storyboard

Optical arrangement by Linda Heydegger. 

mezzo soprano lorraine hunt lieberson died in July of this year. her death was completely unexpected: she was only 52, but apparently had battled cancer since 2000.  the new yorker has a profile and a commemorative audio piece up on its site this week:

Alex Ross offers an audio tribute to the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

PLUS: From this week’s magazine, Ross remembers Lieberson; from 2004, Charles Michener’s Profile of the singer.

 

Ever since first hearing her rendition of the Bach Cantatas,  I have looked forward to one day see her perform in the flesh. she was reputed for her on stage magnetism and her full, vibrant voice. that day will now never come, but her voice lives on thanks to the few recordings she left.

Find Lieberson recordings on Amazon. 

 Not much has been going on on this blog, mostly because of other engagements, including another blog baby, Shortcut, which has been growing and demanding a lot more attention. There's been changes too, with the Athens correspondent returning to her home country and our London contributor moving to Paris - and we're always looking for fresh cities to write up.  If you happen to be a blogger in Brussels, Milan, London or Vienna, and write wittily about life in one of these capitals, don't hesitate to contact me. You may just be perfect for Shortcut.

So much for plug number 1, plug numer 2 is more personal, or maybe not. One of my short stories made the finalist shortlist for this year's Faulkner Creative Writing competition. While husband-to-be is already checking out whether spouses get to share in the winner's bounty, I am more modestly awaiting the announcement of the actual finalists with every available extremity crossed. My friend Kiki Denis, whose first novel is "The Last Day of Paradise" is coming out in August, is listed as well in the poetry category.

Lastly, I am back in the corporate fold at digital agency Framfab working on this. 

So that's why this blog has been so quiet.  

The New York Times Sunday Magazine runs a story on how two Swiss architects got grey hairs doing commissions in China.  Herzog & de Meuron got sucked into the vast, murky, elusive web of Chinese business and politics when they won the bid to build the Olympic stadium. They deny the grey hairs being a result of it, but the shock is palpable in de Meuron's unvarnished words:

"This was a very enriching personal experience," he says — but like many such experiences, it was also exhausting and painful. "I am the sort of person who tries to find a solution," he explains. "You bring me problems, and de Meuron tries to solve them. It is too much money, or you can't do it for this building code, or the client wants concrete, not wood — I find another way. This is how it worked for me up to now. In China, it was very different. That was a challenge for me, not only as an architect but as a person. To have someone on the other side and they are experts in misleading you or trapping you. It is never one to one when they say if they like it or don't like it. They played with me."

 

morph is about to close and many of the contributors are heading to london for the we media global forum, including this contributor who's been recruited to be an online curator. in every day speak that means i'll be glued to the conference chat screen tyring to make sense of comments and conversations threads while the debate rages onstage. or so they tell me. if you're wondering what this conference is about and have never heard of social media or social technologies or citizen media or the consumer web or web 2.0, you might want to read this first and then browse through the media center blog. The topics reflect some of the issues that will be discussed at the forum. if you don't have the time / inclination to do extensive reading, check my summary on SHORTCUT:

Click to read more ...

 
this entry was posted in morph, the mediacenter blog.

Cherchez la femme. That's what the French say when they want to imply that there's a woman behind something or other.  In WEEK 7 of our Morph efforts, we'll be doing exactly that: looking for la femme in social media. How does social media (or web 2.0 applications) impact women? Is it boosting careers? Is it leveling the playing field? Or are the boys running the show here as well?

Click to read more ...

the ever entrepreneurial henriette weber launched a network for women in technology. if you're blogging or podcasting or otherwise honeymooning with social media, head over to geekgrrls and sign up.

if you haven't yet, you may want to: morph is a collaborative project launched by the US based media center and brings together 50 contributors from around the globe who weigh in on technology, media and society. the conversations are centered around weekly topics and five main themes: we live, we imagine, we influence, we inform and we lead. the output by such a diverse slate of people makes for interesting reading and can jumpstart ideas if you're in need of any during a slow business day. just take 5 minutes, browse and get hooked. or search for specific topics and get opinions on anything from where storytelling is headed to how we parse information and what innovation means in an age that seems to  generate it every day. here's a sample by Ogilvy Creative Director John Bell:

First there were three broadcast networks in the United States. Then cable gave us a greater selection which quickly snowballed into the promise of 500 channels. Let's forget that little burp that was Interactive Television which I worked on at AT&T and Viacom in the early nineties. Now we are talking about a long tail's worth of "broadband channels." Today the New York Times talks about the "Slivercast," lots of niche channels that could not exist within the metrics of cable. The real excitement is not that there is sail.tv (or motherload or more versions of Discovery...) but that the means of production and distribution is in the hands of a myriad of new "microcasters" - small business people trying to reach a small yet valuable audience.

there's plenty of networking groups in copenhagen, but for business minded girls, the newish PWA (Professional Women's Association of Copenhagen) looks like a good place to do the rounds. at their opening event they had more than 100 women attending, from all walks of business and different cultures. sorry, no pics of the event, but you can check the website for more info.