Arts 11 - Digital Media: History & Foundations

"Google, the internet's search leader, is hoping to keep the deal alive with a series of new provisions. Among other things, the modified agreement provides more flexibility to offer discounts on electronics books and promises to make it easier for others to resell access to a digital index of books covered in the settlement."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"The studio just paid $20,000 to the Alaska Press Club as part of a settlement with several Alaska newspapers after the studio, in the course of promoting its current release, The Fourth Kind, created an elaborate series of online news stories that professed to be from real Alaska news publications."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"Console sales crashed 23% to $380.7 million last month, from $497 million in October 2008. Game software sales fell 18% to $572.7 million, down from $698.4 million a year earlier. The grim numbers represent the seventh monthly decline in U.S. video game sales."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"Public goods situations crop up all over the place, including decisions on maintaining roads, funding the police and whether or not to shirk at work. This leads us to an important question: is it possible to make people care enough about such problems to do their bit?"... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"In London I'm in the papers every time I blow my nose, essentially. I'll be followed by paparazzi. I'm taught in the school curriculum in Britain. It's actually kind of nice when I come to New York and I don't have that recognized thing."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"Teams are focused on season tickets, big theater groups are focused on subscriptions, that kind of stuff. We are really focused on viral social-marketing technology that will allow music venues and promoters to sell tickets."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"Blyton, who died aged 71 in 1968 and has sold 600 million books, was a trailblazer. After training as a teacher, she got her first break thanks to Pollock, who worked at the London publishers George Newnes and helped her publish her first stories in 1924. But it was her own ruthless business acumen that helped her become the most popular children's author of the era."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"What was it about Tatum that kept him in relative obscurity? Part of the problem, I suspect, is that his personality was almost entirely opaque. We're told that he liked baseball and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beer by the quart, but little else is known for sure about his private life."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"More than 5,000 movies have come and gone and been reviewed in The Times, most of them still living somewhere in the lucrative zombie limbo of DVD or cable programming. Some landed noisily on thousands of screens at once, gobbling up as much attention and money as the marketing machinery of the studios could buy, at least for a weekend or two. Others bloomed quietly in big-city art houses and were smiled on (if they were lucky) by ardent critics and die-hard cinephiles."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"According to Albee, the problem is that the world of theatre has changed in ways he disapproves of. He is especially irked by the increasing importance of a director's vision, which is now understood to be just as valuable as what is being directed. In interviews and public speeches, Albee has been vocal about his distaste for those who neglect his strict stage directions."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"Poland's contemporary artists have put their country on the international art map. Once a must-see for tourists interested in the tragic aspects of Europe's past, Poland has now become an important destination for contemporary-art fans."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

Following its near-collapse last year, the Vancouver company is binding itself to its community with "its first choreographic series, Surfacing, which will feature commissioned work by four local choreographers performed by company members and 15 dancers from the Arts Umbrella Graduate Program."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

Ever since 1996, when Sydney and Melbourne companies were merged to form the Sydney-based Opera Australia, Melburnian opera fans have complained that the national company gives their city too few performances of too few works with too few top-tier singers. New OA artistic director Lyndon Terracini plans to address their complaints, with more new productions, including a Ring cycle to start in 2012.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

Helmer Francesca Zambello has withdrawn from the tuner version of The First Wives Club … Zambello (The Little Mermaid), who directed the world preem of First Wives at San Diego's Old Globe over the summer, is attached to an upcoming production of musical Rebecca, and also regularly directs opera."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

Kaylie Jones, daughter of author James Jones: "My father agreed to eliminate a certain number of F-words - in part because there was a question whether the US postal system would even deliver the book to stores because of its 'salacious' nature - but there was another battle he was waging with his publisher. Apparently Scribner's had a 'don't ask don't tell' policy about depicting homosexuality in the Army."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

In the wake of the firing of Oleg Caetani from the Melbourne Symphony, apparently for unsatisfactory performance, and a very successful guest engagement by 18th-century specialist Reinhard Goebel (whom the musicians cheered), the MSO's chairman and other managers are considering doing without a chief conductor altogether.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"'Forty years,' reflects Joan Myers Brown on the dance company she founded and continues to run, 'means really another year that we've got to struggle. But, the fact that we are still here is amazing'."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"We have seen much hand-wringing over the fact that dominant languages like English seem to invade smaller countries and displace their languages - and languages are indeed dying out faster under the pressures of globalism. But nobody seems to ask, What harm is this doing to English?"... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"How many video game addicts also do drama? Probably very few. Away from central London, professional theatre and music struggle to compete with multi-channel television, video games, pubs, clubbing and IT networking, a situation exacerbated by 25 years during which arts and culture have been downgraded in the curriculum, and the chance of being enthused decreased by the daunting documentation and fear of litigation that deters schools from organising trips."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"It might seem like a stupid question, but when you watch a piece of theatre, do you ever wonder who has done what? There's no real reason why you should. You liked so-and-so's performance, the set looked nice, theatre is a collaborative effort and you enjoyed the show. End of story."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical