The Google Art Project and Google Music: There’s No Turning Back

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aesthetics, art blog, art criticism, Claudia Moscovici, Google, Google Art Project, Google Art Project and YouTube, Google Music, Google Plus, googleartproject, increasing popularity of art, making art accessible, Metropolitan Museum of Art, panoramic views of art, postromanticism.com, Romanticism and Postromanticism, seeing art online, Starry Night, the Frick Collection, the Frick Museum, the future of art, the future of galleries, The Google Art Project, The Google Art Project and Google Music: There's No Turning Back, The Google Art Project: There's No Turning Back, the Museum of Modern Art, the Palace of Versailes, the Tate Gallery, the Uffizi Museum, Van Gogh, virtual gallery tours, virtual museum tours, virtual tour of museums, youtube and art, YouTube art videos

On February 1, 2011 Google launched the groundbreaking Google Art Project. This is an online, high-resolution compilation of some of the greatest works of art, featured in some of the most famous museums, worldwide: including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and, my personal favorite, the Frick Collection in New York City; the Uffizi in Florence; the Palace of Versailles in Paris and the Tate Gallery in London. All in all, seventeen museums and galleries participated in this revolutionary venture.

According to the Wikipedia, Elizabeth Merritt, the Director of the Center for the Future of Museums, described the project as an “interesting experiment.” Other leaders in the world of art greeted this venture with more optimism. Julian Raby, the Director of the Freer Gallery of Art, stated that this project would increase viewers’ interest in visiting the actual museums. Brian Kennedy shared this view, stating that even though the virtual museum and gallery tours offer better resolution and panoramic perspectives, that’s still not a substitute for seeing the works of art in person.

It’s not the same, but, in my opinion, the Google Art Project represents the wave of the future–if not the present–not just for museums, but also for art galleries. Galleries in particular have taken a terrible hit during the past few years. Many were forced to go out of business. During tough economic times, art is seen as a luxury that many consumers are willing to forgo. The Google Art Project generates interest in great works of art once again. And with interest comes visits to the museum and galleries, which in turn, increases the number of  art collectors and buyers.

Incidentally, I also love the idea that Google, which now owns YouTube, combines the virtual museum tours with YouTube videos related to selected artists or works of art. By combining beautiful art and music, sometimes even local scenes, and by being so widely accessible to hundreds of millions of YouTube viewers, Google is making art accessible and inviting not only to art lovers but also to those who have only a remote interest in art.

The world of art has reached a pivotal turning point due to this, and similar, technological advances. Those galleries that will adapt to these new ways of reaching viewers to inform and attract the general public will be much more likely to survive than those that will not. I can’t see virtual reality becoming a substitute for actual reality in any domain: be it art, sex or entertainment. But I do see virtual reality as the most effective–and now, indispensable–way to spread information about the reality that will count most in the twenty-first century. You can learn more about this project by visiting the website http://www.googleartproject.com/c/faq.

More recently, in May 2011, Google also launched Google Music, an online service that offers music in a similar fashion to itunes (in fact, you can import songs from itunes on it). This new service is very versatile: you can purchase songs on Google plus as well as store up to 20,000 songs for free. So far Google Music is available only to U.S. residents, but it will soon open up to other parts of the world. You can find more information about Google Music on the website http://music.google.com.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

http://www.amazon.com/Romanticism-Postromanticism-Claudia-Moscovici/dp/0739116754

 

Andy “Soundland” Platon: A Romanian Pop Music Prodigy

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aesthetics, Alexandra Stan, Alia Anastasiei, Andy "Soundland" Platon, Andy "Soundland" Platon: A Romanian Pop Music Prodigy, Andy Platon, Andy Platon Velvet Love, Anthony Icuagu, art blog, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, contemporary pop music, Curtea Veche Publishing, Editura Curtea Veche, Edward Maya, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, Intre Doua Lumi, Intre Doua Lumi by Claudia Moscovici, Ioana Picos, Lost Without You, Lost Without You by Andy Platon, Marcel Lovin, Marcel Lovin Velvet Love, MediaPro Pictures, MediaPro Pictures Romania, Mihai Marin, modern art, Mr. Saxobeat, pop music, postromantic art, postromantic movement, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Romanian pop music, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Stereo Love, Velvet Love and Velvet Totalitarianism, Velvet Totalitarianism, Velvet Totalitarianism by Claudia Moscovici, VEVO, Vika Jigulina

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve been  a big fan of pop music. As I grew older, I retained a certain nostalgia for 80’s and 90’s bands like U2, who seem to have made it through the generations and even have echoes in the music my teenage daughter Sophie now enjoys, such as the songs of David Guetta (particularly the new hit single, Without You). Granted, I lean more towards Amy Winehouse and Katie Melua than towards the contemporary club music and hip hop hits my daughter prefers. Since she’s become a teenager a little over a year ago and began monopolizing the radio, however, I’ve grown used to today’s pop music, including songs by Lil Wayne, the New Boyz, Pitbull and–of course!–Lady Gaga.

Although I may not listen to most of their music on my own, my teenage daughter and I found unexpected common ground in singers like David Guetta, Maroon 5 and–especially–Adele. As I began to listen regularly to her radio station, two songs struck me as contemporary but also somehow different, out of the norm: Stereo Love and Mr. Saxobeat. Once I looked them up on the Internet, I found out that both were sung by fellow Romanians: Edward Maya and Vika Jigulina (Stereo Love) and Alexandra Stan (Mr. Saxobeat). I thought to myself, not without a note of national pride: Those Romanians did it again! The truth is that Romanians have always been wonderful at adapatation. To my mind, the best kind of adaptation is when you manage to simultaneously fit in with whatever’s popular at the time and, somehow, still stand out as unique, by retaining a certain Eastern European flavor.

Perhaps this trace of uniqueness explains part of the  international success of hit songs like Stereo Love and Mr. Saxobeat, which isn’t easy to come by, since the competition is tough and so many millions of singers want to become international pop sensations. Of course, the huge success of some Romanian songs is attributable not only to the talent of the singers, but also to the video production capacities and international market connections of MediaPro Pictures, Romania’s largest TV and music video production company, which is part of CME (Central European Media Enterprises).

Once I found out from my publisher, Editura Curtea Veche, that  my first novel, Velvet Totalitarianism, will be launched in Romanian translation (under the title Intre Doua Lumi) in September of 2011, I began exploring the possibility of collaborating with talented Romanian composers and musicians for a music video/book trailer of my novel. Via LinkedIn, I met the Romanian singer, composer, director and producer Andy “Soundland” Platon, who ended up doing a wonderful music video based on my novel, called Velvet Love:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KURICuT8TcA

Andy Platon is a Romanian pop music prodigy.  I say “pop music” only because that’s what he excells at best. But Andy has enormous range both in terms of the scope of his talents–as a composer, music video director and producer and singer–and in the versatility of his musical abilities, from classical music to pop music and everything in between. Andy made his debut while still only a teenager in 2009 with the song Lost Without You, which became a finalist in the competition Battle of Songs. This show  was featured not only in Romania, but also in France, Russia and Turkey. Lost Without You was also nominated for the Shockwave NME Music Awards 2010. More recently, he’s known for his collaborations with Troy Lynch – The BeatBoyz (T.I., Gucci Mane, 112), Loredana Groza and  Marius Nedelcu  featuring  Alexandra Ungureanu, Irina Popa, Xonia, Anthony Icuagu (ex. Insane), Ianna Novac (ex. ASIA, Ladies).

His new single and music video,  Velvet Love,  performed by the talented singer Marcel Lovin, captures with feeling and sensibility some of the most poignant scenes of my novel Velvet Totalitarianism, including the complex dynamics between the main characters, Radu and Ioana, as they struggle with the tension between their love for each other and harassment by the Secret Police. As an art critic I found the video to be very artistic–almost photographic in feel–showing clearly Andy’s eye for capturing each scene in a single image, as well as the talent of his Director of Photography, Anthony Icuagu.

The main actors–Ioana Picos as Ioana and Mihai Marin as Radu–did a wonderful job playing the romantic couple in the novel, whose risky love for each other may be saved by their parental love for their son, Lucian, played by Alia Anastasiei. Given Andy Platon’s versatility, range and many talents–as well as the excellent actors, singers and producers he collaborates with–I expect that soon his songs will be heard on the radio all over the world; maybe even here, in Michigan, U.S.A, on my daughter’s favorite radio station, 98.7 Kiss F.M.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

Confessions of a Twenty-first Century Salonnière: My Favorite Art and Literature Blogs

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, Agonia.net, Agonia.ro, Arianna Huffington, art, art and literature blogs, art blog, art criticism, art history, Catchy, Catchy like a woman, Catchy.ro, Claudia Moscovici, Confessions of a Twenty-first Century Salonnière, Confessions of a Twenty-first Century Salonnière: My Favorite Art and Literature Blogs, contemporary art, culture blogs, Diana Evantia Barca, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, history of art, Levi Asher, Litkicks, Litkicks.com, Mihaela Carlan, modern art, My Favorite Art and Literature Blogs, photography, postromantic art, postromantic movement, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Princeton University, Professor Robert Fagles, Professor Victor Brombert, Radu Herinean, Robert Fagles, Romantic art, Romantic painting, Romanticism, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Salon.com, Salons, The Huffington Post, Victor Brombert

When I openened a twitter account a few months ago, it wasn’t difficult to find the phrase that best captures me: “Born in the wrong century, a would-be salonnière.” Ever since college, when I first learned about Marquise de Rambouillet–the refined hostess who led the most talented artists and writers of her day in scintillating intellectual discussions in the elegant alcove of her drawing room–I knew that I had missed my opportunity and true calling in life. Sure, women may be able to be and do whatever they want today. Society is less sexist, more democratic. But in an era when entertainment news outdoes even socio-political news in popularity and readership, what hope is there for placing art, literature and philosophy at the center of public attention again?

The main problem I encountered in being a contemporary salonnière was: Where are the salons? Most academic discourse struck me as too technical and specialized to draw a large audience. Fortunately, while an undergraduate at Princeton University, I had the enormous privilege to study with scholars who epitomized the salon tradition of worldly intellectuals: Professor Robert Fagles, translator of Homer’s epic poems, and Professor Victor Brombert,  a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, who encouraged my love for world literature and culture to the point where I decided to pursue Comparative Literature for both my undergraduate and graduate studies. Many years later, I discovered quite a number of online salons, where writers, artists and intellectuals converge to discuss their works, in a clear, interesting and sophisticated fashion. I’d like to share with you some of my favorite contemporary salons. 

Litkicks.com. I discovered Litkicks ( http://www.litkicks.com/) in October 2009, when I found on the internet an article about a fellow Romanian-born writer, Herta Müller. The article was called “Herta Who?” by Dedi Felman and it was about the dissident writer’s recently awarded Nobel Prize in Literature. At that point, the founder of Litkicks, Levi Asher, also wrote a brief note on the blog about my recently published novel on similar themes, Velvet Totalitarianism, 2009/Intre Doua Lumi, 2011. We got in touch by email and I became a regular reader and occasional contributor on the blog. Litkicks features articles on literature, poetry, art, philosophy, music, cinema and politics.

Levi was a software developer (and culture lover) on Wall Street when he started Litkicks.com in 1994, which became, along with Salon.com, a pioneer culture blog. The website was originally launched to support Beat Generation poetry and experimental fiction. Over the years, it has expanded its scope to include contemporary literature in general, essays on nineteenth and twentieth-century French poetry and fiction (including Michael Norris‘s excellent essays on Proust), lively political articles, and Levi’s top-notch Philosophy Series. Litkicks includes articles on established authors published by the big publishing houses as well as reviews about talented independent writers published by smaller presses. The blog has thousands of readers a day, but thanks to a loyal following of regular contributors and commentators, it retains the intimate feel of a community of friends engaged in intellectual discussions and debates.

Catchy.ro. Founded in 2010 by the Romanian journalist Mihaela Carlan, Catchy.ro (http://www.catchy.ro/) is quickly catching on as Romania’s premier blog. Discussing all aspects of art, entertainment, politics and culture, Catchy.ro is inspired by the highly successful The Huffington Post, founded by Arianna Huffington in 2005 and recently acquired by AOL for a whopping 315 million dollars. Part of The Huffington Post‘s enormous success stems from Arianna Huffington’s pull and connections with wealthy investors. To offer just one notable example, in August 2006, SoftBank Capital invested 5 milliion dollars in the company. However, its success can also be attributed to the high quality of its articles and the popularity of its over 9000 contributors. Without question, The Huffington Post gathered some of the best bloggers in every field it features. Moreover, the blog has not merely adapted, but also stayed one step ahead of the curve in its use of technology, recently introducing “vlogging“–or video blogging–which is taking off and making journalism even more multimedia and interactive.

If I mention Catchy’s precursor in some detail, it’s because I believe these are also some of the features that have helped the Romanian blog grow so quickly during the past year, since its inception. Catchy “like a woman” targets primarily a female audience. But ultimately its panel of excellent journalists–with expertise ranging from art, to literature, to philosophy, to music, to fashion to pop culture and, above all, to the most fundamental aspects of human life itself, like health, love and marriage–draws a much broader audience of both genders and every age group. Like The Huffington Post, Catchy.ro also treads perfectly the line between intellectual writing and pop culture, providing intelligently written articles for a general audience. As some of the more traditional Romanian newspapers have struggled and a few even collapsed, the up-and-coming blog Catchy.ro shows that in every country adaptation is the key to success.

Agonia.net.  Started by the technology expert and culture promoter Radu Herinean in 2010, Agonia.net (http://english.agonia.net/index.php) is a rapidly expanding international literary blog. It includes sections on prose, screenplays, poetry, criticism and essays. Agonia.net has the following assets: a) it publishes well-regarded writers and intellectuals, b) it’s contributor-run so that it can grow exponentially and internationally (with sections in English, French, Spanish, Romanian and several other languages in the works) and c) it has a team of great editors that monitor its posts and maintain high quality standards. Agonia. net improves upon the model of online creative writing publishing pioneered by websites like Wattpad.com, which are contributor-run but have no editorial monitoring. Because of lack of editorial control, Wattpad.com has not been taken seriously by readers and publishers despite its vast popularity with contributors. Any literary blog that has a chance at being successful has to have the capacity for handling a large number of incoming contributions while also maintaining reliable editorial standards. Agonia.net seems to have mastered this delicate balance.

In participating in these exciting artistic, literary and intellectual forums, I’m starting to feel like my calling as a 21st century salonnière might not be an anachronism after all. I invite you to explore each of them and see which ones fit your talents and interests best. 

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com