Year: 2011

Fuse Commentary: What Survives — The Mad Rush to Digitization

January 10, 2011
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The mad rush to digitization brings up another host of new issues. Unlike a printed book, digital media requires a change of technologies—computers, software, imaging—to interpret the information. Will digitization serve the long-term interests of knowledge as well as the media it is replacing? It’s unlikely. By Peter Walsh. When we look back from, say,…

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Fuse Theater Review: A Pleasant if Thin “Understudy”

January 9, 2011
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The tragicomic idea is that the existential futility of Franz Kafka’s world reflects life in the theater. The characters gloriously quixotic love for the stage battles against commercial greed, egomania, and psychological mess-ups. The Understudy by Theresa Rebeck. Directed by Larry Coen. Staged by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston at the 140 Clarendon Street…

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Classical Music on YouTube: Hidden and Not-So-Hidden Treasures

January 7, 2011
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For classical music connoisseurs, YouTube has morphed into a virtual museum of music, at once an oasis of archival material, rare recordings, and provocative content. Rare recorded materials, some of them dating back to the early 1900s that were once available only in the dusty archives of a research library, are now instantly accessible, often…

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Book Review: Remembrance of Lebanon Past (Updated With Interview)

January 6, 2011
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This first novel from Arab-American writer Thérèse Soukar Chehade, who teaches English Language Education at a school in Amherst, Massachusetts, turns out to be a thoughtful family portrait that deals subtly with the variegated experiences of being outsiders in a strange land and the pulls of loss, memory, and desire. Loom by Thérèse Soukar Chehade.…

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Visual Arts: New Year’s Resolutions and On Augmenting Art

January 6, 2011
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In practical terms the Virtual Reality helmet has still not lived up to its potential. Another device has come along, however, that can convey as much information, though without the total visual immersion of Virtual Reality. This is nothing other than the humble cell phone . . . By Gary Schwartz. In 1997 I was…

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A Note from the Webmaster: The Arts Fuse is alive and well

January 6, 2011
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What does not kill me, makes me stronger. — Friedrich Nietzsche The internet is always an unpredictable neighborhood and sometimes a rough one. The Arts Fuse website crashed (but did not burn) yesterday; after a long day and a half, we’re back up and running smoothly—better and more resilient. The cause of the crash remains…

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Coming Attractions in Film: January 2011

January 3, 2011
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The highlights of the month include films from Iran, an adult look at married life, an early movie by the criminally underrated director Todd Haynes, and what is billed as the “best Nazi zombie movie ever.” By Justin Marble. Princess Bride and Young Frankenstein. At the Brattle Theatre, January 6. It’s not often that viewers…

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Coming Attractions in Jazz: Early January 2011

January 2, 2011
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Two outstanding Israeli pianists, baritone sax and bass masters, and some fascinating ensemble collaborations highlight the start of 2011.

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Commentary/Review: Modernism Takes To The Barricades

January 2, 2011
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In this valuable book, Gabriel Josipovici raises radical doubts about the aesthetic and spiritual satisfactions of conventional storytelling as well as the unquestioned values of realism, at one point condemning writers simply content to tell a story “and telling it in such a way as to make readers feel that they are not reading about…

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