Campbell Vertesi

Today, Ask a Ninja posted about a Net Neutrality issue with MySpace, which highlights exactly why we as artists should be concerned with this issue.

"Net Neutrality" usually refers to the practice of Internet providers not restricting what websites you can connect to, or what services you can use over your internet connection.  Imagine if AT&T blocked you from accessing Google, or Youtube, in order to force you into using the AT&T owned competitor products instead. 

MySpace has started violating the neutrality of their site, by deleting links to competitors.  If you post a link on your myspace site to a competing video site (revver.com for instance), Myspace will delete that link. Poof, gone.  This is to force you into using MySpace's own video hosting service... sound familiar?  Perhaps exactly like the example above?

 What they did is perfectly in accordance with the legal stuff you agree to when you sign up for MySpace.  Technically, anything you put up there belongs to MySpace, and they can do whatever they want with that content.  But that doesn't mean that MySpace users should be happy about it.

There are people who believe that we need legislation to prevent this sort of thing - laws that protect "Net Neutrality".  I'm against the whole idea.  This is exactly the sort of thing that capitalism is so good at dealing with!  If you're not happy with what MySpace does with your content, don't use their service!  Complain, post on your blog about it, tell you friends... but fundamentally, your right as a consumer is to decide to use a different service. Make MySpace pay the price for their unpopular policy, and don't give them your content.

Remember that we arrive at the table with a bargaining chip, too!  MySpace wants your content (be it videos, audio clips, or whatever), and the web traffic that will bring.  You want someone to host your content.  If you can't come to an agreement as to what MySpace will give you in exchange for your content, you can (and should) walk away from the table, to seek further.  Part of MySpace's offer is that they will restrict what sites you link to.  If it bothers you, seek further! 

 As artists, this is worth paying attention to.  Particularly for small-time artists, our marketing and livelihoods are increasingly based on online services like MySpace, YouTube, and Revver - and correspondingly, on people's ability to access our content from anywhere.  Net Neutrality is critical to any future for us in the online marketplace, and the best way to support Neutrality-friendly policies is to vote with your wallet. 

Get 'em while they're hot!

The International Mozart Foundation in Salzburg is sending out Mozzie's 250th Birthday year with a bang! They've bought the rights to the definitive scholarly editions of the complete works of Mozart for free release online!

That's right, free as in beer. And that's right, scholarly as in Baerenreiter. These are the most expensive, most coveted Mozart texts (for singers, at least), prized for their high accuracy and scholarly annotations. Apparently the big B got a cool $400,000 for the rights. Not that this was the end of the spending: with over 45,000 visits in the first two hours, they've had to buy a bigger server!

So what are you waiting for? The full text is searchable, so (as reuters points out) a search for "Pamina" will yield all of her arias, as well as the famous Baerenreiter notes thereupon.

I can't believe it, so I'm gonna say it again: the complete Baerenreiter scores of Mozart are available for free online!

An intrepid commenter left me a link for the MetBlog today... apparently they're blogging their rehearsal process for The First Emperor, the newly commissioned work by Tan Dun. Is this Gelb at work? Or something going on under his radar? In any case, I like it.

But wait till you see the spring project I'm working on. Holy crap. It'll combine so many of my favorite things - Bryn, Opera, the Internet, streaming, blogging... it's gonna be sooo badass it' hard to describe. So I won't describe it - YET. You're just gonna have to wait.

Nice to know that I'm not the only one anxious to bring opera into the age of New Media! Pinchgut Opera, a small company in Sydney, Australia, is blogging their rehearsal process for Idomeneo. Simple, but effective. If I lived anywhere in Eastern Oz, I'd be there!

The Lucrezia Project (whose website I designed) is being performed this weekend.  If you haven’t already, check out the website (now with information!).  If you’ve seen the site already, check out the webcast of the performance… and if you really want to get into it, there’s also a webcast of the round-table discussion (in which I was a panelist!) that preceded tonight’s performance.  

Note: As of this moment, those stream links don't seem to be working.  It’s not my fault though, and I can only hope that they get fixed by the time you read this. 

Here’s some more great news in the musical geekery world!  Has anyone else heard about San Francisco Symphony’s new Keeping Score program?  This is great stuff. As the SF Chronicle puts it:

“[Keeping Score] is an undertaking that will allow music lovers to crawl inside the heads of the composers; ...peer at the score while a pointer marks the place being played; become historically immersed in the time and place in which the music was introduced; ...and at the same time listen, listen, listen.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

A few weeks before every concert, they start playing the pieces on the radio . Local classical stations I guess, NPR… that sort of play.  Each time, there are discussions about different aspects of the pieces, interviews between Music Director Michael Tilson-Thomas and instrumentalists he knows.  Then they do a video broadcast on PBS – documentaries, biographies of composers (check local listings).  Finally (and this is my favorite bit), they set up a website for the pieces.  Not a mom and pop website like you’re used to, either.  This is a high-quality, information packed flash dealie.  A veritable cornucopia of music geekery.

Listen to the piece while reading about the programmatic aspects.  Watch the score scroll by as you watch a video of the orchestra playing it, each measure highlighted as you go.   Interesting information is represented as colored blocks in the score.  Click on one to see an interview with a particular player (“interview with trombonist John Doe on the role of the horns in this piece”), a discussion on the music theory behind the passage, perhaps a historical tidbit, or a ‘parody’ explanation (parody is music history speak for “plagiarized”).  Musical notation can be moused-over, to see an explanation of “pp” or “adagio”. There are mini-interviews with music director Michael Tilson-Thomas.  There is so much information to geek out on, it’s unreal.  The first time I saw this site, I think I wet my pants.

Go on.  Check it out.  Their pilot project is Tchaikovski’s 4th symphony. Enjoy!  Now this is the kind of thing I like to see - getting audiences more involved in the stuff that give classical music such depth!

Here it is! The post I've been waiting to - um, post!!  May I present the Lucrezia Project!

Next month, CCM is producing The Lucrezia Project - a sort of modified version of Respighi's opera Lucrezia.  I know next to nothing about the way the show itself is being modified- my involvement is with a novel way to approach thematic development in an opera. And this is an opera about Honor Killing.  Go on, read the wikipedia link.  It will help make this whole thing make sense.

 You see traditionally, the director does days of painstaking research in developing a serious, deep theme for their presentation of an opera.  They analyze characters, they break down scenes into their subtle implications - in short, they wrack their brains over this stuff.  Then they try to impart this theme to their acting singers, who skimp on the studying, and try to fake their way through a character that somehow (hopefully) supports the director's concept.  Finally, the audience arrives, and is perplexed at what the hell is going on in the first place, and why on earth did they use such odd lighting??  Theatre sure is funny!

This is the natural life cycle for an opera with a concept.  But perhaps not The Lucrezia Project.  The idea behind this production is to let the audience in on the development and thematic issues right from the start, using the internet.  I built a website that incorporates directors' blogs with discussion forums, and areas for the public to watch the performers grow their characters.  On this site, people can discuss the moral implications of Honor Killing - especially in the context of the modern world, as Eastern and Western civilization collide and intermingle.  How do you take the right to dictate another culture's morality?  Is the growing monoculture of our increasingly globalized world a Good thing?  What can or should be done for girls who seek asylum from their own families? (see, I told you to read the Wikipedia link.  Now go back and do it)

All of this will go on in a public forum - along with cast comments, directors' notes, and the whole playbuilding process around this incredibly contentious issue (dammit! Read the friggin' Wikipedia link already!).  The whole project culminates in a podcast/videocast of the production, and a series of interviews with the artists about their experience in the project.  Of ccourse the show is open to the public as well, and UC students get in free.

Can you say "badass"?  Can you say "New Media"?  Finally, you can have an audience that really understands the directoral vision.  Finally, a crowd that knows your character as well as you do!  At last, the audience will know more and have thought more about the theme than they did in the 5 minutes between reading the program notes and the curtain call.  This has the potential to take the thinking in theatre into a virtual discussion - and vice versa.

The down side - this project is limited to participation from UC students only.  Outsiders (we call you guys "normies") can spectate, but not post.  Feel free to write on your own blogs I guess, and submit the link on the contact page.  Your thoughts will likely be included in the discussion. At least post a link in MY comments.

Oh, and the shameless plug - I designed the site!  This is the exciting project I've been doing at work for the last month, and it's finally in production.  My supervisor Ellen Davis and I have worked on the Lucrezia Project tirelessly for weeks, and we really hope this participatory theatre concept takes off.  I did the visual design though. :)

So head on over and take a look!  I don't know if the forums or all of the content is up quite yet, but I'm not waiting any longer.  This time tomorrow I'll be posting from California, and I should have all sorts of other, interesting stuff to write about!

I think I may be the only blogger who hasn't posted about this yet - is it safe to say we've all heard of Lonelygirl15?  The Youtube sensation has recently been revealed as actress Jessica Rose, and her videocast as being related to an Internet Service of some description.  It's not an amateur affair, and it's not clear yet where the revenue comes in.  

It's been suggested that Youtube itself is the company behind the broadcast.  We've all wondered how Youtube planned to make money - and maybe a hosted show is the answer.  All I know is that they've definitely started crossing borders with this thing.
In her famous swimming entry, Lonelygirl15 made some reference to "Cassie" - "whatever happened to her?"  Prompting speculation across the web.  Who was Cassie?  What did happen to her?  Well, Cassie has appeared with her own videoblog on YouTube.  Her posts are pretty creepy (think Japanese horror movie).  The first one showed her throwing things into the same stream where Lonelygirl15 had been swimming.  

And here's where it gets interesting - a YouTube member went to the stream, and found the Tarot card for "Judgement".  Whaaaaa?

So now we have a truly modern 'TV show' - it only takes place on the Web, it has no commercials (yet?), involves multiple perspectives on (maybe) the same events, and it crosses over into the real world.  This would be like someone leaving a ninja star at the scene of a Ninja Turtles episode (except somewhat less dangerous).  Crazy stuff.
Which segues into my next topic - next-gen media and the arts.  Wait for it.  It's coming.  No, really - i mean it this time. I'm taking some time to stay at home and be sick, and I'll be writing.