People & Places

NEWS/FEATURESARAB TIMES, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2016

20

Focus

Technicolor innovation

H’wood historystored in bottleLOS ANGELES, April 5, (AFP): A Technicolor scientist surrounded by the latest virtual reality technol-ogy inspects a vial containing a few droplets of water — and one million copies of an old movie encoded into DNA.

The company has come a long way since the Hollywood golden age, when the world gazed in awe at the lush palette of “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone with the Wind” provided by its three-strip cameras.

Now celebrating its centenary year, Technicolor’s laboratories are at the cutting edge of the science

of fi lmmak-ing, leading a worldwide revolution in immersive en-tertainment.

“We are bigger today in LA than we were 70 years ago or 50 years ago,” Technico lor chief Fred-

eric Rose said at a recent ceremony where he accepted a “star of recog-nition” from the Hollywood Cham-ber of Commerce.

Rose used the occasion at Tech-nicolor’s Sunset Boulevard studios to showcase the company’s latest jaw-dropping innovation — the encoding of movies into artifi cial, “non-biological” DNA.

InnovationJean Bolot, vice-president for

research and innovation, held up a vial barely bigger than a bullet containing a million copies of 1902 French silent fi lm “A Trip to the Moon,” the fi rst movie to use visual effects.

DNA is almost unimaginably small — up to 90,000 molecules can fi t into the width of one human hair — so even such a large library is totally invisible to the human eye. All you can see is the water in the tube.

“This, we believe, is what the future of movie archiving will look like,” Bolot said.

Scientists have been experiment-ing with DNA as a potential stor-age medium for years but recent advances in modern lab equipment have made projects like Techni-color’s a reality.

The company’s work builds on research by scientists at Harvard University, who in 2012 success-fully stored 5.5 petabits of data — around 700 terabytes — in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previ-ous DNA data density record by a factor of one thousand.

DoubleDNA is a long, coiled molecu-

lar “ladder” — the famous double helix structure — comprising four chemical rungs, adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine, which team up in pairs.

Bolot’s team digitized the “A Trip to the Moon” into data in the form of zeros and 1s in comput-ing’s binary code, and transcribed it into DNA code, which was then turned into molecules, using lab-dish chemicals.

The contents are “read” by se-quencing the DNA — as is rou-tinely done today in genetic fi nger-printing — and turning it back into computer code.

Converting movies into man-made DNA brings huge advantag-es, said Bolot, who points out that the archives of every Hollywood studio, currently taking up square kilometers of fl oor space, could fi t into a Lego brick.

Another problem overcome by DNA storage is that the format for reading it doesn’t become obsolete every decade or so, unlike celluloid, VHS, DVD and every other medi-um in the history of fi lmmaking.

“If I gave you a movie in the form of these fl oppy discs from the beginning of the IBM PC, you would not even know how to read the movie because there are no more fl oppy disc readers,” Bolot said.

“The guys at Harvard told me if you left this (vial) on a hot Arizona pavement with trucks running over it, and you come back in 10,000 years, it will still be readable.”

“A Trip to the Moon” took six weeks and tens of thousands of dollars to convert, but Bolot’s team is working on streamlining the technology into something that would be genuinely commercially viable.

“We don’t know yet if that’s go-ing to work but if it does — and we’ll know, we expect, within a year — then this will really unlock a new age for archiving,” he said.

Founded in Boston in 1915, Technicolor relocated to Holly-wood in the early 1920s and has provided post-production on thou-sands of fi lms across the world.

Its fi rst feature, “The Gulf Be-tween,” fi nished in 1917 in an old converted railroad car, used a two-color technique that photographed a single strip of black and white fi lm with green and red fi lters.

Rose

The hand-painted custom 1957 Gibson guitar of Keith Richards (left), is photographed as part of Exhibitionism, the interactive multimedia exhibition of the Rolling Stones’ career so far, which launches at the Saatchi gallery in Kings Road, London, on April 4, (Inset): Members of the band The Rolling Stones (from left), Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards pose for photographers

upon arrival at the Rolling Stones Exhibitionism preview in London, on April 4. (AP)

(Left to right): Moametal, Su-metal, and Yuimetal of the band Babymetal visit Music Choice on April 4, in New

York City. (AFP)

Wilson Dawg

NEW YORK: Sigur Ros, the acclaimed experimental Icelandic band, on Monday announced a North American tour of small theater shows with stripped-down instru-mentation to test material for a new album.

Sigur Ros said it would be the fi rst time since 2002 that the band would play unreleased material on the road, part of its bid to write music for its upcoming eighth album.

“In keeping with the scale of the ven-ues, the group will be performing without the string and brass sections that have been characteristic of recent performances, opting instead to focus on the core unit of the band itself,” it said in a statement.

Sigur Ros won wide critical praise starting in the late 1990s through its highly experimental and often melancholy works, which evoke nature with a blend of classi-cal and rock elements.

Hallmarks of the band include a bowed guitar, long minimalist build-ups, front-man Jonsi’s falsetto voice and scat lyrics in a language dubbed “Hopelandic.”

The band will start the North American tour on September 19 in Vancouver and mostly play small theaters over the follow-ing month, although it will also perform at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

Accustomed to playing arenas, Sigur Ros said the North American tour would mark the fi rst time the band will play with-out an opening act, instead performing two unique sets with an intermission. (AFP)

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NEW YORK: Soprano Tamara Wilson has won the award dubbed the Heisman Trophy for singers.

The Richard Tucker Award, along with a $50,000 cash prize, was announced Monday in New York. It goes to an American opera singer on the cusp of a major international career.

Since it was created in 1975 and named for the late Brooklyn-born tenor, many winners have become stars on world stages, including soprano Renee Fleming and last year’s honoree, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton.

Wilson, 34, said that when she got the call she jumped for joy around her Lon-

Variety

French singer Lou Doillon performs during the concert of British musician John Cale at the Philharmonie de Paris. (AFP)

Star Wars actor ErikBauersfeld dies at 93LOS ANGELES, April 5, (AP): Erik Bauersfeld, who turned three words from a minor acting role — “It’s a trap!” — into one of the most beloved lines of the “Star Wars” se-ries, has died.

His manager, Derek Maki, says the performer died Sunday at his home in Berkeley, California, at the age of 93.

Bauersfeld stayed in radio for much of his life. He stumbled into the “Star Wars” series while work-ing on a radio project at Lucasfi lm.

Bauersfeld ended up voicing the roles of both the rebellion’s Ad-miral Ackbar and Jabba the Hut’s ghostly steward Bib Fortuna in 1983’s “Return of the Jedi.”

Admiral Ackbar also appeared in “The Force Awakens.”

don hotel room “for a solid 10 minutes.”Wilson made her critically acclaimed

Metropolitan Opera debut in 2014 singing the title role in Verdi’s “Aida.”

As this year’s winner, picked by a panel

of professionals, she’ll be featured at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 30.

Wilson, who grew up in Naperville, Illinois, outside Chicago, is part of a new generation of singers reaching out to a

popular audience whose tastes may not initially include opera.

On the YouTube channel Exit Stage Left, the effervescent singer offers earthy, zany chats about offstage life that could be

useful to anybody, from how to pack for long work trips to a long list of cold rem-edies and advice on surviving and thriving in a tough, competitive world.

She promises a “Sexi Soprano Webinar” about “blocking the haters, building up your self-confi dence and pushing out the negativity in a world ... where you’re constantly being judged, broken down, told from all different directions what you should be, how you should act, what you should wear, how you should sound.” (AP)

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NEW YORK: A new single by Phife Dawg, who died last month, is coming out Tuesday, with portions of the proceeds going to charity.

The late hip-hop artist’s wife Deisha and manager Dion Liverpool announced Monday that “Nutshell” will debut Tuesday on Beats 1 Radio and will be available on iTunes. A video for the song will be unveiled Tuesday night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. “Nutshell” is a track from the album, “Give Thanks,” that he had been working on at the time of his death.

The family is donating 50 percent of the proceeds to the American Diabetes Asso-ciation and the National Kidney Founda-tion. Phife died last month at age 45 from complications of diabetes. His best known songs with A Tribe Called Quest included “Scenario” and “Bonita Applebum.” (AP)

Rolling Stones plan to release new album this year

‘Exhibitionism’ offers satisfaction for fansLONDON, April 5, (AP): It’s only rock ‘n’ roll — but it isn’t, is it?

The music business is about com-merce as well as entertainment, and the Rolling Stones are one of its big-gest multinational fi rms.

There’s plenty of both art and busi-ness in “Exhibitionism,” a vast exhi-bition that covers 20,000 square feet (1,850 square meters) of London’s Saatchi Gallery with fi ve decades of Stones history.

The more than 500 artifacts, bor-rowed from the band’s archive and private collectors, include musical in-struments, lyrics, sketches, fi lm clips, outfi ts, posters, album artwork and stage designs. There is even a fake don-key. From entertaining to excess, the Stones rarely do things on a small scale.

“In the end, we had over 25,000 things to choose from,” said Austral-ian rock promoter Tony Cochrane, the show’s executive producer.

“I knew the Rolling Stones had a warehouse where they had kept a lot of their personal artifacts, memorabilia, fa-mous instruments and the like,” he said Monday, a day before the show’s public opening. “But no one could have known how enriched the collection was.”

The result is a treasure trove for fans, who can ogle everything from a marabou-feather cape Mick Jagger wore to sing “Sympathy for the Dev-il” to a Maton guitar owned by Keith Richards whose neck fell off during the recording of “Gimme Shelter” (the song ends with a barely audible clunk).

Even casual fans will likely be im-pressed by the exhibition’s attention to detail. It opens with a life-size recrea-tion of an apartment the band members shared in 1962-63 in Chelsea, a then-raffi sh, now-affl uent London neigh-

borhood.“It was a hovel,” Richards says on a

recording, and the recreation captures the peeling wallpaper, mold-stained walls and unmade beds, the dirty dishes, empty beer bottles, broken eggshells and overfl owing ashtrays. It even smells.

Exhibition curator Ileen Gallagher said the band members were “pretty astonished” by the result. “Although Mick said it wasn’t quite that messy.’”

Another room features a recreated recording studio, based on Olympic Studios in London, where visitors can watch footage of the band at work and listen to recordings of the Stones and their collaborators talking about the creative process.

The exhibition’s strength is the space it gives to the band’s creative partners, from backing vocalists and session players to the artists and de-signers who helped forge the Stones’ brand image and iconography.

LogoA whole room is devoted to John

Pasche’s lips-and-tongue Stones logo, inspired by a picture Jagger had seen of the Hindu goddess Kali. Another fea-tures the band’s huge-scale set designs, and a third showcases album-cover imagery by artists including 1960s pho-tographer David Bailey and Andy War-hol, who designed the infamous zipper cover for “Sticky Fingers.”

“They’ve always managed to work with artists that have cultural signifi -cance,” said Gallagher. “That’s very im-portant — and it’s very astute of them.”

And, of course, there is fashion. The Stones quickly left behind the match-ing checked jackets of the early 1960s to forge their own style, and the ex-hibition shows off many of Jagger’s

more outrageous fashion statements, including the white dress he wore at the band’s 1969 Hyde Park concert and a pair of glittery 1970s jumpsuits.

Gallagher said the goal was to tell the Stones story “in a way that really brings in the cultural, artistic, histori-cal infl uences of the band.”

After their dose of culture, most vis-itors will leave through the gift shop, a reminder that this exhibition is a savvy commercial enterprise. Fans can buy everything from coffee mug for 10 pounds ($14) to a Stones-branded table football game for 4,750 pounds ($6,800). There is even a tie-in with upmarket pottery fi rm Wedgwood, offering delicate tea cups and saucers carrying the exhibition’s less-than-del-icate logo: the Stones lips emblazoned across on a bikini-wearing crotch.

A sign notes: “Over 250 years of history make Wedgwood a truly iconic English brand.” Much like the Stones themselves.

“Exhibitionism” runs to Sept 4, with an international tour planned to follow the London run.

Here are some key things to see at “Exhibitionism,” the British band’s massive exhibition at the Saatchi Gal-lery that opened Tuesday:

Edith GroveShortly after the Stones got together

as a band in 1962, founding member Brian Jones moved into an apartment in west London with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and James Phelge. The apart-ment, at 102 Edith Grove, was notori-ous for being a mess, with clothes and dirty dishes strewn about the place.

The exhibition has recreated the scene with incredible detail, right down to the old empty bottles, a kitch-en sink fi lled with pots and pans, and

plenty of old Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records ready to be heard by an aspiring band that was, at the time, making only a few dollars per gig.

Olympic StudiosBehind a wall of glass is a recreation

of the studio where the Rolling Stones recorded their fi rst single, “Come On,” and many of their hits in the 1960s.

There are several instruments scat-tered around the fl oor, and a portion of “Sympathy for the Devil” — a 1968 Jean-Luc Godard fi lm that shows the song’s creation — plays on a screen in the background.

Also:LONDON: The Rolling Stones are plan-ning to release a new album, possibly this year, guitarist Ronnie Wood said Monday.

The British rockers last released a studio album in 2005, but Wood said they have been in the studio and re-corded some new material and some blues covers.

“We went in to cut some new songs, which we did,” the 68-year-old Wood said. “But we got on a blues streak. We cut 11 blues in two days.

“They are extremely great cover versions of Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter, among other blues people. But they really sound authentic.”

When asked when the new material would be released, Wood said only: “This year.”

“When we heard them back after not hearing them for a couple of months, we were, ‘Who’s that? It’s you,’” Wood said. “It sounded so authentic.”

The Rolling Stones, which started as a blues band in 1962, just wrapped a tour of Latin America with a free show in Cuba on March 25.

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