The Arts
Archived article from Nov 12, 1999
Artists, musicians and writers are often in the forefront of innovation, serving as forceful leaders in the development of new trends and as powerful communicators of fresh perspectives to a larger audience.
Focus asked several Rutgers experts to discuss changing directions in the arts at the start of the 21st century.
Interviews by Phyllis Gottlieb
Musical interlude
Julianne Baird, professor of music, FAS-Camden
If chamber music and symphonic music are going to survive in the next century, they need to become more entertaining, accessible and interesting to younger audiences. It is a frightening fact that of late the average age of the concertgoer is often 55-plus.
Opera, on the other hand, is performed to sold-out crowds. Even though it is sung in foreign languages, it calls on the other media -- theater, drama, literature, scene painting -- and presenters have made a big effort by means of supertitles, etc., to engage the audience.
Sponsors and audiences are looking for that same multidisciplinary element and engagement in chamber and symphonic music concerts. For example, my performance of "An Evening with Jane Austen" features music from the author's private, handwritten music collection and is popular with concert presenters and colleges because of its multidisciplinary nature. It is set in a Victorian drawing room, and the recital includes a little bit of acting and narration of some of Austen's passages on music and society.
I think in the future we'll see more of this kind of interactive involvement with the audience. The way in which music is transmitted is sure to change greatly.
On the tube
Robert Kubey, associate professor, department of journalism and mass media; director, master's program in communication and information studies; director, Center for Media Studies
It is my view that there will be far less change in television than many prognosticators would have us believe. Much prediction is based only on what technology can deliver, not on enduring elements of human behavior that are not about to change.
The prediction that the World Wide Web, for example, will completely displace television is unfounded in my view, as are the ideas that we will all soon have 500 channels or that "interactive" TV will be a big industry.
Surveys show that most people don't want more channels so much as they want to have an improved selection of channels that truly interest them. And people use television more for relaxation, entertainment and distraction than for information gain. People enjoy the passivity and easy distraction that the television medium provides. They like story lines, and they especially like seeing familiar people with whom they have grown comfortable. This is why theater, radio, film and television have long thrived by featuring recognizable actors, personalities and characters.
Audiences like placing themselves in the hands of a great storyteller, or in the case of film or television, in the hands of a great screenwriter, producer or director, and this has not changed since the days of Sophocles or Shakespeare.
Publish or perish
Marlie Wasserman, director, Rutgers University Press
There are no boring days in book publishing. We've already seen enough changes to keep us scrambling to adjust: the decline in library book purchases, heavy competition among presses for the most salable scholarly books, the demise of conventional typesetting as we work with authors' disks, efficient copy editing on screen, the rise of the book superstores. When will things settle down? All the clues suggest that the landscape will continue to shift.
Here are just three of the additional changes we are likely to see in the coming years. First, we may be digitizing books, storing them on servers and printing them out on demand in an attempt to keep inventories low. As a result, books may never go out of print. Second, a much higher percentage of our sales may occur over the Internet so that we spend more time adding information to Web sites than trying to persuade brick and mortar stores to stock our books. Third, we may publish some books in streamlined form in print, while publishing supplemental material and extras (known as bells and whistles) over the Net.
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