Arts 12 - Digital Media: Current Directions

"The Wrecking Ball is an evening of political theatre, a Toronto tradition that has spread to other Canadian cities. Playwrights are given a short time to write a brief play, political in nature. Directors and actors are brought in, and with very little rehearsal or preparation they put on a show for one night only."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"I think that concert presenters still scratch their heads and don't understand why this phenomenon is occurring. They don't want to recognize the fact that drums, which not so long ago were considered to not be a concert instrument, have now taken over as the predominant attraction of new audiences.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"The Waterfalls flowed in the East River. The Gates snaked through Central Park. Now New York's latest large-scale public art project is being exhibited in an even unlikelier space: your wallet."... ArtsJournal mclennan

Lee Strasberg's son David Lee is maintaining his late father's acting schools in Manhattan and West Hollywood and even opening a new branch in Mumbai next year. He argues that the Method "is less reliant on psychobabble than most people believe. … [More] interesting is the way developments in neuroscience keep cropping up in his conversation."... ArtsJournal mclennan

Celebrated architect Alvar Aalto may have created a Nordic modernist icon with his 1971 concert hall, but he didn't much care about acoustics, and it showed. So the powers-that-be are turning the place into a convention center and building a new six-venue concert hall with acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota, known for Disney Hall in L.A.... ArtsJournal mclennan

"If the human brain is data being passed from neuron to neuron at its basic level and we can simulate that in a computer, shouldn't a conscious mind start to emerge?" Not really: "The difference between simulated thinking and conscious thinking can be illustrated by thinking about the difference between a computer-simulated boat and a real one."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"Goofy, gentle, nimbly amateurish, jerking was little known outside certain precincts of this sprawling city [L.A.] until a year ago. But in the last nine months or so, jerking began an unexpected run as an Internet phenomenon." The movement has a "rebellious disregard for the conventions of urban style and music (old school hip-hop artists are referred to as 'baggy daddies')."... ArtsJournal mclennan

They're serious. Says one of the magazine's editors: "The Internet can be considered the first weapon of mass construction … What happened in Iran after the latest election, and the role the Web played in spreading information that would otherwise have been censored, are only the newest examples of how the internet can become a weapon of global hope."... ArtsJournal mclennan

Critic Armond White wrote, "Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious." Responds the novelist Sapphire, "With Michelle, Sasha and Malia and Obama in the White House and in the post-Cosby Show era, people can't say these are the only images out there."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"It's been an interesting journey. Slowly and surely we have come together through honeymoons and the opposite. I remember Karajan said that with an orchestra like this the first five or 10 years are tradition. I didn't quite believe him. But after what has sometimes felt like moving at the speed of tectonic plates, … we now have a tradition to build on."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"The CD player is dead. So says Linn Products, the high-end audio specialist based in Glasgow which for 20 years has been making … CD players. The reason: its audiophile customers have moved, with alacrity, to hard drive-based systems."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"The subtext of the week's performances [at the Blue Note] - with McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, Eddie Palmieri and Jack DeJohnette as guests on various nights - is that Mr. Glover is a musician. The raised wooden board beneath him isn't just his stage; it's his instrument, with eight microphones underneath."... ArtsJournal mclennan

Stephen King looks at the short story master, the appalling treatment he gave the wife who made his career possible, the appalling treatment axe-wielding editor Gordon Lish gave his prose, and the alcoholism underlying it all.... ArtsJournal mclennan

"A tooth and two fingers of Galileo Galilei, the 17th century Italian astronomer, physicist, inventor and mathematician, have re-emerged from a lost wooden case, Florence's authorities [have] announced."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"Augmented reality (AR) has been touted as the bridge between the physical and virtual worlds, as new technologies add information to real-world environments." A new exhibition titled "Give Me More" uses AR "to reveal hidden layers of meaning associated with ordinary objects. … Storybooks become animated, t-shirts bestow powers on their wearers, and Euro notes show their more salacious face."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"His 19 'Above' books, each with about 150 photographs, include neighborhood-by-neighborhood overviews of Paris, London, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, San Diego and Seattle." (He covered his hometown with four volumes of Above San Francisco.) "Then there are the volumes showing the natural wonders of places like Yosemite, Big Sur and Hawaii."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"Reading the future and shunning possible mishaps is mankind's oldest dream. In 16th-century Iran and Turkey, … it inspired some of the most intriguing book paintings ever. These were prompted by a peculiar literary genre, the Fal-Nameh, or Book of Omens, which took off around the 1560s and lasted at least until the early 18th century."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"Oxfam has attempted to patch up its differences with secondhand booksellers." A trade group "had said that Oxfam's voluntary staff, donated stock and business-rate reductions allowed it to undercut rivals, forcing some secondhand booksellers out of business and taking trade away from others."... ArtsJournal mclennan

"Set in the mid-1960s … Fetch Clay, Make Man, by Will Power, centers on the young boxer's friendship with Stepin Fetchit, the stage name of the actor Lincoln Perry." The play, which "deals with creating personas," opens in January at the McCarter Theater in Princeton. Ben Vereen will play Fetchit, with Evan Parke as Ali; Des McAnuff will direct... ArtsJournal mclennan

Surveying the history of artists' attempts to fool their viewers, from Ancient Rome through Giotto and the Flemish masters to American tricks with pictures of money and sculptors who made rock look like bronze and porcelain resemble wood.... ArtsJournal mclennan