June 18, 2005
It Must Be Bad for You
Had a wonderful time downtown last night at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Watched the Zany Umbrella Circus. A sort of Mad Max bricolage of bicycle parts, aerialists, jugglers, musicians, sets, scaffolds, etc. Everybody in Pittsburgh should see it. Then become part of it. What impressed me most about the ZUC was the seemingly calm assembly of all the parts. I could imagine the introduction of video and robotic elements. As TV becomes more demanding and, according to Steven Berlin Johnson, we become more adept at absorbing multiple narratives and non-narrative information, I can see real live entertainment making cooked entertainment subservient. I can imagine everyone having their own curtain with their own name on it. I can imagine . . . well, that's kind of the point.