2009 - April/May
Dossier: Culture and Innovation
Italy responds
Renato Brunetta between reform and innovation.
58 years old, Venetian, an economist and University professor, and a long time participant in the battle for reform. Already active in politics in the 1980’s within the governments of Craxi, Amato and Ciampi, Renato Brunetta has since the 8th May been the Minister for Public Administrations and Innovations in the XVI Legislature of the IV Berlusconi Government. The reform, also called “anti-idler decree”, has been definitively approved by the Italian Senate, without modifications in respect to the text enacted by the Camera. The Minister, speaking in the court at the time of approbation, declared: “the measure is not perfect, but perfectible. The delegated decrees that will follow in the space of a few months will be finalized by the optimization of the productivity of public works and the efficiency and transparency of the public administrations. This will be a revolution for 60 million citizens, who will no longer be subjects or users, but clients”. Full Story
New York Itinerary
Chelsea: art is the market place
Traveling with NYCVE to discover the art galleries of the Big Apple. Beginning in Chelsea: the soul and economic engine of contemporary art. Not just in New York.
Chelsea is the center of New York’s contemporary art market, and, perhaps, the world’s. Because even if today there are other areas of the Big Apple, such as Williamsburg in Brooklyn, where artists and exhibition spaces are concentrated, all - or nearly all - of the most prestigious galleries have a branch in Chelsea, the neighborhood that offers art merchants the opportunity to reach a wider and above all richer public. Full Story
ZOOM
Beautiful? Made by ‘Manos’
Venetian design promoted by the Spiazzi association, “on the wave of a return to craftsmanship”.
Beautiful, original, unpublished, that respects the environment. These are the characteristics that an object has to have to be desirable. Because industrial design products made on a large scale are being joined, slowly but relentlessly, by new market niches. On the wave of a return to craftsmanship. Anticipating this trend, beginning in Venice in 2006 ’Manos’, a display self produced design conceived and promoted by Spiazzi, a Venetian cultural association that has already become a reference point for young creative artists’ world wide. Full Story
New York Itinerary
I Google New York
Personalized itineraries, bookings and much more: New York City presents a revolutionary “Information Center” and the new web site nycgo.com. In partnership with Google.
New York unveils tourism of the Third Millennium. And it does it through two technologically avant guard initiatives: a latest generation web portal, nycgo.com and above all a information center, in Midtown Manhattan, dedicated to multimedia and interactivity. The objective is to provide new and efficient instruments for the discovery of New York’s five districts, thanks to the use of the most ‘user-friendly’ interface available today. Full Story
Cultural and Artistic Paths
Top model, today’s muse
From a model to a top model. The great exhibition of Spring-Summer 2009 at the “Costume Institute” at the Met: the epic of the photographer’s model through facts and original pictures.
A meeting point between contemporary artistic tendencies and the world of high fashion, the ability of analysis and the synthesis of the curators of the “Costume Institute” at the Metropolitan mark the great exhibition that the institute proposes for Spring-Summer 2009, entitled “The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion”. From the 6 May until August the reciprocal relationship between fashion and the evolution of the ideal beauty will be explored. An understanding of the role of the model, the past and outgoing icons of the 20th century, inspired by the aesthetic canons of its time. Full Story
Current Affairs
Artistic craftsmanship, genius loci
An appeal of concern to save the Venetian artistic craftsmanship and to remember their own roots.
The death of artistic craftsmanship is silent: it’s like forest with trees falling one after another, masters after masters, workshop after workshop, for more than twenty years. But if we simultaneously listen to the sound of every lost worker, the trees fallen in this forest, we would realize the significance of the loud roar and desert of experience that has been created around us.
When a craftsman workshop disappears an entire library also goes, because the craftsman’s work is summed up in the experience that is layered over the years, through work in which all the senses are involved. This is why the object of my report is the unfavorable climate that has hindered the renewal of these experiences. Full Story
Dossier: Culture and Innovation
Interaction has power
From internet sites to the multimedia publishing of “Cultural Journeys”.
It was from the first and rudimentary mark on stone that man expressed the necessity to secure to a support the contents adaptable for his communicating needs. In that direction, the evolutionary line of the communication model has created the development of support materials and technology for communication that today - more than at any other time - emphasize the value of inter-activeness in all its forms. Taking a peek at the communicative practices of contemporary cultural actors, it is interesting to reveal how technological innovation has lent itself to optimizing the communicative performances that certain actors can put to use moving through the fundamental elements - or rather factors such as broadcaster, message, recipient, context, channel and codes - of the basic model for communication. Full Story
