Arts 11 - Digital Media: History & Foundations

"More than 200 directors, producers and screenwriters withdrew 52 films from the [Thessaloniki Film Festival], undermining the state awards, which selects winners from Greek films that unspool at the fest." Filmmakers were protesting the nation's film funding laws.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference

"The WGA West's 2009 Hollywood Writers Report finds 'little if any' improvement in employment and earnings for women and minority writers. The report ... found that women scribes remain stuck at 28% of TV employment and 18% in features while the minority share has been frozen at 6% since 1999."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference

"Composers and lyricists are among the few Hollywood creatives without a collective bargaining agreement. Services like orchestration, conducting and music performance are covered by American Federation of Musicians (AFM) agreements, but not the act of writing music or lyrics."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference

"Part of the appeal of percussion music is visual." Indeed, "the extramusical elements may be the reason percussion music is so popular with audiences, and often draws crowds that are substantially younger than average."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference

"The company's move last season from the tiny 50-seat Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (a.k.a. CHAW) to the much larger Sprenger Theater in the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE proved more than its budget could handle."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference

"People once scoffed at the idea of reading a book on a 3.5-inch mobile screen. For many readers, though, sheer convenience trumps everything else."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference

"It's not often that you see a manifestation of Satan within the precincts of Westminster Abbey, but at a ceremony to unveil a memorial to the founders of the Royal Ballet, he made a striking appearance. [Two dancers] took the part of the fallen angel in synchronised performances of an extract from Ninette de Valois's Job, performed at either end of the long nave, so that the entire congregation could see something."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"Chicago-based dramatist Marisa Wegrzyn has won the 2009 Wasserstein Prize for her new play, Hickorydickory." The award, which also includes a reading at New York's Second Stage Theater, is given "for an outstanding script by a young woman who has not yet received national attention."... ArtsJournal mclennan

The Washington Post's classical critic answers ten questions about the decade past, covering such issues as the decline of record labels, the rise of the Web, hits (in both senses) at the box office, and the trajectory of classical radio. And she predicts the future. ("Classical music will survive. I predict that.")... ArtsJournal mclennan

What with the movie, the Mayan calendar, and the solar-galactic-alignment thing, one NASA astronomer has "been getting about 20 letters and e-mail messages a day from people … scared out of their wits," seriously wondering if they should euthanize themselves and loved ones before the end of the world less than three years hence. So the agency "felt it was prudent to provide a resource."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"For all the fun we have with them, illusions do serious work in illuminating how our brains work, and in particular how perception works. They may also help us understand how consciousness developed, and tell us about our 'neuro-archaeology'."... ArtsJournal mclennan

There's a "reprehensible message" underlying most war-themed video games: "Killing foreigners on behalf of one's country is one hell of a good time." But Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is "a first-person shooter that plays as a tragedy, not a power fantasy[,]  … a murder simulator that won't let you forget the nature of your actions."... ArtsJournal mclennan

The British actor played Robert McCall, the title character of the CBS detective series, from 1985 to 1989. He also starred in the films The Wicker Man and Breaker Morant.... ArtsJournal mclennan

Synchronicity Performance Group planned an extremely tight budget for 2009-10, and the company couldn't sustain the loss it took on its children's play Bunnicula, about a vampire rabbit. "As a result, Synchronicity has cancelled the last two shows of its season: Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone and The Brand New Kid, a family show."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"Nothing. (laughter) No, it was a joke in the dressing rooms at Judson. We were all naming categories of visual art practitioners and someone said, 'We were doing postmodern dance at Judson.' We all cracked up and no one countered us."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"We might call a fickle, changeable acquaintance a chameleon, but the true champions of camouflage turn out to be cephalopods - octopuses, cuttlefish and squid. Unlike a chameleon, an octopus can duplicate the colour and texture of almost anything."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"A contact lens that harvests radio waves to power an LED is paving the way for a new kind of display" - graphics transmitted right onto the lens and into its wearer's field of vision. Uses might "include subtitles when conversing with a foreign-language speaker, directions in unfamiliar territory and captioned photographs."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"How many tweets does it take to cover the entire span of opera history? The San Diego Opera wants to find out and has launched a Twitter project in which it will tweet about everything from Monteverdi to Mozart to Philip Glass on a daily basis. With more than 400 years to cover - and at a rate of two tweets per day - the project could take years to finish."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"Where hard-line Abstract Expressionists shunned figural elements in their work, Mr. Kriesberg used them lavishly. As a result, he was often called a Figurative Expressionist; the term applied to midcentury Expressionists whose work was not strictly abstract."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"Google has scaled back its digital book plans after submitting a revised settlement with industry regulators following pressure from European and Asian governments. The amended settlement proposes Google will only digitise books copy-protected in the US or published in the UK, Canada and Australia - a significant reduction on its original plans." (New Zealand is ticked off.)... ArtsJournal mclennan