WHAT'S GOING ON AT THE HALFASS? PAGE 3B LOCAL DIRECTOR COMES HOME WITH STAR PAGE 3B .B THE MICHIGAN DAILY THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2007 RIAA's failure to adapt W th the recent RIAA crackdown on Uni- versity students, the morality of file sharing has been a hot topic. On the surface it seems pretty simple: It's wrong - don't do it. Unfortunately, the issue isn't so black and white for those of us who grew up in the digi- tal age. Download- ing music illegally is stealing. Every mp3 is a composi- LLOYD tion someone CARGO poured a piece of themselves into, and when you take it for free, you're pirating their livelihood. But still, I do it occasionally, and I suspect a lot of the rest of you do, too. It's not our fault really, either - it's the culture we grew up in. I remember when Napster first started to blow up; and I don't recall ever questioning whether it was right or wrong; at 13, I had other issues on my mind. And with dial-up, we were talking a couple hours for a song, and downloading whole albums was essentially out of the question. Now with cable Internet and bit torrent, you can have an artist's entire catalogue Tired of hearing in the time everyone bitch it takes about the RIAA? to make a For a different sandwich. perspective, "A Is that modest defense any worse than your of the RIAA," log friend on to burning you michigandaily. a box set? I com. don't really see how it is, and no one seems to object to receiving a burned CD. I suspect that has something to with the baby-boomer generation growing up making each other dubs of tapes, partnered with the guilt-easing knowledge that your friend paid for it (or someone down the line did). With downloading the blood is on your hands (or rather, your IP address) and I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for people who get caught and prosecuted. Everyone knows it's illegal, but the risk of actually getting caught is so low that it's not much of a deterrent. But that doesn't mean what the RIAA is doing is any less shitty or stupid. The recording industry needs to get with the times. Download- ing has gashed their bottom lines, but it's not going to stop, and it's going to have to be them that adapts. CD pricing is finally start- ing to fall, but until the major labels embrace the Internet the way the indies have then sales are * going to continue to tank. Fur- ther alienating your consumers by suing them isn't a great way to garner goodwill and loyalty either. Digital is the future, and while people tend to want to own a physical product after shelling over their hard-earned money, the convenience of iTunes is impos- sible to ignore. And with iPods being more ubiquitous than Dis- cmans or Walkmans ever were, the mp3 has become the format of choice for seemingly everyone under 40. The analogy between See CARGO, page 4B lIST March 22 to 25 The Daily Arts guide to the best upcom- * ing events - it's everywhere you should be this week and why. AAFF returns, free of censorship, for year 45 of experimental competition By KRISTIN MacDONALD Associate Arts Editor The Ann Arbor Film Festival kicked off Tuesday night with cocktails, coffee and Stuc- chi's ice cream only to quickly add provocative filmmaking to its list of stimulants. This is the AAFF, a five-day fiesta of all things avant- garde and a proudly surviving vestige of Ann Arbor's more progressive-minded past. The screening began with an earnest trib- ute to deceased AAFF participant Helen Hill, a one-time Festival judge and lifelong film- maker, and the Festival couldn't have selected a more appropriate start than the presentation of Hill's quirky 16mm introduction to amateur filmmaking. The short film not only combined animation, live action and gentle humor to outline the medium's different formats (and home-bathroom darkroom techniques) but spoke to the dedication and can-do spirit required of independent filmmakers to realize their art. Filmmaking's a fun process, but it's a demanding one, too, and the piece honored the commitment of these self-reliant artists as much as its inclusion honored one such artist in particular. For the AAFF not only showcases the best of independent film from the world over but strives to develop a supportive community for those filmmakers as well. This week's AAFF schedule features much more than just short film screenings, with several filmmaker spot- lights, public lectures and Q & As and even a party or two. There's also a special program planned to introduce wary newcomers to the admitted obtuseness of experimental film - a panel discussion self-mockingly entitled "What the Hell Was That?" After all, independent film's reputatiop for - obliqueness is not entirely undeserved. One piece in Tuesday night's line-up was practi- cally the definition of esoteric: a single six- minute shot of Russian writer Maxim Gorky's 1896 review of an early Lumiere brothers' film, slowly dissolving on what looked like a can of paint (turn-of-the-century intellectualism lit- erally visualized as watching paint dry). This is not pure cinema. This is plain old art, in a medium that provides a seemingly endless opportunity for fresh expression, and the AAFF, by projecting these impossibly diverse pieces in the cavernous grandeur of The Michigan Theater, offers an all-too-rare way td'experience it. . The prominent back story of this year's festival is then all the more baffling. Ordered by the state of Michigan in a well-publicized battle to rein in its controversial content or face funding cuts, the festival boldly chose the latter, cutting ties with the government rather than censor its material. It's the state that's losing out. In a fight over First Amendment rights, the AAFF promises to be a lively oppo- nent, with indignation to spare and the ACLU as back-up (as well as, apparently, friends with pocketbooks). See AAFF; page 4B Making the perfect violin By KIMBERLY CHOU Associate Arts Editor You can find them working together in the cozy cedar studio every few weeks: the older gentle- man physicist and the ponytailed violinmaker, experimenting with filters, electric violins and, when fortune allows, the occasional Stradivari violin, the gold stan- dard of wood-body violins. To an outsider the union of a scientist and luthier may seem like an odd pairing. But the part- nership of Prof. Gabriel Weinreich and Joseph Curtin may be exactly what the violin-making commu- nity needs in its strides to craft an instrument finer than those of Stradivari or Guarneri del Gesi, the revered masters of the centu- ries-old tradition. As individuals, the two are cer- tainly impressive on their own. Weinreich taught physics at the University for 30 years before he retired in 1995; after retire- ment, he published his landmark paper on instruments' directional tone color. Curtin, a well-known violinmaker who is quickly approaching his third decade of lutherie, received a prestigious MacArthur fellowship - the foun- dation's "genius grant" - in 2005. His work and that of other violin- makers around the globe was pro- filed in a New York Times article late last year about advanced approaches to violinmaking. In a project they've been devel- oping for the past two years, Weinreich and Curtin have been Gabriel Weinreich (left) and Joseph Curtin record impulse responses from a Curtin-made violin. working to figure out why, in Cur- tin's words, good violins sound good. "I had (already) been working on violins for some time," Wein- reich said. "What I saw as a gen- eral problem in violin design (was the lack of) a standard you can call scientific ... the only way to define what you mean by a good violin is to give an example." Said Curtin: "How do you get the sound of a great violin? You can try doing it by building a vio- lin, or you can go after it using electronics and software. The advantage to this approach is that once youhave captured the sound, you know what you have. It's not just some lucky combination of wood and glue and varnish." It's not every day that a master violinmaker and premier physi- cist in violin acoustics happen to both reside in Ann Arbor. In their quest to be able to cre- ate a violin with the best possible sound, the longtime friends came together to put the characteris- tics of a good violin into an elec- tric violin. Curtin expressed it in more specific terms: "I am inter- ested in building ... an electric vio- lin together with a programmable See VIOLIN, page 4B ON SCREEN There's going to be something a little strange going on at midnight this week- end at The Michigan Theater. On Friday and Saturday the theater will screen two films from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a New Age artist known for his unique vision of psychological exploration. "El Topo" will screen on Friday night, a beautiful rendition of '60s spaghetti westerns, and on Saturday night, "The Holy Mountain," a mix of sharp sar- casm, and drug-trip-esque imagery. ON STAGE Student-run opera troupe MUS- KET will perform Stephen Sond- heim's "Assassins" this weekend, tracing the lives of history's most famous assassins - among them John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald - and asking the audience to consider the possible motivations behind their atrocious acts. At the Power Center: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m, Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $13, or $7 with student ID. IN CONCERT Seattle-based band The Long Winters will play The Blind Pig on Sunday night, highlighting 2006's Putting the Days to Bed, their newest collection. Songwriter John Roder- ick is known for his addictive lyrics complementedbyalonglistofinstru- mentalists that provide complex and layered melodies. With opening acts Bound Stems and Stars of Track and Field. Doors open at 9:30 p.m. Tick- ets are $12, 18+ only. CULTURE FEST This weekend Matsuri, the 16th annual Japan Culture Festival spon- sored by the Japan Student Associa- tion, will feature several dance and musical performances, a tea cer- emony, a wide array of food choices including wanko-soba and a toy shop. The performances will range from traditional koto music to Japa- nese hip-hop. Saturday from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the East Hall Atrium, $1 admission.