Traditional Arts Pandering for Youth

-New York Philharmonic (NYP): "the moving image's interjection into the classical concert hall" (From Rosen's The Image Culture).  


-"In 2004, the New York Philharmonic experimented with a 15-by-20-foot screen that projected enormous images of the musicians and conductor to the audience during performances of Wagner and Brahms" (Rosen).


-From the orchestra trustee encouraging the project: "We want to increase attendance at concerts, change the demographics" (from New York Times).  
     "We have to recognize that this is a visual generation."  
     "They are used to seeing things more than they are used to hearing things."


! This is a clear example of overdependance on a medium, as well as failing to consider the essential limitations.


! This problem is not unique to orchestral performance.
     Recognizing declining attendance, and wanting to reach broader audiences, many art museums have developed education programs to reach more people without sacrificing the integrity of the work or the experience of engaging with a work of art. (Though the research and application of museum education programs are largely focused on traditional art, such as drawing and painting, contemporary museums like The New Museum develop approaches to film/video, sculpture, and instillation among others.)  These museums didn't add TV displays next to paintings.
     The NY Philharmonic trustee demonstrates a lack of creativity and underestimates the intelligence of his public.  
     Moving images wil dominate and negatively transform other arts, if we cure our lust or obsession with moving images with more moving images.  (Terms like cure, remedy, or any other term that presumes to fix a problem with the public, assumes to be working from a deficit.)
     
     ! Shitty Movie Adaptations:  Why does it seem that the movie versions of books, even when the books are mediocre, are so consistently lousy?  "The movie wasn't that great.  The book was better."
      ? Did the the directors consider what made the reading experience so unique?  Did the director find a way to capture the narrator's voice in a way that only a film could?
      Examples: Lolita, and Lolita (Novel and Screenplay written by Vladimir Nabokov. 




? A question is not asked: Why must we cure this love for images?
     ! A live performance with images or video is simply a different experience, as reading comics is different than text alone.  The problem with the NYP, and the reason for the lack of success that Rosen describes, appears to be the lack of purpose behind the image presentations, which do not draw our attention back to the music.
     ! Using pictures of space because the piece is called "The Planets" is really stupid, and embarrassingly literal.


-My problem with Rosen and The Image Culture:
     Rosen uses an exceptionally bad example to suggest a wide reaching cultural decline, but offers us nothing but lament and regret.  She fails to consider her own question: "Did things have to happen this way?"