GL.TCH

GL.TCH

GL.TCH Introduction by Maimire Mennasemay, Kenneth Milkman, Aaron Krishtalka, Richard Shoemaker, and Andrew Katz Edited by Amanda Beattie and Frank Mulvey Exhibition: April 6 – April 20, 2017 Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery Dawson College 4001 de Maisonneuve West Montreal, Canada H3Z 1A4

space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/ the_gl.tch_exhibition

GL.TCH “There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka’ but ‘That’s funny...’”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) What is a glitch? In 2016-2017, S.P.A.C.E. has proposed putting a crack in the commonly understood meaning of this word—i.e. an error in the functioning of a system, a program, or a machine—and to offer a stipulative definition: a glitch as any disruption in, deviation, departure, or diversion from usual patterns, established theories, predominant beliefs, or behaviours; as any snag, bug, or unexpected variable in a system, a process, or an event. Such a glitch could arise spontaneously or be carried out intentionally— for instance, S.P.A.C.E. intentionally disemvoweling the word glitch itself to produce GL.TCH. Though the word glitch likely originates in the Yiddish and German words for “slip,” the idea of glitch could be traced to what the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius calls “the swerve” (clinamen): the way in which the motion of atoms is unpredictable—glitchy, as it were—leading to gaps in our knowledge as well as ushering in unexpected possibilities, and even suggesting a measure of human freedom that defies natural and social determinisms.

A glitch in this broad sense could refer to any number of things across the natural and the social sciences, the humanities and the creative arts, and life experiences. A slip in methodology. An unacknowledged bias. A faulty assumption. An illogic in an argument. An experimental result that runs counter to prevailing theory. An unintended consequence. An unexpected note in a melody. A blooper in a film. A moment of cognitive dissonance. An aesthetic discordance. A seeming irrationality. A manifest absurdity.

An apparent impossibility. A wavering in the Matrix. And much more. In all cases, GL.TCH could lead to effects both large and small, as well as to outcomes that could be seen as both negative and positive, and reorient our questioning, research, and creativity in pioneering directions.

A glitch compels us for the curiosity it provokes, inspiring, as in the Asimov quote above, the observation ‘That’s funny.” To say an unexpected outcome is “funny” is to recognize playfulness as an aspect of discovery, learning, 2

knowing, experimenting, and creativity. Such a recognition prompts us, for example, to see a “failed” experiment or any other “failure” in discovery, learning, knowing, or creativity as a glitch rather than as a failure, thereby triggering “perplexity” and, often, serendipity. As artist and educator Nick Briz points out, a glitch is “an unexpected moment in a system,” and thus calls attention not only to itself but also “to that system, and perhaps even leads us to notice aspects of that system that might otherwise go unnoticed.” A glitch may be the crack that lets the light, or darkness, in, signalling an unseen, hidden anomaly; a repressed experience, emotion, or idea; even impending chaos in the system, the unraveling of an established theory or belief, or the undoing of social and personal relations. A glitch may seem small yet may in fact run deeper than we imagine, or may bear consequences more significant than we would expect. Potentially, a glitch could bring about what artist Jeff Donaldson calls “a spontaneous reordering of data,” whether in the arts or the sciences or our personal or social lives; it could activate new questions, new ways of seeing, and even lead to a paradigm shift in knowledge, or to the emergence of new aesthetic sensibilities.

This exhibition presents a series of interpretations of the GL.TCH theme through the perspectives of Dawson students, faculty, staff and members of the broader community who work in different disciplines. Certain contributions are the work of a single individual, others the result of a group effort. Some contributions originated in a classroom activity, others from discussions and collaborations after class. Each of these unique takes on the theme may highlight any aspect of GL.TCH: the fallibility of our knowledge, the incompleteness of our theories, the imperfections of our methods across the disciplines, the blind spots in our visions, the cracks in our realities, the gaps in our histories, and the non-linear, contradictory and paradoxical nature of change and progress, among many others. They may explore slips and cracks, deviations and diversions, disruptions and departures, in various forms, even boldly experiment with them, allowing these glitches to shock us and, hopefully, help us leap towards new points of view, new ways of thinking, experimenting, and creating, as well as, perhaps, glitch from one discipline to another and from within Dawson College to the world beyond it.

Maimire Mennasemay, Kenneth Milkman, Aaron Krishtalka, Richard Shoemaker, and Andrew Katz

Mathieu Larone

Graduate, Illustration & Design GL.TCH theme poster for 2016-2017 Mixed Media Variable dimensions

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Sarah Tue-Fee

3rd Year, Graphic Design Cut Shot, 2015 Oil on canvas 51 cm x 51 cm

Based on a digital collage made up of several different pictures, the painting has a ‘cut and paste’ look that does not seem to line up in certain areas, giving it a surreal appearance. This piece deals with the act of cutting up the landscape and also cutting the body out of the landscape, leaving ‘tears’ in the earth. There is something both idyllic and unstable about this scene of leisure. The scene seems like it could break apart at any moment—like a puzzle that doesn't quite fit together—and the head in the center of the intersecting composition makes a kind of bull’s eye, referencing the self-centered nature of humans in the face of the environment.

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Kayla Beffert

3rd Year, Professional Photography Defective Skies, 2017 Digital 43.2 cm x 27.9 cm

A glitch can be defined as a temporary malfunction or a sudden surge of current. In this photo the theme of a glitch is represented by the bright lights in the sky. They are a temporary “malfunction” in the otherwise peaceful atmosphere of the night. To me this picture represents how sometimes you go to a specific place, to do a specific thing, and something unexpected happens—a glitch, if you will. You can’t predict what will happen to you when you leave the house, but if you never leave the house nothing exciting will ever happen. You need to take chances and the more chances you take, the more you’ll be rewarded. Beauty is happening all around us; it’s just a glitch away.

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Anik Vignal

2nd Year, Fine Arts Untitled, 2016 Graphite, contĂŠ, charcoal, colour pencil, ink, felt pen, paper, cardboard, organic matter 85.1 cm x 78.7 cm

One would think that when asked to portray nature, we would appreciate it rather than destroy it in order to create.

In 2016, my drawing teacher asked us to map out a park.

For a month, I focused on touch and emotion, trying to translate all I felt when visiting the park onto paper. It quickly transformed from a mess of textile to paper to natural elements, which I incorporated as much as I could into the work.

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How can one portray a whole park on one simple sheet of paper? I figured it wasn't even worth attempting to keep it simple, so I chose to not hold back. My main focus was on the beauty of the park and all it had to offer, but once I'd completed the piece, I realized that I'd used my subject solely for my own good. It is bittersweet to think about how one may appreciate and love something, yet out of selfishness, harm it for one's own benefit. To me, that is the glitch.

Dalouny Phonevilay

2nd Year, Illustration & Design We Had a Promise Made, 2016 Acrylic on canvas 91.4 cm x 61 cm

What I wanted to represent with my piece was a fantasy-like landscape—something that would almost have a daydream feel— which I approached with the departure of natural colours, and most specifically, the heavy use of the magenta moonlight spreading across the landscape. The magenta represents a break in our timeline, a place we allow ourselves to have. We act in a way that we would normally hide from people, and we feel things that we have the habit of repressing. It represents this moment, this pause we take advantage of in order to breathe before returning back to reality. I love the idea of choosing traditional art to portray a theme that is commonly associated with digital technology.

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Paula Venegas

1st Year, Literature, ALC The Gift, 2016 Digital 63.5 cm x 83.3 cm

The Earth is a gift that we often forget to take care of.

When it is time to protect it, we are absent. I demonstrate this absence in my work by the people who are faded.

Everything is in black and white, which represents how archaic our thoughts and actions can be. The Earth at the center of the flower stands for the fact that flowers are one of the most commonly given gifts. Despite this, our planet is not a gift that we will receive twice. The setting of the work is inside a house because we have become detached from Nature—the people in this work are trapped inside and only see the world from the perspective of the television. Luckily we still have a small amount of time to change the destiny of our planet, if we take good actions.

If not, we all know that the movie of our existence will not have a pleasant ending.

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Marisol Nolasco 2nd Year, Visual Arts Ongoing Strain, 2016 Acrylic on canvas 76 cm x 100 cm

This painting has been through a lot. I first painted a beautiful landscape with lovely flowers and bright colours.

After some time, I looked at my painting, took my palette knife and smeared colours all over the canvas. In a matter of seconds, I managed to completely destroy the natural environment that I had previously created. Even in my own painting, a human managed to destroy the environment.

This painting represents the constant fight between nature and humanity. We created the industries that are killing our planet, yet that fact is not the glitch. The glitch, the problem, the mistake is that we know that we are killing our home, and yet we aren’t doing anything about it. We are too busy arguing about the reality of climate change. We are too busy killing and destroying one another to see the bigger picture. What I want most of all is for this painting to wake someone up. I want to make at least one person realize the absurdity of our situation. Only then will I be able to say that I accomplished my duty as an artist.

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Laurence Hénault-Paquin Graduate, Visual Arts Weakness, 2016 Acrylic on canvas 132.1 cm x 81.3 cm

The next step…

Our world is filled with glitches.

Despite living with beautiful ideologies of patterns and rules, We are not protected by any system or society.

We cannot organize our world because humans are unpredictable.

There is no guarantee; nothing can be totally exact, concrete and perceptible.

Our system and society were created by some of us, for some of us.

The powers that be don’t make room for glitches, leading to the social rejection of those who don’t fit, the essential problem of our sick society.

Today, we live with the results of this chaos.

We need to reorient our values and convictions to include glitches, Because without them our complex world is completely disoriented.

Life’s natural glitches are often perceived as “Weakness.”

This painting is my vision of our world. It is my glitch, and perhaps our glitch.

It is an abstract demonstration of incomprehension and of the illusion of weakness in our system.

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Nathanaël Fleurine

3rd Year, Industrial Design #staywoke, 2017 Digital 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm With special thanks to Charles Bernier, friend and photographer, and David Ye, friend and model.

This work was inspired by the renovations at the Atwater metro station.

The benches were altered and “armrests” were added. They seem to be out of place and not integral to the initial design. Over the past year, as I pass the new benches, I can't help but think that they are somewhat of a glitch.

The geometry, the choice of materials and colours seem completely out of place when compared to the previous benches. This incongruity led me to question why the so-called armrests were placed there. I can only imagine that it is to prevent homeless people from sleeping on the benches, as there are many homeless individuals at this location. I created the piece to show that, in my humble opinion, the “armrests” are not the most efficient way to solve the problem of homelessness in Montreal.

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Esther Calixte-Béa

Graduate, Visual Arts Abusive Culture, 2016 Acrylic on canvas and cardboard 50.8 cm x 138.2 cm

Abusive Culture is about popular media forcing ideologies and beliefs on the population. Although we may not feel that we are being directly influenced, it is inevitable. Our subconscious is filled with information that we may not agree with, but that we grow to accept as we are constantly bombarded by it.

The “paradoxical nature of change and progress” in the GL.TCH theme is exactly what this painting is about.

We, as a society, have diverted away from Religion to complete freedom. We are no longer slaves, but we are still prevented from having new or different ideas and opinions.

In reality, the only differences between the past and present are new inventions and the advancement of technology.

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Our “new religion” is being dictated by the media, with the false idea that we are progressing due to a system dominated by technology. The media tells us what is moral or immoral, what is right or wrong, and what is normal or acceptable.

We have deviated into a new system of enslavement that promotes the idea of freedom while we are still being persecuted for having different opinions. We are continually taught to believe that the world has changed, but we have actually learned to grow more tolerant to abusive issues, people and events—or, to completely ignore them.

There is a glitch in our society—a virus that is spreading—and we just watch it happen, because we are taught to believe that it is good and that we are progressing into the future.

Isabel Moscoso

2nd Year, Illustration & Design Artificial Interaction, 2017 Ink on board 38 cm x 51 cm

Over the past few decades, we have witnessed great advances in technology. We have achieved what our ancestors never dreamed of, what our parents saw in science fiction movies, and what we thought we could never afford. These accomplishments have made humans feel invincible, and feel that anything can be solved with knowledge and technology. Many believe that there are few boundaries to face anymore—not even physical distance. Telecommunication companies sell the idea of not being apart anymore with the gadgets and apps they have on the market, and sell the idea that distance is not a limitation in order to enjoy quality time with loved ones.

Through a glitch in the composition, this drawing represents how these artificial interfaces will never replace an actual human interaction; how a ringtone is not the sound of someone actually calling your name; how a cold screen cannot provide the warmth of a hug; and how romantic texts won’t melt your soul like the sound of a nearby voice.

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Tom Berthelot

2nd Year, Professional Photography Orenges, 2017 Digital 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm

Conformity is the foundation of our society. Without this fundamental dynamic we wouldn't be able to live right next to each other, or be confident that one product in a box is the same as the product in a box next to it. There are codes and rules we live and work by without ever questioning them, some explicit, some implicit which we follow simply because we feel like “it's right” (or at least “alright”). We tend to think of this conformity as something that removes glitches. However, the process of conforming and of imposing conformity can cause glitches as well.

To offer just one example: the oranges in our grocery stores conform to a certain idea and standard we have about oranges: round, brightly orange. However, this conformity is not entirely natural, and comes at a cost. We put substances that are toxic to us, pesticides, on the fruit to make them conform to our image of how they should be. In other words, to make oranges look perfect, we are ready to poison consumers.

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Other things––and people––that we make conform to certain standards and ideals come with similar glitches: our wrinkle-free shirts that come with toxic chemicals; our all-powerful smartphones that come with radiation; and of course our perfect-looking people on magazine covers that come with eating disorders, self-image complexes, and other psychological glitches that result from trying to conform.

The glitch I depict here is that to achieve conformity we are willing to make decisions that harm us. This image is not about saying whether conformity is positive or negative or both. This image's only purpose is to trigger some sort of reflection about this incoherence––that we sometimes choose to hurt ourselves in order to conform.

Carl Mulvey, Thinker

Swiss Cheese Revolution, 2017 Graphite on paper 17.8 cm x 17.8 cm

In 2017, a little-known thinker and cheese lover posed a simple question that went viral: “Why can’t everything look like Swiss cheese”? After attending several wine and cheese events with the illuminati of the design world, his humble sketches served as a catalyst for what came to be known as the Swiss Cheese Revolution. There were some naysayers who clung to the dusty “form follows function” credo of 20th century modernism. Scattered attempts were made to discredit the movement as an “absurd glitch in design history,”1 but since most people like Swiss cheese, the “glitch” became the norm, and the world was changed forever.

Iht, Mia Genst. “The Fall of Functionality.” Funktionalität Zuerst, 1 Apr. 2017: 19.

Mia Genst Iht is President of the International Conglomeration of Architects, Lausanne, Switzerland.

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Andrew Katz, Pascale Richardson-Haughey Faculty, English, Creative Writing; 2nd Year, Social Science Are We GL.TCHed by Social Media?, 2017 Text

“That your students would even agree to a two-week social media blackout is surprising.”

Carmine Starnino, Deputy Editor, The Walrus Although we tend to see our technology as glitchy, the ultimate glitch may be the ways in which technology affects our relationships to our environments, others, and ourselves. Does our excessive use of, and even addiction to, technology create a disconnection, or alienation, in these relationships? Is our gravitation towards social media on our phones and computers, for instance, a kind of glitched instinct we’ve developed to avoid moods and feelings, reactions and experiences, that seem to us socially awkward, or that are just uncomfortable—for example, the discomfort of boredom that could, if allowed time and space to breathe without distraction, lead to exploration, creativity, insight, and real human connection?

To explore these questions, we ran an experiment: for two weeks, from 12:00 a.m. on Wednesday, January 11th, 2017 to 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, January 24th, 2017, we kept off social media and journaled about the experience. We tried to understand what our motivations were when we were tempted to log into social media. Was it to procrastinate?

To avoid an uncomfortable situation? To kill time? What things about our environment, other people, or ourselves did we perhaps begin to notice that we’d missed when we’d been busying our every free moment with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc? Which aspects of our use of social media, upon reflection, seemed glitchy, even detrimental to us, and which seemed useful?

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Featured here are excerpts of our results. More of our results will be published on the S.P.A.C.E website. A college-wide version of this experiment will also be held from April 7-10, 2017 (the four days after the S.P.A.C.E GL.TCH exhibition vernissage), with anyone at Dawson welcome to participate and share their experience on the S.P.A.C.E website. And we are pleased that the magazine The Walrus has asked us to write up our experiment for an article in its online edition!

Apparently the idea that young adults would voluntarily go off their devices was a surprise to their editors.

Rebecca McFarlane

1st Year, Illustration Mixed media 43.2 cm x 27.9 cm This illustration was created in association with Are We GL.TCHed by Social Media?

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Kathleen Binette1, Maya Gilmour2, Ross Paraskevopoulos3, Pascale Richardson-Haughey4, Kajamathy Subramaniam5 2nd Year, Illustration & Design, 21st Year, ALC, 32nd Year, ALC, 42nd Year, Social Science, 2nd Year, Social Science, Psychology Profile Are We GL.TCHed by Social Media?, 2017 Text 1 5

Maya Devoid of distraction, not knowing what to do with yourself, is perhaps the least rejuvenating form of meditation. Mindless scrolling appears to assuage some sort of underlying anxiety that you cannot quite put your fingers on but that you are familiar with—control of the deluge of information, of perceptions and of relationships at your fingertips. There’s no commitment in peering into the world from afar, and that distant reality, however chaotic, appears so much more bearable than our immediate one (as deluded as that may seem). Only when I would wake up and try to tap the empty squares where the apps, the windows, once were, would I feel pathetic, victimized by my own skewed way of partially knowing and experiencing the world—the models, the lovely lives and aspirations, friends and what they posted—instead of fully experiencing it myself.

Social media became a part of my daily routine that trickled down to waking up, scrolling, eating, sleeping (although that's debatable), repeat. The apps became extensions of my very own fingertips, urging to be checked, instant stimulation. Fighting the impulse truly felt like cutting off a limb, lacking and phantom feeling, only it was 336 hours, rather than 127. Eventually, however, the feeling subsided. I had to learn to live without something, or hope to forget that it was there in the first place, although I knew it still lingered somewhere in the air, or wherever the world-wide web is. My phantom limb was initially the object of ridicule, but I've accepted that taking a break from social media goes beyond self-righteousness or whatever else people called it; it’s about overcoming a dynamic of power that I barely had a choice in taking part of in the first place. I haven’t been on Instagram since, and the world keeps spinning.

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Ross We connect with people we have no physical access to and acquire affinities for them/the person we perceive them to be through the computer screen. I think a mixture of self-loathing, free time, and access to social media websites is what leads to living life vicariously behind a digital/device screen.

During my two weeks, I felt drowsy and zoned out. I included video games in the experiment, and so I couldn't use video games or posting poetry to Facebook to distract myself until supper time. (I was anxiously pacing around the house for supper to be ready so I could "do something" instead of writing and/or reading.) After any social outing I feel overstimulated and plunk myself down in front of the TV or computer and play video games.

This is instantly followed by my body loosening up and any tension or racing thoughts fading away as if I were a chain smoker taking that longed-for puff. I did finish reading a novel, however, so my reading has definitely improved with more motivation/ incentive to be reading; it makes the hours go by until I can go to sleep and pass through to the next day.

Some final major effects I noticed over the two weeks from not playing video games or using social media is that I was more anxious without having a screen in front of me to numb any "frightening" thoughts and twisted my hair more without a controller or device in my hands. Additionally, I would have brief mental flashes of myself playing a video game, followed by feelings of joy at this possibility, only to snap back into reality and realize that I was committed not to.

Pascale Wanting to do everything, and be everywhere, at once seems to be a by-product of social media, or is at least reinforced by it.

After being excessively stimulated by Facebook and Instagram, all I want is to do everything and be everywhere at once, without missing out on any of it. This feeling has made it difficult at times for me to commit to whatever moment I am in without wanting to be elsewhere (and yet that elsewhere is nowhere in particular).

Social media is an easy outlet for the hypermodernist condition of constantly striving for more. We learn to desire everything, and having a space where we can see and take in hundreds of images almost simultaneously feels like we are getting that much closer to experiencing it all. However, I have noticed that after taking in all these images, I feel emptier and more lacking than ever. I start to notice everything I am not doing, and react to that feeling of lack with further distraction. Being off social media for two weeks was not enough to change the habit, and was definitely not enough to erase this constant desire for more, but it was a step in the right direction. I owe it to myself, and to others, to keep distancing myself from social media, and all the chaotic, narcissistic and competitive feelings it induces. I need to keep learning to slow down, and commit to my real life, rather than distract myself from it whenever it gets difficult, or worse, boring.

Kajamathy Social media is used to avoid emptiness in individuals. With social media it is easy to avoid talking to people and to pass time in distraction. However, it is also used to be connected with everyone we know; even if we are not participating in the daily lives of other people with social media, we feel more connected and part of their lives because we get to know them and comment on the things they do daily. After the experiment, however, I decided to not go back on social media as much as before, because I saw how much time I wasted and discovered that I could get a lot more done when social media was not present in my life. I also discovered how much I enjoyed doing certain activities that I had neglected before when I was on social media.

Kathleen Honestly, two weeks without social media was not that hard, but it is not something I could permanently remove from my life. As much as there are things on social media I can do without, there are other things that I benefit from. What was most difficult for me was that I could not post anything, and for me it is something that is important because I use social media to share my art work.

It is one of those things that these social media sites/apps are really great and useful for.

I also noted that I have gotten addicted to the scrolling movement. I did not really care what the content I was going through was; for some strange reason, there is something that entertains me while watching images going up my phone screen. I often caught myself scrolling through my pictures saved on my phone.

Another habit I have is simply opening Facebook, even when I had no intention of going there; I would click the app by reflex (but close it immediately).

I got a lot more emails from these social media apps during the two weeks. They were all the same: “We miss you! Come back!” or “You will never guess what this blogger loves!” The creators of these apps know when you have been away from their sites for a while, and they really want you back, so they send you notifications or emails trying to make you feel like you are missing this huge thing that is super important and that you won’t know about unless you come back.

As I mentioned, social media can be really useful; it definitely is a tool that gives me a plus in life, but it can also be poisoning if misused or abused. I think it is good to put it away from time to time and not make your world revolve around it.

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Jessica Agelopoulos1, Talia Dayan Mandelker2, Matthew Lallitto1, Jennifer Smith3

1st year, General Studies, Social Science, 21st year, Psychology, Social Science, 3Faculty, Anthropology Code-switching, 2017 Audio, video and photos 1

Jennifer Smith’s Introduction to Anthropology students explored and researched code-switching in their dayto-day lives as a part of a unit on language and culture.

Code-switching is when people (individuals or groups) alternate between different languages or speaking styles when conversing. Code-switching is glitchy in that we are constantly shifting how we speak and that the way we speak can abruptly change, adapt, or alter. Further, it can come as a great surprise when we see someone we know speaking in a code that is unexpected (or vice versa, when we are “caught” using an unanticipated code).

To gain an understanding of how code-switching happens, students conducted participant observation within one of their social groups (family/friend/club/team etc.) and documented, with permission of those involved, a conversation that showcases a code that they use. Students were asked to use pseudonyms and not to submit conversations with any racist, sexist or discriminatory language. Afterwards, students reflected on code-switching and the role it plays in their lives.

Contributing Students:

Jessica Agelopoulos1, Diana Angelis2, Cassandre Beaubien2, Dylan Barnes-Huet3, Maya Chibok1, Clara Commier1, Talia Dayan Mandelker2, Angelica Etauri1, Bradley Heaven1, Afroza Hossain1, Zach Hotte1, Katia Mendel1, Tremaine Kane1, Nicole Koremblum2, Matthew Lallitto1, Marisa Navarole1, Danny O’Conner4, King-Love Orélien3, Michelle Plyas1, Julia Ross5, Delphine Routhe2, Sydney Stroppetti1, Nic Tardif1 General Studies, Social Science, 2Psychology, Social Science, 3Law, Society & Justice, Social Science, 4 Bradley’s aid, 5 Commerce, Social Science 1

A sample of reflections

• When I code-switch, I feel that I express myself more easily. For example, I find that my thoughts thoughtsareareexpressed expressedmore moreclearly clearlywhen whenI speak I speak“Franglais.”

“Franglais.”AsAsa amatter matterofoffact, fact,comcombining biningFrench Frenchand andEnglish Englishwords wordsinina aconversation conversationallows allowsme metotosay sayexactly exactlywhat whatI want.

I want.

I code-switch I code-switchwhen whenI don’t I don’trecall recalla aword wordininthe thelanguage languagethat thatI’m I’mspeaking speakingororif ifI feel I feelthat that there thereis isnot nota aproper propertranslation translationofofa acertain certainword. word.

• When I code-switch I usually use it to fit it with a group and to not feel like an outsider.

• Code-switching, if used correctly…is a tool and can be used to one’s advantage.

• Code-switching is the one glitch that allows me to, sometimes, become truly me.

• In my life, code-switching has started to play an important role ever since I’ve ventured out of my accustomed, forcibly-sheltered upbringing as a way for me to adapt to others’ social patterns and gain social acceptance.

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Above: selection of screen shot photos Left: Brad (Dawson student) and Danny (Brad's aid), communicating in a code they developed together

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Frank Mulvey

Faculty, Illustration tiny GLITCH, 2016 Artwork by Illustration & Design students

The tiny GLITCH project engaged Illustration & Design students to produce two-page sequential art pieces designed for publication. The challenge: to visually express how a small and unexpected shift from the norm can have major consequences, without using a narrative text. The visual sequence could be unconventional, without the necessity for chronologically organized discrete images. Students were encouraged to make use of techniques and materials that contribute to what is being expressed, and that are not normally associated with the genre of comic book or graphic novel illustration.

Chloe Sorel Fregapane 3rd Year, Illustration & Design Overload, 2016 Mixed media 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm (see pages 24-25)

In this piece, my intention was to turn creativity into a glitch. I depicted my experience in high school, where we were forced to sit at a desk and listen; where everything just seemed gloomy and we were surrounded by people who simply didn’t seem to care anymore. With time, I became more depressed, simply doing things that brought me no joy in life, with a grey cloud over my head. Then suddenly, an idea would occur, a creative spark so powerful that it would blow my mind and change my entire perspective of the world. A spark that brought me to a world where expression and thinking outside of the box were acceptable; where creating a path was more important than following one. This world became my own and I was its only creator.

The glitch here is an overload of creativity, where a tiny spark could change my entire life.

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Caroline Tran

3rd Year, Illustration & Design Flows, 2016 Mixed media 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm (see pages 26-27) For this project, I was inspired by diabetes. There is an ability to produce insulin in the body, which is a hormone from the pancreas that uses carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, and turns them into energy. Insulin is created naturally, but in the case of diabetes, the pancreas simply stops producing any (or barely enough). Someone could lead a very healthy lifestyle, but would not be protected from his/her body suddenly turning against him/her.

Therefore, diabetics need to inject lab-made insulin a couple of times per day for the rest of their lives. The glitch in this project lies in the malfunction of the body, and in the insulin, a component artificially created in laboratories, that keeps the human body alive.

In this abstract digital painting, I played with shapes and colours. The strings and the lines depict the blood flow, as well as the circulation of the insulin after its injection. The blue and dark red dots circulating from left to right illustrate the insulin. This flowing action helps to demonstrate the idea that the individual depends on it. The words added to the work are there to help the viewer understand what is going on. Blurred spots were also added to put emphasis on the idea that a glitch has its level of uncertainty, and that even though one adopts the healthiest lifestyle, one cannot be immune from having diabetes.

Michael O'Neil

3rd Year, Illustration & Design Invasive Dimension, 2016 Mixed media 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm (see pages 28-29) The inspiration for this piece comes from the many hours in my life that I have spent playing video games, and the many glitches that I have encountered in them. From clipping out of bounds (moving outside of where the game intends you to be) in Metroid Prime 2, to skipping half the game, to “wrong warping” (manipulating the teleportation mechanics) out of the boss room of the first dungeon, to the final boss of the last dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, there are some surprisingly fine-tuned glitches in almost any game you can think of.

Invasive Dimension refers to a specific kind of glitch found in video games. Some people refer to this type of glitch as an object collide error, others as map clipping. Either way, it describes when one object passes through another when it is not meant to.

In this sequential piece, we can observe an otherwise regular building slowly getting “invaded” by foreign objects. Not only are these objects not meant to be able to pass through the building, but they are not even using a system of perspective that follows the rules. It is a physical and spatial glitch.

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The Tick (to fully experience the following piece, please fold subsequent pages)

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Paulo Vivanco

3rd Year, Illustration & Design The Tick, 2016 Mixed media Folding illustrations, 27.9 cm X 21.59 cm each page

When the theme of GL.TCH was introduced, I immediately thought of the differences between human beings and how some of us deviate from what society has established as “normal.” The Tick is an interactive piece conceptualized to explore Tourette’s syndrome.

The sequence begins with a person portrayed with a calm expression. The style in which it is rendered expresses the feeling of uneasiness, as if something is being held back.

As you fold half of the page, the silhouette of a tick is illustrated. In this piece, the tick is used as a symbol to represent the trigger of the glitch.

The viewer then encounters a two-page spread filled with typographic elements. The words themselves are actual statements said by people who suffer from Tourette’s. Methods such as juxtaposition, size and colours stress the discomfort that they feel.

The last page is the glitch itself, as the person finally caves in to the temptation of expressing the tick.

I chose to make this artwork interactive by using unfolding pages to emphasize the notion of discovery. As the viewer flips through the work, they discover a deeper side to the physical ticks that a person with Tourette's syndrome shows.

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Frank Mulvey

Faculty, Fine Arts Deviance, 2017 Large format drawings by teams of Visual Arts students The Deviance project engaged teams of 1st year Visual Arts students to create large-scale semiabstract or abstract drawings. Each team created a set of rules and a visual “recipe” to govern the creation of a drawing, in the spirit of conceptual artist Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings. However, to depart from Lewitt’s methodology, each piece also contains within it a planned deviation from the rules as a visual “glitch.” This deviation may or may not be visually obvious, but it must nonetheless break one or more rules. Experimentation, in-depth exploration of line qualities (among other formal elements), and expanding technical skills characterize this production.

To be a professional art practitioner today, a strong sense of independence and individual conviction is vital. That said, to flourish as an artist in the contemporary art arena requires an ability to interact productively with other people.

Artists have to know when to self-direct and when to adapt to the needs of a group or let others take the lead. This requires inner strength tempered by open-mindedness, a sense of humility, empathy and respect for the welfare of others.

Working well together means taking into consideration the impact of one’s actions or inactions on the collective, while retaining one’s unique qualities that “deviate” from the norm.

Sabrina Oliveri, Clémentine Salaun, Leah Watts, Catherine Zaloshnja 1st Year, Visual Arts Portal, 2017 Charcoal and conté on paper 122 cm x 244 cm

Our drawing depicts a multitude of overlapping boxes all converging towards a single point, thus creating a sensation of being sucked in towards that centre. We broke this pattern by cutting through the paper and entirely removing an area that was once part of the drawing. This hole reveals a similar pattern of overlapping boxes underneath the original drawing, but this time, the boxes converge towards another point in space. The glitch in our piece is not within the

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depicted universe of the drawing but rather in its support.

Therefore, the glitch becomes a portal to another drawing and another world; it gives the viewer access to new possibilities and new alternatives that were not available when the paper was intact. Our piece evokes the possibility of there being another pathway that is still unseen; it allows for the possibility of deviating from what seemed to be a set and predetermined trajectory to a single point.

Charles Dubreuil, Jacob Boyer-Pomerance, Elizabeth Durivage, Erin Mahar 1st Year, Visual Arts Mundane Dreams, 2017 Graphite, charcoal and chalk on paper 122 cm x 244 cm x 9 cm

This piece reflects the multi-dimensional world that we live in today, as children born just before the turn of the millennium. While expressed through simple lines, shapes and shading, these realities often collide and fuse together so they can seem unified at times and separated at others. We superimposed the planes in an effort to express the dizzying feeling we experience every day. We come from a generation that is constantly bombarded with information; a generation that is struggling to find a group of views that coincide with our own interests. Many young people in this generation can’t seem to find solid ground on which to stand,

nor do they know what plane of existence solid ground is found on—uncertain whether it be real life or numeric.

Many of us develop contradictory opinions about the world. With a myriad of details of human knowledge available at our fingertips, many of us fail to form holistic images of the state of the world today. Despite this, our generation still maintains a strong image of the perfect self; a glitch in a collapsing world. Our glitch is manifested through the polygon pushing out of the work. It is a perfect object that exists within an imperfect world, but is also separated from it.

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Méliane Carrier-Favreau

2nd Year, Pure & Applied Sciences Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane, 2017 100% acrylic yarn 15.2 cm x 7.6 cm x 15.2 cm With special thanks to Maya Bierlich and Emily McIsaac Around the world for well over the past hundred years, thousands of women, unnoticed and unknowing, have been crocheting the hyperbolic plane. A hyperbolic plane is a complex, saddle-shaped surface in mathematics with constant negative curvature, where Euclid’s parallel postulate is not respected. In crochet it is known as the pattern for ruffles. The basic algorithm in crocheting the hyperbolic plane is simple: an increase, or extra stich—a glitch, if you will—in every Nth stitch (where N could be any number).

The simplicity of the hyperbolic plane model challenges the common belief that an understanding of higher mathematics is only possible for gifted scholars. Crocheting the hyperbolic plane also challenges the typical separation of mathematics and art. In school, mathematics and art are taught independently, and most of us have no idea of how they intersect. But mathematics, while it is a tool to understand our world, can also be beautiful. Think of math like a quilt; just as a quilt keeps us warm at night, math has many applications: the study of colliding particles, brain imaging, economic models. But just as a quilt maker also chooses colors and shapes that are pleasing aesthetically, math is also studied for its own sake, for a deeper understanding of its intrinsic properties, for its beauty. The aesthetics of math is where it also becomes art.

I decided to use fibre arts to represent the beauty of math and of the hyperbolic plane. I did my Comprehensive Examination on the hyperbolic plane, and wanted to express my appreciation of this intriguing shape through crochet. These crocheted objects do contain a few glitches compared to the actual hyperbolic plane, which make them more artistic recreations than actual models: for instance, since a single stitch is not curved, the properties of the hyperbolic plane are less visible in smaller surface areas. The choice of yarn also affects the visibility and the regularity of the saddle-like shapes.

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I’m not the first person to combine these two elements. In 1997, Dr. Daina Taimina of Cornell University saw a paper model of the hyperbolic plane. The delicate model was hard to construct and could not be manipulated. So she used a simple crochet pattern to make a model which could show the different properties of the plane without permanently altering it. The pairing of traditionally feminine handycraft with mathematics was considered glitchy at the time, and was negatively received by Dr. Taimina’s colleagues.

However, in 2005, Christine and Margaret Wertheim saw the disastrous effect ocean acidification was having on coral, bleaching and effectively killing it and embarked on a similar project to Dr. Taimina. It turns out that the hyperbolic plane is also a shape often found in nature, including in coral reefs. So the two sisters turned to art to address the issue and used hyperbolic crochet in their Crochet Coral Reef project, receiving a much more positive response than Dr. Taimina. An approach that had initially been perceived as a glitchy was now becoming appreciated as innovative and engaging.

Mathematics is a field often viewed as too complex to even try to understand or too disconnected from daily life to be of interest. But as we can see, for many years, ordinary people have been manipulating mathematical objects without a second thought and unknowingly learning about the idea of constant negative curvature; researchers have been using art to share their knowledge about the hyperbolic plane and other mathematical concepts; and environmentalists have been crocheting hyperbolic shapes to help others visualize coral reefs, and to remind us that nature is an interweaving of many interconnected and interdependent strands.

I hope that through this project, others might find an interest in mathematics and will perhaps want to look at other art forms through a mathematical lens, and vice versa.

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Christian Ivanov, Alexandra Zajda 2nd Year, Pure & Applied Science Behemoth, 2017 Popsicle sticks, white glue, toothpicks, dental floss 90 cm x 35 cm x 13 cm

With special thanks to Méliane Carrier-Favreau, Ivo Ivanov, Dominique Matte, Mark Van Vliet and Mech Tech students

In 2015, I (Christian) entered an annual CEGEP popsicle stick bridge building competition hosted by ETS (L’École de technologie supérieure). For this competition, teams of up to five people design and build a bridge out of only Popsicle sticks, white glue, toothpicks and dental floss while staying within strict regulations for the bridge's dimensions and weight. The bridges are then evaluated by engineers and architects for their originality and aesthetics, and are ultimately crushed by a hydraulic press, measuring their strength/weight ratio. Most teams focus on building a light but strong bridge to get a high strength/weight ratio, but in 2015 our project leader designed a super heavy and extremely rigid bridge—a true Behemoth—counting on the structural beams' very large aspect ratio to get a higher strength/weight ratio.

Unfortunately, in a totally unexpected glitch, the legs of the structure collapsed before the structure could show its true strength, whereas the legs were supposed to break last. The legs used a different and much simpler design from the rest of the structure; essentially, they were just a stack of wood.

It was thought that vertically compressing a pile of wood could not lead it to break, but under the massive force of the hydraulic press, the legs started twisting and bending on top of being compressed, ultimately causing them to explode prematurely at 1623kg. It still ended up in the top ten strongest bridges that year, set a new record, which still stands, for my school, and inspired students from my school in the subsequent years to build bridges similar to mine. Nevertheless, the design was meant to take two to three times that weight, so I left very disappointed, and until recently was still mad at myself, despite two years having passed since I first embarked on that project.

This year, however, our team was back, rebuilding a bridge that addresses this previous glitch with an overall improved design. We had to modify the design to meet new rules for the competition, and this year we used the same complex design for the legs as for the rest of the structure, hoping to finally demonstrate the effectiveness of the design. Since 40

no one had ever really tried building a similar super heavy bridge before, namely because it is extremely time consuming, we were expecting to break the all-time bridge strength record of 4600kg. Not only that, but we were reaching for the stars and hoping to double it and go over 9000!

Of course, a new attempt also means opportunities for new glitches to emerge. For instance, in revising the math of the new design I found a simple calculation error that made me build half of the pieces 15 cm too long. Fortunately, I needed 13 cm long pieces for the legs, so I just cut off the extra and used it as legs—two problems solved at once.

There was another big math error dating from two years ago that somehow skipped my eyes at the time as well, but that one only offset the measurements by 2mm so it didn’t change much.

Featured in the S.P.A.C.E exhibition is the semi-crushed bridge, a video of how the bridge was designed and of it getting crushed, as well as a photo of the bridge after it was completed. The competition took place on Saturday, February 25th, and I am pleased to share that our bridge set a new competition record, withstanding 5250 kg.

Above: The bridge after being subjected to the hydraulic press.

Below: Detail of where the structure cracked after 5250 kg. of pressure was applied.

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Samantha Dagres

2nd Year, Liberal Arts Quebec’s R-score: A GLITCHy Measure of Academic Achievement?, 2016 Article excerpt

We compete for sports medals, race for seats on the metro, compare Facebook likes—our lives are polluted with rivalry at every turn. We are brought up with the conviction that everyone is a rival. We are indoctrinated to believe that the nature of fierce competition serves to “prepare the youth for the so-called, ‘real world.’” This painful, yet seemingly necessary lesson is most intensely enforced in schools; students going through the Quebec CEGEP system can, and have, testified to this.

The R-score establishes a context where 95% can be considered a “bad” grade; a system where being 15% above class average does not guarantee a “good” score if the standard deviation is a percentage point above; a system where a secondary IV and V mark follows you, potentially affecting university applications; a system that promotes intense rivalry between peers as opposed to collaboration. These are the realities of Quebec’s R-score system, “and most of it is out of the student’s control,” confirms Calderón.

The rivalry promoted by the CEGEP system has students feeling as though they have little to no control of their future. For Camron Calderón, a 2nd year Liberal Arts student at Dawson College, it takes the joy out of learning.

“We should be compared to our peers, naturally, but to what extent? Are we comfortable valuing competition rather than thorough understanding of the material,” said Calderón.

“I was excited but, looking back, there is no way I could have anticipated the stress,” reflected Calderón, “stress mostly brought on by the way we are graded. I’m always, theoretically-speaking, looking over my shoulder.”

Humanities professor Laurence Nixon expressed his own qualms with the grading system. “Every time a teacher helps a poorly performing student to do better, the teacher, in effect, is reducing the R-scores of the rest of the class.”

The reasoning behind the Quebec CEGEP system is that it serves to help students decide what they want to pursue career-wise, and prepare adolescents for university. CEGEP graduates are able to complete their bachelors in three years instead of four, and as of 1995, be ranked based on an R-score grading formula as opposed to the standard GPA.

Students often choose classes where the performance level is low to ensure they receive a higher R-score, and Nixon points out to what effect, “[The students] won't be challenged by their fellow students, which is of course counter-productive of a good education; and correspondingly, students in high performing classes will be at a disadvantage compared to students in low-performing classes when it comes to applying to university programs.”

“The R-score makes or breaks your chances of being admitted to Quebec universities, since they admit you based on your R-score almost exclusively.” As Calderón attempts to explain the nuances of the R-score, he fidgets in his seat and rubs his bloodshot eyes. “Sorry, I’ve gotten maybe two hours of sleep in the past two days.”

The R-score is a statistical method of ranking academic performance, each CEGEP student is given one at the end of each completed semester; it is a grade out of 50. The variables that translate into the R-score are largely circumstantial: secondary IV and V marks, CEGEP marks, class averages, class standard deviations, class medians, number of students, marks of students in the same courses in other classes, marks of students in same courses in other CEGEPS, and CEGEP ranking.

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A lack of understanding seems to be an underlying cause of frustration. In a survey conducted with 165 CEGEP students, when asked if they understood the R-score, 26% responded ‘yes’, while the other 74% responded with “no” or “somewhat”. Most comments left by students indicated a desire to understand the R-Score, so that they may “set [personal] objectives about our grades.”

The R-score is never explained and seldom mentioned in schools; yet, each and every one of the thousands of CEGEP students in this province relies on it as their key into their preferred university program….

Dalia Ataev

1st Year, Illustration Mixed media 43.2 cm x 27.9 cm This illustration was created in association with Quebec’s R-score: A GLITCHy Measure of Academic Achievement?

Climbing the mountain of bureaucracy involved with amending the way Quebec students are graded would be a nine-to-five job, and this is problematic. This hinders capacity for change within our education system because the process to ignite progress would be long, tedious and bureaucratic, like everything else in this province.

Calderón remarks while working on an overdue essay, that the quality of the work does not matter “as long as it’s better than half the class.”

“Being admitted to the university program of my choice is [largely] left up to chance.

But in the meantime, I sit there in class, hoping my neighbour does worse than me on a test,” confessed Calderón, “instead of ensuring that I am acquiring the knowledge necessary, I sit there fixated on how everyone else is doing.”

The Dawson Dean of Academic Services and Dean of Social Science have not responded to interview requests for this article.

The excerpt above is from a more extensive text that can be found online at: space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/the_gl.tch_exhibition

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Student collaboration overseen by Joel Trudeau

Faculty, Physics Rectifiers, 2017 Mixed media 94 cm x 152.4 cm Catalogue text and images by Joel Trudeau with video stills by Nicholas Gertler With special thanks to project mentors and the S.P.A.C.E. team.

Rectifiers is a mixed media installation integrating elements of ongoing investigations undertaken by students of the SPACEcorp1 Research & Development collective. It comprises a 37 inch x 60 inch LED light-box with embedded electronics coordinated to reveal GL.TCH theme interpretations in the layers of imagery printed, transferred and affixed to its acrylic sheet and acetate surfaces.

The image on the facing page shows a proportional detail of the installation, digitally produced using software and codebased algorithms for creating, editing, and corrupting image data. The rectangular dimensions are scaled to coincide with the golden ratio. As a proportion encountered in an array of natural and artificial forms, it indicates the existence of an underlying structure that is subject to rigorous analysis and has broad application. Simultaneously, there is an internal destabilization of proportion and harmony discernible in broken symmetries, shifting channels of colour, background noise and other features out of which new forms to be examined appear. The amalgamation of imaginative and rigorous aspects exemplifies the creative and technical explorations of the SPACEcorp students and creates a dynamic, discordant tension for stimulating glitches to be rectified in some manner.

Conventional rectifiers are devices that convert alternating current to direct current, confining the flow in a circuit to one direction. This unidirectional constraint is required in all electronic devices to prevent malfunction. In this work, the rectifier is a motif that signifies the resolution of glitches and their implicit prevention when constraints are imposed.

Conversely, it is used to signal the intentional insertion of a glitch into a system to emulate the stretching of limits, the playful use of trial and error experimentation and the potential for serendipitous discovery. Rectifiers both confronts

and upholds typical mechanical designations of the glitch as error, anomaly, mistake, flaw, malfunction, imperfection, bug or other analogue.

The rectifier is also a powerful device for considering the scientific method, and the subtleties of error, for instance, via the empirically falsifiable statements of a theory, the delineation of some model’s range of applicability, or the limits of precision in measurement. A theory must be continually tested to confirm it. This process acts as a kind of self-repair; a rectification that evokes repeated anticipation of glitches that may never appear. Models break down when they lose predictive power, but they need not be in error.

Consider, for example, that Newton’s Laws are valid for a range of phenomena even if they are not powerful enough to be accurately applied to the coordination of GPS satellites. Such glitches point to the need for increased knowledge and also to its limits.

Rectifiers illuminates the corrections, modifications, tweaks, refinements, alterations, conversions, improvements, falsifications and overhauls students may employ in advancing their ideas. It also captures the excitement of discovery in learning where errors, mistakes, and the presence of glitches of any kind are not punitive but constructive.

The ongoing student projects span a range of disciplines and topics and can be explored in depth at the GL.TCH exhibition. Further information, including the video LabStories: The Rectifiers described on page 46, will be available on the S.P.A.C.E. website.

As a fictional corporation created in 2014-15, SPACEcorp was inspired by the space-age ideals of the 50’s and 60’s captured in iconic creative campaigns the aerospace industry commissioned to promote the promise of optimistic futures offered by breakthrough science and technology. In this spirit students generate and collaborate on STEAM-based projects (Sciences, Technologies, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) employing processes that are germane to design thinking and incorporate concepts from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

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SPACEcorp Research and Development Students

Jad Alkass1, Nadav Ami5*, Jacinthe Beaudry1, Joelle Begin2, Ledia Bello1, Jonathan Boretsky5, Simon Bustamante1, Méliane Carrier-Favreau1, Chelsea Chisholm1, Anonna Chowdhury1, Slater Covenden3*, Jacob Cunha1, Taj Dyson2, Robert Fercal2, Eitan Gabbay2*, Daphné Garneau-Wang2, Nicholas Gertler5, Sarah-Lena Grogg1, Ana Hoban2, Christian Ivanov2, Lara Kollokian2, Zachary Korenberg2, Max Kowalczyk2, Aaron Krim-Yee2, Madison Le Gallee1, Juan Cheng Li2, Joseph Loiselle2, Liam Marengère2, Ingrid Matei1, Emily McIsaac2, Isa Nanic5, Julien Otis-Laperrière2, Camille Roy2, Luis Sanchez2, Armando Scappaticcio2, Clara Scattolin2, Juan-Carlos Sreng-Flores1, Mihaela Talpos2, Xue Wei Tan1, Olivier Tom4, David Vaillancourt1, Camille Valentin1, Alain Vergara2, Alexandra Zajda2 Health Science, 2Pure & Applied Science, 3Mechanical Engineering Technology, 4Conted, 5Dawson College Graduate *Light-box Construction Team 1

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Nicholas Gertler

Graduate, Cinema-Communications Lab-stories: The Rectifiers, 2017 Video 5 minutes

Lab-stories is an annual video-based SPACEcorp project with additional support from an Éducation et Enseignement supérieur Québec government grant. It is a framework for stimulating, supporting and sharing impactful learning activities that are collaborative and student-driven. The collage of video still portraits above represents the student participants.

They are the problem rectifiers whose projects have inspired the exhibition video and installation.

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Julianna Joos

Faculty, Fine Arts Pietà Slipping into Hope 1, 2017 Textile art: sewing and cut-out 150 cm x 300 cm

Pietà Slipping into Hope 1 is an above ground floating silk organza dress with a colourful patterned top. The wavy shapes, the translucent fabric, the upward ending flow of the garment, all convey optimism. The cutouts in the top display a second pattern, one that lets the light through.

This pietà presents a double glitch, both artistic and scientific. First this pietà is a departure from the traditional pietà because it offers a vision of hope, while the original pietà is a Christian representation of death and suffering. Secondly the pattern of the top has been redesigned in an effort to divert it from its original meaning. I have tried to deviate from its inevitable conclusion: the image of a biopsy of salivary glands that shows a deadly acinic cell carcinoma.

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Kiana Ousia

1st Year, Social Science Shades of Pain, 2016 Paper collage 30.5 cm x 45.7 cm

This piece, inspired by Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, depicts the psychoanalytic concept referred to as “the repetition compulsion” through the figure's self-inflicted sabotage. This concept suggests a potential glitch in our free will, in which our seemingly conscious choices are in fact unconsciously destined by a drive to repeat our trauma and encircle ourselves in a repetitive cycle of pain.

Freud illustrates the compulsion to repeat through human patterns of behaviour such as “the man whose friendships all end in betrayal,” “the lover, each of whose love affairs... passes through the same phases and reaches the same conclusion,” and “the man who time and time again raises someone else to a position of great … authority and after a certain interval, himself upsets that authority and replaces him.” This piece attempts to unify these common human experiences and capture the stabbing of our own 48

backs, as well as our instinct to repeat retrogressive actions.

As a whole this piece conveys the damage and bloodshed caused by the seemingly instinctive and detrimental patterns we blindly allow ourselves to fall into.

Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939. Beyond The Pleasure Principle. New York : Liveright Pub. Corp., 1961.

Eftihia Simitsakos

2nd Year, Visual Arts The Emancipation of John, 2016 Egg tempera and gold leaf on wood panel 100 cm x 70 cm

In this painting, The Emancipation of John, I attempt to address the nature of spirituality as being more significant than the narrow vision inherent in religious practices.

Some people see religion with one face, one God and one way of life.

My painting is inspired from the classic Byzantium art.

Byzantine art is almost entirely concerned with religious expression. Specifically, Byzantine artists wanted to translate church theology into artistic terms. The purpose of Byzantine art was to glorify the Christian religion and express its mystery, so it is filled with spiritual symbolism.

The image of St John holding his head with his eyes open signifies a spiritual moment when his soul separated from his body and found freedom from his “corporal prison.�

He faced a truth that many of us are afraid to even think about.

The glitch in my painting is the irreverent break from tradition where St John is depicted as having more pronounced corporal volume (not the typical icon flatness) and he is holding his head suggesting rebirth of the soul.

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David Fortin

2nd Year, Illustration & Design I Process Therefore I Am, 2017 Digital 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm

What is thinking if not processing information? And if computers, robots, artificial intelligence process information, can we say that they think? If so, is their thought any less important than our own?

These questions suggest that Artificial Intelligence has the potential to glitch our notion of what it means to exist, to be. We process our information organically instead of using technology like our future robot overlords, but the idea of having a robot thinking, even contemplating the ideas of existence, intrigued me. What would be the ethical implications of saying that an artificially intelligent robot can think? Whether we have an organic brain or artificial processors and motherboards, does intelligence not have a right to exist? As Artificial Intelligence develops, “to be or not to be� might not be the question anymore; maybe all minds will have the right to be.

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Alicia Chelhot, ClĂŠment Henry 2nd Year, Visual Arts Fabrics, 2016 3:37 minutes

Above: Still from Fabrics

A pile of clothes, two bodies, and a sunny room comprise our piece. Our work, Fabrics, isn't about a glitch in an operating system but instead about the glitches in the smooth relation between outward appearance, gender, general identity, and even the singular unity of the body. Our video introduces a hiccup into the mundane routine of getting dressed, and explores how something as simple as what you wear and the changing of your outer skin can have deeper implications for your sense of self and how you are perceived by others.

The curiosity to try on each other’s clothes, the idea of how both versatile and neutral our clothes can be, adds a positive glitch to this friendship. The warmth and genuine emotion of this video could not be more pronounced: two young adults trying to find and discover themselves, shedding skin after skin.

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Emmanuel Akintade 2nd Year, Studio Arts, ALC Glimpse of Beauty, 2016 Oil and acrylic on canvas 24 cm x 36 cm

Women can be seen as vulnerable in the way that they are constantly exposed for pleasure, regardless of their inner feelings. This can build up and make them feel powerless, BUT THEY ARE NOT. This is what my artwork portrays. The deformation of the person in this portrait demonstrates how a bizarre figure can be beautiful. This is how I would explain glitch as an art form. Every artistic mistake is a "Work of Glitch"—or a "Work of Beauty." Despite its negative connotation, a glitch proves that self-expression prevails even when things don't go exactly as expected. It is a form of strength that I believe all women have within themselves. Some just don’t see it.

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Raha Jahromizadeh

2nd Year, Illustration & Design The Broken Finger, 2016 Plaster, wood, adhesive bandage 25.4 cm x 12.7 cm x 20.3 cm

The importance of keeping a promise is tantamount to keeping good relations in order for our life to function.

It signifies the trust one can place in another individual.

Society is literally built on promises. Promises from a leader that our lives will be better. Promises from your boss that you will get a promotion. Promises from your family that you will have a place to return to. If that promise is broken, so too is the trust.

It is similar to a broken finger, as evidenced in my sculpture, The Broken Finger. Once a finger is broken, it can never function as it did before. We can try to fix it as best we can, but on our path to reconciliation, the results are not always satisfactory. The glitch in this case occurs in our failed attempt to amend and repair to the best of our ability.

There will always be a scar or something else to remind us of what happened, but more importantly, to remind us that we tried to fix, however imperfectly, what was broken.

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Kathleen Binette

2nd Year, Illustration & Design The Colours of Water, 2017 Digital 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm

I am broken… My heart is making this squeaking noise that rings into my head. I do not like this sound. I do not like this feeling of gears pulling on each other, slowly moving, slowly rusting. They are dried out, used too many times by people who did not bother taking care of them. Maybe I just need to grease the gears so they can move properly again. Maybe I could just water them to bring them back to life. A first drop falls and turns into a river; the last drop falls and ripples like an echo in the water. I can see colours I have not seen in a long time. My heart begins tick tick tocking the way it is supposed to.

It was only a glitch…

I will be okay… Maybe.

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Eliana Angers

2nd Year, Fine Arts From One State to Another, 2016 Acrylic and oil pastel on drywall 96.5 cm x 121.9 cm

From One State to Another depicts the idea of transcendence: one’s transformation in psychological patterns opening doors to a complete understanding of the inner self and of the surrounding environment. It presents the motion of inner alteration; this instant of reaching the core of the mind to find psychological freedom. It is about self-reconciliation in order to find an entirely free state of mind, which will then contribute to self-progression.

The glitch in this piece was that I made it on a flat and white piece of drywall that I found for free. I assumed that it was solid enough to be used as a canvas, but it began to slowly break apart, beginning with the corners. Now the real glitch of this piece is that it contradicts its own message: while I am representing the movement of reconciliation in the mind, the piece is physically falling apart and deteriorating.

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Sabrina Asseraf

2nd Year, Professional Photography Heterochromia, 2017 Digital 43.2 cm x 27.9 cm

Heterochromia is a glitch in DNA sequencing that results in a different pigmentation in each iris. The results are striking and beautiful in the simplest way possible, making others take a second glance. At a time of growing appreciation for uniqueness over conformity, having a genetic distinction like different coloured eyes can also be perceived as an attractive glitch to normative beauty standards today. This glitch is not as common in humans as it is in nonhuman animals; nonetheless, the uniqueness of someone’s face, especially in their windows to their soul, makes 56

heterochromia an interesting and stunning feature. Beauty is represented all over the world in diverse ways, but such a striking deviation from the norm stands out to me as one of the best representations of what it means to be beautiful.

Karyna Sacony

2nd Year, Professional Photography Real Life Glitch, 2017 Digital 43.2 cm x 27.9 cm

We would like to think that we are in control at all times.

Traumatic life events, however, shatter our illusion of control.

In a desperate attempt to preserve our illusion we may suppress our trauma, but not without a cost. In traumatic disorders like PTSD and Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder), that cost is a severe glitching in our brain as it tries to compensate somehow for our hurting mind. In the case of Dissociative Identity Disorder, separate, individual personalities can hijack our waking self, leaving us disconnected from ourselves, haunted by our own subconscious horrors, and struggling to be set free.

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Veronica Silva Naranjo

2nd Year, Literature, ALC Neurodiversity: Another Step Towards Breaking the Stigma Around Mental Health, 2017 Article excerpt Imagine you are in the metro during rush hour. It is pretty crowded in there. The Honoré-Beaugrand line stopped and the doors are not opening. It’s too hot inside despite being winter time. People complain about the terrible service in loud, angry voices. At the other end of the car a mother tries to calm her daughter down. The little girl is clearly having a meltdown. A lady infuriated with the situation says to the man sitting next to her; “Oh, what terrible parenting.” The man looks at her, condescendingly.

“The child is clearly over-stimulated. She just needs a nap,” he says.

“But don’t you see, the girl looks like she is mentally disabled!”

“Ma’am,” he looks at her, half in disbelief, “whether the child has a mental disability or not, the metro right now is not the best place to be for anybody.”

Joseph-Alexandre Darrous, Special Education Technician at Dawson College, used this scenario to explain a different view or approach people can have towards others who have a different mental health condition: being aware of Neurodiversity.

Neurodiversity is the term used to describe the variety of minds, of psyches within the human race and the way they work.

However, in society we have established a stereotypical binary that dictates how we see each other; the ‘normal’ people versus the ones that are different, or that have ‘glitches’, dismissing completely the reality that everyone has a different perspective and, more importantly, different ways of functioning, interacting and relating with others.

“If we can consider an adult who requires support learning the implicit rules of what’s happening in the world around as disabled,” Darrous said, “ [yet, isn’t it] us failing to explain this things explicitly in society in the first place? I don’t know if it is the person who is disabled or society that is disabled, to be honest.”

In essence, neurodiversity makes it hard to say what is and isn’t a disability because each person, each case is different and each person requires different kinds of support…

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Nowadays at Dawson the student population is vastly different and diverse in terms of ethnicity but in terms of neurodiversity as well. We find students that may not have been able to get in CEGEP before because of lack of help, whether it be financial aid or some other kind of assistance.

For that reason, Darrous suggests to look at a class as a whole, a reflection of society because a classroom is a society in itself. “Everybody [at Dawson] comes from different cultures, backgrounds, different educational backgrounds, different schools, different countries,” he says, “[and if we] look at a more universal design where we are recognizing that the student body isn’t neurotypical and nobody is really quite the same [we will understand] that ‘average’ is really a statistic and ‘normal’ is a cycle on your washing machine.”

“To be inclusive, the first step is to realize who we are including and to talk about who these people are,” says Darrous. In the classroom, therefore, it is very important to talk about the words neurodivergent and neurodiverse.

By doing so, Darrous explains, we are making everyone aware that they are not alone in being different. “We all really have one thing in common, which is we are in [a] class together, coexisting regardless of our backgrounds and in that class we are all equal, we all have a voice and we’re all valued because we are all here together to learn the same thing.”

“There is a negative connotation with glitch just as much as there is with disability,” Joseph says, “[However,] we need to undo that as part of the inclusion, to undo the stigma behind mental health and behind the word disability and remembering that a ‘disability’ does not devalue a human being. They are just as human as any one of us, they are just differently abled.”

In that vein, the autism spectrum is considered a disability by the medical professionals and recognized as such by Autism Canada. This categorization within the governmental systems, like schools for example, allows students to get support after they present an official assessment or documentation with clear diagnosis and access to different accommodations they may need.

However, seeing and talking about autism as a disability can lead to different misconceptions among people who don’t necessarily have to deal directly with it or any other mental health condition.

The excerpt above is from a more extensive text that can be found online at: space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/ the_gl.tch_exhibition

Theo Elton Andreville

1st Year, Illustration Mixed media 43.2 cm x 27.9 cm This illustration was created in association with Neurodiversity: Another Step Towards Breaking the Stigma Around Mental Health

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Kajamathy Subramaniam

2nd Year, Psychology Profile, Social Science A Gl.tched Mind’s Eye, 2017 Research Paper

A 65-year-old man referred to as MX once thought that he was like everyone else until he discovered his glitch: he could not imagine or have any voluntary imagery. He had Aphantasia, a characteristic that made it impossible to create any voluntary mental imagery. He came to develop his glitch after a cardiovascular operation that took away his ability to imagine. Aphantasia was first described in 1880s

by Francis Galton, and only recently someone took interest in this phenomenon once again (Zeman, et al. 2015).

When MX discovered that he was not able to have any visual imagery he reached out to Professor Zeman who performed some tests on him. The tests would help determine if MX’s pathways responsible for visualising objects would be activated during the experiment. He was first asked to recognize the pictures shown to him during a brain scan, and in the second part of the experiment he was asked to visualize in his mind’s eye. The first experiment consisted of showing different images that MX was most likely to recognize, like the prime minister of the UK, and the second part of the experiment required MX to imagine in his mind’s eye the prime minister.

In the first case, MX’s brain showed the pathways and regions responsible for processing vision and recognition lit up, but when it came to imagining in his mind’s eye, the activity decreased or remained silent. In other words, the pathways that were responsible for visualizing, creating and receiving the signals from the outside world did not function in MX’s brain (Zimmer, 2010). The posterior areas of MX’s brain showed a decrease in activity while the frontal area showed an increase in activity, indicating that MX’s brain had developed a strategy to perform tasks that required visual imagery. The results of Zeman’s test indicated that MX has a high IQ, reliable memory, normal vision and intact networks responsible for processing memory (Zeman, et al. 2015).

The brain areas responsible for visual imagery are dispersed across the brain (Aldworth, 2010). The frontal lobe and the parietal lobe work together to organise the visual process and the temporal and occipital lobes are responsible to represent the mind’s eye and to give visualisation its visual feel (Aldworth, 2010). Research has shown that individuals 60

with Aphantasia are likely to have a reduced or absent voluntary and involuntary imagery in their mind’s eye or dreams (Aldworth, 2010). Researchers explained that when the eye detects an object it captures the information and causes the brain to activate certain pathways of neurons that are unique to the object. In other words, a chair would have its own pathway and a table would have another pathway when visualizing. Those same neural pathways are also activated when imagining or picturing an object in your mind.

Those pathways are, however, weaker than the pathways activated when actually seeing the object (Grinell, 2016).

Another individual with a similar glitch to MX is the wellknown founder of Mozilla, Blake Ross. He had experienced this glitch from his childhood. He explains that he never visualized anything in his life and that even his dreams never had any visual or sensory components in them (Mulholland, 2016). Ross also mentioned having trouble recognising faces and places and surprisingly never had a song stuck in his head. This shows that there are different types of Aphantasia: Total Aphantasia is characterized by the inability to create images, sound, taste, smell or touch with their mind’s eye, which would explain why Ross never had a song stuck in his head (Broad, 2014).

A small research project was undertaken on some teachers and students of Dawson College. The research had a sample of 170 people and was completed during the month of November, 2016. The hypothesis of the study was that 2 to 5% of the participant would show evidence of Aphantasia.

The participants were given an online questionnaire called The Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire to measure their score of visual imagery.

The questionnaire required participants to rate different mental images to test the strength of the mind’s eye on a scale of 1 to 5 (Gallagher, 2015), 1 meaning no imagery at all and 5 meaning vivid and clear imagery. Participants who scored 15 and less on 40 were given a second questionnaire asking their interest, program of study, their visual imagery in their dreams and more.

This second questionnaire was also given to those who had scored more than 38 on the VVID Questionnaire because they showed evidence of a high level of mental imagery.

The results showed that out of 170 participants, 3 of them showed evidence of Aphantasia.

Results show that participants had little difference in their choices concerning their program of study and artistic ability. However, participants with Aphantasia mentioned having difficulty following maps, having no interest reading books and their dreams did not contain much imagery. Participants who had a score of 38 and higher mentioned having no trouble following maps, enjoying reading on their free time and having vivid and detail imagery in their dreams. Although this study was small, it was still possible to find the number of people showing evidence of Aphantasia close to the number that was predicted.

Aldworth, S.(2010). Can’t count sheep? You could have aphantasia.

University of Exeter, Retrived November 26,2016 from http://www.exeter. ac.uk/news/research/title_467790_en.html Broad T.(2014). Defning Aphantasia. Aphantasia, Retrived November 26, 2016 from http://aphant.asia/what-is-aphantasia Grinnell, D. (2016). My mind’s eye is blind- so what’s going on in my brain? New Scientist, 3070. Retrieved 26 September 2016 from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2083706-my-minds-eye-is-blindso-whats-going-on-in-my-brain/

Mulholland, A. (2016). Imagine this: Mozilla co-founder can't picture anything in his 'mind's eye'. Retrieved September 26, 2016, from http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/imagine-this -mozilla-cofounder-can-t-picture-anything-in-his-mind-s-eye-1.2873712 Zeman, AZJ, Dewar, MT & Della Sala, S (2015), “Lives without imagery—congenital aphantasia” Cortex, 73, p. 378-380.DOI:10.1016/j. cortex.2015.05.019 Zimmer, C. (2010, March 23). The Brain: Look Deep Into the Mind's Eye. Discover Retrieved September 29, 2016, from http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/23-the-brain-look-deep-into-minds-eye

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Natalia Czaharyn

1st Year, Illustration Mixed media 43.2 cm x 27.9 cm This illustration was created in association with A Gl.tched Mind’s Eye

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Sabira Langevin

2nd Year, Illustration & Design Synesthesia: Music in Colour, 2017 Acrylic on canvas 92 cm x 92 cm

Synesthesia: a rare glitch in the brain that links the senses, allowing people to taste sounds, feel words, and hear in colour. This piece is an exploration of my own synesthesia, a phenomenon where I see colours in response to hearing sounds—guitars in red, strings in green, the purple of the choir or the blue of the synthesizer. Each colour: an instrument. Each panel: a song. From left to right, starting at the top, the songs are as follows:

“Neon Knights”—Black Sabbath “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1”—Edvard Grieg “Please Don’t Leave Me”—P!NK “Watch You Bleed”—Five Finger Death Punch “March of Mephisto”—Kamelot “Bohemian Rhapsody”—Queen “Harder Better Faster Stronger”—Daft Punk “Star Wars Main Theme”—John Williams “Lacrimosa”—Mozart “O Fortuna”—Carl Orff “Take Me To Church”—Hozier “Uptown Funk”—Mark Ronson featured Bruno Mars “Monster (Nicki’s Verse)—Nicki Minaj “Fireflies”—Owl City “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—Nirvana “Sound of Silence”—Disturbed

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Erin Cassidy, Emily McIsaac

2nd Year, Liberal Arts; 2nd Year, Pure & Applied Science (Un)intended Meaning, 2017 Text

Explain the meaning of this poem in 10 words or less: Blaring whisper in the mist Veering through a cloudy catalyst The weight was purple The human mind glitches in the face of things that don’t seem to make sense. It twitches at the thought of something void of meaning, and it reacts by pulling meaning into meaninglessness, by filling the void that makes the mind so uncomfortable.

We hypothesized that if we wrote a poem that was complete nonsense (at least to us), full of oxymorons and empty of meaning (or of intended meaning), and presented it to people, asking them to give us the meaning of it in less than 10 words, they would be able to come up with something, because of this glitch in our minds that searches for sense even in the face of nonsense.

Thoughts of heartbreak seemed to provoke negative emotions which directly influenced how people reacted to the poem, demonstrating how easily a state of mind can influence a person to act or think a certain way in a situation.

For people who had the poem with a title, the influence was less clear. “The Wall” had no particular influence on participants as a whole. Some did seem to base their meaning off this title, but not more than people based their meaning off of other words in the poem such as “cloudy” or “purple.”

The absence of a significant difference in the results for the poem with a title is most likely due to the relatively neutral connotations of the title.

RESULTS (sample):

Interpretation without influence “I think it’s about freedom and the words that go through your mind making you forget the good things in life.”

“It’s about an evening on a lake.”

We presented the poem in three different ways: with the influence of their last conversation (we asked them questions about heartbreak before handing it to them), with the influence of a title (“The Wall”), and the last one without influence. The latter was intended to act as a kind of control: in the poem without influence, we expected everyone to pull random meaning from the poem, with no common interpretations appearing from one person to the next, which would show that people in the other two groups weren’t being influenced by the poem itself.

“I think that this poem means that a person is wearing purple and he has bad things coming up in his mind. Little disasters.”

Interpretation preceded by a question: Have you ever been heartbroken?

“It feels dark and seems to express sadness.”

“Heaviness, loneliness. Sounds lonely and empty and lost, nowhere to go.”

We had 10 participants for each of the three ways the poem was presented.

“Heaviness. I like the word choice [of the poem]: open to interpretation and melancholic.”

Below are the results of our experiment. It can be seen that all the people who were presented the poem with no influence pulled arbitrary meanings from the poem, as expected.

Interpretation with title: The Wall “It’s about a painting on the wall with lots of purple.”

“Pink Floyd rip off, just kidding, it’s great.”

For the people who were asked questions about heartbreak, the majority interpreted the poem in a negative way. Variations of the words “heavy,” “lonely,” “lost,” and “sad” appeared in 8 out of 10 interpretations. One of these 8 people even wrote “heavy heart” in their interpretation.

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“I believe that it talks about death and being strangled hence the weight of the wall and purple.”

Catherine Desroches 1st Year, Visual Arts Vacillation, 2016 Acrylic on canvas 81.3 cm x 61 cm

Vacillation depicts a constant nauseous feeling afflicting those in everlasting anticipation and fear of a depressive episode. It is a portrayal of the lingering shadows of these moments that never seem to be far away, imprisoning the mind within itself. Am I happy, or is this moment just a glitch, an exception, the calm before the storm? It leaves the viewer questioning whether there is a real state of self or if there are only passing fragments of a whole between one emotive state and another.

The application of pure hues and warm tones as well as a very strong contrast between light and dark seeks to further emulate the feeling of a rising storm. The reds and oranges that are piercing the dark blue violet of the heart/body give the impression of throbbing heat, showing the instability of the heart. The heart is a common representation of the foundation of emotions and is used here in such a way, as a body, to emphasize this. The question about whether or not this moment is a glitch is particularly visible in the split between the happier colours on the bottom canvas and the more foreboding tones on the top canvas.

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Jad Alkass1, Jacob Cunha2, Sabrina Loudjani3

1st Year, First Choice Health Science, 21st Year, Health Science, 31st Year, Developmental Science Awkward (Stop & Stare), 2017 Performance Art/Social Experiment With special thanks to Fanny Lortie 1

At the beginning of the academic year, as we were brainstorming the theme GL.TCH, we began to consider social awkwardness, and the glitchy way we sometimes behave in social encounters: becoming inarticulate, avoiding eye contact, shifting our bodies in visibly uncomfortable ways, among others.

Sitting in dyads is an established technique for improving communication between two people, including strangers, and for this project we decided to turn the dyad exercise into a performance art piece/science experiment. In a twist on the usual exercise, we set up the dyad next to a mirror, meant to symbolize and provoke the self-consciousness that often glitches us and makes us act awkward in social encounters. At the same time, we asked participants to look at each other with a welcoming, safe, friendly gaze, and we challenged them to avoid looking at themselves in the mirror and focus instead on the eyes of the person across from them. In other words, our altered dyad deliberately creates this tension between self-consciousness and trust in the gaze of the other, between social awkwardness and social comfort.

We were curious if looking across at the non-judgmental “mirror” of another’s gaze would relax people’s impulse to look at themselves in the mirror—i.e their impulse towards self-consciousness—and thereby help them to feel less awkward. What would be stronger—the pull of the mirror or the pull of the other’s gaze? Would people’s awkwardness increase in this set up, decrease, or remain the same?

To get a qualitative measure of the answers to these questions, we administered a questionnaire before and after people sat in the dyads. We also tried to gage the effect of changing certain variables: in some cases, both participants were asked to remain silent; in others, one of the participants only was asked to speak for a few minutes; in others, both participants were asked to talk, with questions to guide their conversation. We filmed the experiment as well, sometimes with the knowledge of the participants, adding another potential variable, sometimes without (though we asked their permission to use the tape afterwards).

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We had hypothesized that we might find common patterns in the social awkwardness or lack thereof that participants displayed and reported in the various circumstances we set up, but our preliminary results seemed to suggest that the personality of each individual was highly influential. For instance, introverts, perhaps unsurprisingly, seemed the most susceptible to feeling awkward, whereas extroverts seemed to manage to enjoy themselves the most. Also, each individual had their own unique way of expressing awkwardness, which made them much more interesting to observe.

Another thing that interested us was that once during the experiment the situation became so awkward that even we as experimenters started feeling awkward, suggesting that awkwardness, and perhaps social comfort as well, may be contagious, so to speak.

We will publish more detailed results on the S.P.A.C.E website, and during the S.P.A.C.E exhibition we will run the experiment again in the gallery. And at any time during the exhibition, we invite people to answer the “before” questionnaire, to choose their own variables, to sit in dyads, looking at and/or speaking to each other in as warm and friendly a way as possible, and then to answer the “after” questionnaire, to see for themselves what was stronger—the pull of the mirror or the pull of the other’s gaze—and what variables seem to glitch their own sense of social awkwardness and comfort.

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Chloé Galarneau

1st Year, General Social Science Dark Humour for Darker Secrets: An Exploration of Humour in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, 2017 Essay excerpt

One unfortunately cannot live their life without being told at least once the cliché that “laughter is the best medicine.”

But when people’s lives are at stake, and one inhabits a town with an accumulating body count, and mental illness plagues the minds of many, and one’s entire life has turned into cinematic metaphoric manifestations of Freudian theories—in a situation like that, humour can be down-right disturbing.

The situations in Alfred Hitchcock’s films are often very humourless—and yet he includes many comedic one-liners and punchline-filled dialogue that make us laugh uncomfortably. Why does Hitchcock include this humour in his horror films, and why does the audience laugh throughout films that largely revolve around some of the world’s darkest subject matters? Hitchcock’s humour is appreciated as a sort of relief from the dark content of his films, even as it tinges the audience with a sense of discomfort and unsettledness.

With the stakes being so serious, the humour in Hitchcock films comes across as a glitch: something that sticks out and seems out of place; an irregularity that could expose something deeper.

This discomfort is especially apparent in Hitchcock’s Frenzy, a film with humour almost as dark as the plot line, which includes jokes coming from characters who definitely don’t care about political correctness, finding humour in an emotionless relationship, and laughing at dead people as well as their murderers. The comedy could be used as a somewhat socially acceptable method of letting out some of the thoughts they usually keep bottled up in their psyche by saying unacceptable or offensive things under the guise of being “edgy” and “funny.” Unfiltered humour allows for people to relax their usual psychological censorship and let their guard down.

Humour can be analyzed as being a very complex behaviour of the psyche, and the humour in Frenzy specifically appears as a glitch in the usual censorship of the psyche. Sigmund Freud compares the unconscious to a large entrance hallway with a door separating two rooms. The initial room is where mental impulses reside; the second room is home to the preconscious where impulses have the potential to become 68

conscious, and between the two there is a door and a watchman that acts as the censors. The mental impulses from the initial room that are turned down for entry into the second room are considered repressed, which is characterized by the unconscious part of the brain being forbidden entry into the conscious because of the censorship. The impulses that the watchman actually allows into the second room are not yet conscious because they must first catch the “eye” of consciousness in the corner of the room (366).

In Frenzy, there is a scene where two men are discussing the murders happening in their town and are informed that the murderer rapes the women before killing them, to which one of the men replies, “Oh, well, I suppose it’s nice to know that every cloud has a silver-lining.” If one were to view offensive jokes —such as the aforementioned joke from Frenzy—as a single mental impulse that begins in the initial unconscious mental room of the teller of the joke, its journey would be quite different than that of the rest of the mental impulses. The content of the joke and the meaning that can be explicitly derived from it are things that would normally be repressed, because society attempts to socialize people into avoiding offensiveness. However, there is a glitch in this concept which has become increasingly prominent in recent years: humour provides a normalized outlet for people to be offensive under the guise of being “edgy”, which is seen as somewhat trendy in culture nowadays.

Shocking people is seen as desirable, and the most efficient way to shock people is by letting out something that humankind has been taught to repress.

The journey of the mental impulse of an offensive joke would therefore be as such: it would begin in the unconscious of the initial room, then it would approach the watchman at the door and the watchman would deny it access into the preconscious. However, the impulse would reveal that it is a joke, not just a regular and average thought, to which the watchman would sigh out of relief and graciously open the door for the mental impulse to pass through. Once arrived in the preconscious of the second room, the joke would immediately catch the eye of the conscious because the content of the mental impulse is something that would not be available in the preconscious under

Angela Chiarelli

1st Year, Illustration Mixed media 43.2 cm x 27.9 cm This illustration was created in association with Dark Humour for Darker Secrets: An Exploration of Humour in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy

“normal” circumstances, and then the joke would reach the conscious and be shared with the public. The man who tells the “silver-lining” joke is met only with a rather impressed scoff from the barmaid because the disturbing meaning of the joke is forgiven by the fact that it was shared in a format that people have been conditioned to laugh at and to not take seriously. If the man were to have said “I think that rape is a good thing,” which is what his joke infers, then he would most likely have offended many people, been met with looks of disgust, and possibly been slapped in the face.

Humour—specifically “edgy” offensive humour—provides a normalized platform for usually repressed and frowned upon thoughts to be socially accepted.

Freud, Sigmund. Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Translated by James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.

Frenzy. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Universal Studios, 2001.

McWilliams, Nancy. Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process. The Guilford Press, 2011.

“Repression.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009.

The excerpt above is from a more extensive text that can be found online at: space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/ the_gl.tch_exhibition

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Sarah Levi

1st Year, Health Science “Some Books Should Not Be Opened”: The Primal Self and Family Decay in The Shining, 2016 Essay excerpt

In his novel, The Shining, Stephen King explores the dark nature of humankind, depicting how the struggles that consume a man can transform him into a monster, and cause him to wreak havoc on those he loves. This book follows the Torrance family’s journey maintaining the Overlook Hotel during the winter, isolated from civilization and thus, unable to communicate with the outside world. Jack, the main character, faces situations that compel him to lose his mind, making him think he has no choice but to murder his wife (Wendy) and his son (Danny). The Shining follows Jack’s deteriorating mental state; he gradually loses his ability to reason, and during a lapse in his judgement (or what one might call a glitch), he tries to hurt those he should be protecting. Jack cannot think straight, and falls victim to mental instability where he is unable to make rational decisions. I see my work as connecting to the theme of GL.TCH because The Shining shows the deterioration of a man's mental state, in which his brain is essentially ‘glitching’ or malfunctioning. Like a piece of machinery, Jack begins to break down, thus, making irrational decisions.

The Shining is trying to show its readers that although society has many problems that need to be fixed—another kind of glitch—we usually let them go under the radar and we pretend that everything is okay. We often try to avoid the faults and issues that arise in our lives, but this novel shows us that we can never truly ignore them. They are responsible for causing malfunctions in our minds, and can ultimately drive us towards insanity.

The excerpt above is from a more extensive text that can be found online at: space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/ the_gl.tch_exhibition

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Antoine Arnould

1st Year, Illustration Mixed media 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm This illustration was created in association with “Some Books Should Not Be Opened”: The Primal Self and Family Decay in The Shining

Indiana Brierley

3rd Year, Illustration & Design Sketchbook Series, 1 - 15, 2015-2017 Mixed media 20 cm x 25 cm

A sketchbook is an interesting tool because it offers a line of communication between the artist and the exterior. Of course, sketchbooks aren’t universal in their usage; one couldn’t claim a proper use for a tool as vague as leather-bound sheets of blank paper. In my experience, the sketchbook offers a variety of outlets—various forms of communication and play that manifest themselves through the user, in their personal range of creative releases. One glitch offered in a sketch is as difficult to push through as the next, because it is as raw as it is personal, spontaneous, and loose. In this way, each glitch is a hiccup, an effort, and invites communication between the artist and him or herself, as well as the artist and any individual who delights in interpreting it. However, as difficult as a glitch can be, each glitch is necessary, for it is the act of doing that makes for better doing, whatever the task.

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Samantha Dixon

2nd Year, Cinema-Communications Changing Sculpture, 2017 Mixed media, rope, corrugated plastic board 30.5 cm x 30.5 cm x 30.5 cm With special thanks to everyone in the S.P.A.C.E team who participated in painting each of the blocks.

We are not meant just to observe; we are also meant to create!

What we see on the outside does not come close to what is on the inside. We are all coloured differently, but we may need some help to express ourselves. The more we move and change through interactions, the more complicated our structure can become, but that is how we let our colours show. We can't remain in some “perfect” black box. We are all glitched with our weirdness, opinions, humour and love for one another. It takes not only ourselves to show it, but also our friends, leaders and family members lending a hand.

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This sculpture is not like one you usually see in a museum. It reflects the idea that we are not meant simply to be observed; we are also meant to be played with and interacted with, as is this sculpture. It begins as a simple block, with nothing on it, but the more you move the pieces the more deformed and colourful it becomes, conveying a more beautiful and unique piece. Each interaction, in this case, becomes another kind of positive glitch that helps reveal the inner uniqueness of the sculpture.

The individual blocks represent various students’ creativity and personality. Many S.P.A.C.E. students helped decorate the boxes, and there were no limitations as to how they did so. What they chose is a reflection of some part of their personality, whether they were aware of it or not, and of the collective dynamic of our group.

Kathleen Binette1, Marco Carreiro2, Anaïs Charbonneau-Poitras3, Takeshi Fukushima4 , Katherine Gagné5, Fanny Lortie6, Jasmine Mrenica2, Ross Paraskevopoulos4 2nd Year, Illustration & Design, 22nd Year, Professional Theatre, 32nd Year, Psychology Profile, Social Science, 42nd Year, Literature Profile, ALC, 51st Year, 3D Animation & CGI, 6 2nd Year, Cinema Communications, ALC A Missing Piece of the Puzzle, 2017 Video 4:17 minutes With special thanks to Ann Daily and Ursula Sommerer 1

We all know the phrase “my side of the story.” This phrase reminds us that stories have sides, especially when a single event is experienced by multiple people, who each have their own point of view as well as perhaps their own agenda.

Each person’s perspective and motivation as they tell “their side” constitute potential glitches in the story. Indeed, these glitches can be so significant that a participant in the story can become what is known in literature as an “unreliable narrator.”

A Missing Puzzle Piece is a vlog style short film that presents the Doe family, a family of unreliable narrators who make it impossible to pin down a simple factual answer to a question—where is a missing puzzle piece, and who lost it? The family conflict is around a literal puzzle and a central piece that has gone missing, and each family member tells their

own version of the story, casting themselves in the role of the hero, with the goal of justifying themselves and blaming somebody else. This project aims to show, in a way the viewer can relate to, how excessive glitches in a narration can make it unreliable, and make any rational investigation into even a straightforward factual question impossible.

The story is told in a non-linear style, switching between points of view, and in the end, the audience is left missing fragments of the narrative, so that, like the family, they cannot complete the puzzle and know what actually happened to the missing piece.

This project was inspired by the film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa.

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Jennifer Smith

Faculty, Anthropology Stories of Encountered Glitches in Migration and Travel, 2017 Text and photographs

Jennifer Smith’s Culture, Travel and Mobility group (Advanced Topics in Anthropology) were asked to conduct ethnographic interviews that centered on an individual’s experience with, and stories of, migration and/or travel.

Stories help researchers connect with interviewees on an emotional level and add depth to our understanding of personal challenges, growth and hardship. During the ethnographic interviews, students asked their interviewees to describe a glitch they encountered during their migration/travel experience. This exhibition piece showcases the answers to this question. To best convey the context, two photographs accompany each story: one image, chosen by the interviewee to accompany the description of their experienced glitch; and, a second image of the interview in progress that offers insight into this commonly used research method.

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Alisia Bello1, Mariana Furneri1, Courtney Murdoch2, Chloe Wong-Mersereau1 2nd year, Liberal Arts; 22nd year, General Studies Profile, Social Science Stories of Encountered Glitches in Migration and Travel, 2017 1

Chloe

“The Best’s Memories” Interviewee: Mary Sui Yee Wong (Chloe’s mother) Mobility Story: Mary Sui Yee Wong (see little girl in white on right) immigrated to Vancouver from Hong Kong on December 21, 1963. She was 7 years old and the oldest of three siblings. Her family came to Canada in search of educational opportunities. Integrating into Canadian culture was a difficult transition and Sui Yee faced many unexpected glitches along the way. Nonetheless, she is a professor of Fine Arts at Concordia University, Marianopolis and Goddard College, as well as a practicing artist and mother of two daughters Amelia and myself, Chloe.

The GL.TCH: Q: “Can you describe some glitches you may have encountered in your immigration process?”

A: “My time spent with the Best family makes me think that it was a good memory, but the deeper I look back, I remember it really wasn’t. I was an outsider and you can see that visually in the photo. I’m not looking at the camera and I’m still wearing my Hong Kong school uniform.

Visually I am different. The image makes it look like I was having a great time, but the reality was that I hated this weekend activity: every Sunday the Best family would pick me up and bring me to church with them. Afterwards, I went to Sunday school and then I had dinner with the Bests. They taught me table manners and how to speak English. I feel like this photograph symbolizes the freedom I was supposed to experience as a young child, but the glitch is that I had no freedom because I was sent away to live under the rules of another household for a day. The mother in the photograph is standing right behind us almost over my shoulder. I felt a lot of internal conflict over the two-year period I spent with the Bests because they were trying to convert me to Christianity while my family practiced Buddhism and ancestral worship. This psychological glitch affected my confidence and self-esteem as young immigrant child."

Left photo: Ice Cream After Church. Mary Sui Yee (right) and Ava Wong (Mary Sui Yee’s sister, second from left) with the Best sisters (names unknown, left and second from right). Photo taken on June 1964 by Mr. Best (father of the Best sisters).

Right photo: February 22, 2017, Chloe (left) and her mother, photo taken by William Mersereau.

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Courtney

“What Are You Talking About? Isn’t There Any Way I Can Stay With You?” Interviewee: Nicole D'Entremont (Courtney’s maternal aunt)

Mobility Story: Nicole’s first time living outside of Canada was in 1991 when she took a semester abroad at Salzburg College in Austria. In 1992, she moved to Boston, Massachusetts for two years to pursue her Master’s degree.

In 1994, she moved to Halifax after getting a job working for CTV News and met her future husband Phil, who she then moved to Australia with for three years to teach in 1994. Part way through their time living in Australia, they spent six weeks in Singapore where Nicole was teaching at Ngee Ann Polytechnic as part of a professor exchange program. In 1997, they returned home to Ottawa. Ten years later, they returned to Australia with their sons where they lived for one year before coming back to Canada and settling into life at home. They continue to travel as a family but have made their lives in Canada and are here to stay.

Above photo: Snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef, 1999, photo taken by Stephanie Brown.

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The GL.TCH: Q: You had secured a job teaching in Australia before your move; had [your husband] also found a job?

A: “Well, no… So, I got the job and then we started talking about him—obviously, he was going to come. So, then I started looking into visas and with my job they were going to give me permanent residency and I said I was coming with a partner, meaning a boyfriend, and they said I’d have to talk to the Australian Embassy and when I did they said he could go over for no more than six months. I went home that night and said to Phil ‘well, you can come… But only for six months.’ He says, ‘what are you talking about? Isn’t there any way I can stay with you?’ I said, ‘well there is, if we’re married!’ Apparently, his plan all along was that he wanted to propose to me on the Great Barrier Reef [Hence, the photo below], but then he came a couple weeks later and proposed in Halifax instead! So that’s how and why we both ended up going [to Australia]."

Right photo: Courtney (Montreal, QC) and Nicole (Kanata, Ontario) February 17th, 2017, photo (screen capture) taken by Courtney Murdoch.

Alisia

“One Bad Cough Delayed Our Trip by a Whole Year.”

Interviewee: Maria Cairo (Alisia’s grandmother). Text translated from Italian.

Mobility Story: Maria Cairo’s mobility story as labour migrant begins in a small village named Carolei in Italy. The year is 1948 and Maria has just gotten engaged to Luigi at the age of 15. The two cannot afford to marry, so they begin to work. However, work is not easily found seeing as the wealth brought to the Italian economy by the end of the Second World War did not extend to Maria’s small village.

As a result, Maria finds herself working alongside her mother baking bread.

Once the young couple marry in 1958, Maria gives birth to two children. Financial struggles worsen and the family must find a solution. On June 13, 1967, Maria and her family make the move to Montreal. Once in Canada, she faces the hardships of not speaking the language, and the added expense of a third child. She jumps from job to job until she finds a position at Commonwealth Curtains, which she holds for 25 years. She quits when her husband passes away in 1997, being unable to work after such a loss.

Currently Maria is cared for by her three children who have all married and have families of their own.

The GL.TCH: Q: What were you guys doing in this picture?

A: “That's a funny picture. It was the day before we arrived in Montreal...the 12th of June, 1967. I think. I don’t know the exact date; the time zone is confusing. We were at the train station waiting to be taken to the airport. Our family and some friends were with us. My daughter, your mom, was hugging me because we were finally moving after having to wait a year to reapply for a visa. That’s because the first time we applied to immigrate, my daughter didn’t pass the medical exam. The immigration people make you see a doctor before you go so you don't bring any sicknesses into the country. The first time we tried to leave, my daughter had a bad cough and they didn't let us go. One bad cough delayed our trip a whole year.”

Above photo: Hugs at a Train Station in Italy (Maria is being hugged in the photo by her daughter, other people in the photo are unknown), June 12th, 1967, photo taken by Luigi Filice.

Above photo: Maria and Alisia, Montreal, December 25th, 2016, photographer Terry Filice (Alisia’s mother).

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Mariana

“They Started Chasing Us with Their Motorcycles” Interviewee: Amanda Ennis (Amanda’s cousin and godmother) Mobility story: In December 2015, Amanda Ennis travelled to India with her friends, Tanya and Shiv, while her husband Mark joined them four days afterwards. Tanya and Shiv are both Indian and were engaged to be married in September 2016. They wanted to visit India in order to meet each other’s family before the wedding. Since Amanda and Mark had been discussing travelling to India with their friends for years, they decided to go with them. For the first four days of their trip, they stayed in Delhi with Shiv’s grandparents. Later, they spent 4 days travelling with their driver across other cities and towns in India, such as Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Jaipur, and Neemrana. This trip was especially memorable to Amanda because of her exploration of new places and visits to beautiful monuments, her experience of extreme culture shock from the people to the food, and her time spent bonding with friends.

that he was scared. It was pretty shocking. This is a picture of one of his favourite restaurants. We went there and we bought him lunch. We all had lunch together, it was super fun. He’s so cute. Tanya had gone back afterwards, and he asked, “Can you give me the picture that was taken of all of us?” He wanted to keep it. He was such a sweet man.”

The GL.TCH: Q: Did you experience any troubles or glitches when you were travelling India?

A: “Our driver, Desraj, is the driver of one of Tanya’s family friends. But the family friend wasn’t in India at the time, so he was like “Why don’t you ask my driver to drive you around anywhere?” So we said “Okay perfect, we’ll do it!”

So he was like an uncle. He was so nice. He would drive us everywhere, he would bargain for us, he was such a nice person. One day, while we were driving to this place, Fatehpur Sikri, on the way there, we were just driving and everyone’s just talking in the car. And all of a sudden, someone hits the car. Like physically hits the car, as its driving on the highway, with their hand or like a bat or something.

Then, they started chasing us with their motorcycles. There were two, one on each side of the car. They kept hitting the car, trying to make us stop. Our driver was like “No way am I stopping,” so we kept going. We raced away.

Finally, we got to this more touristy area, and as soon as we got there, the motorcycles went away. He pulled into the touristy area and he was asking the guards “What the heck just happened? Who are these people trying to chase us?”

The guards said, “They know that you have tourists in the car. That’s why they’re trying to chase you down to stop the car so they can rob you.” We were so thankful that he didn’t stop. We were so scared. All of us were scared. Shiv was like “No, this is normal, guys! This is totally normal.” But he was scared, too. He just didn’t want to make us feel scared 78

Top photo: “Desraj’s Favourite Lunch Spot”. From left: Mark (Amanda’s husband), Tanya (Friend of Amanda and Mark), Shiv (Friend of Amanda and Mark), Desraj, their driver for this trip), December 11, 2015, photo taken by Amanda Ennis.

Bottom photo: Interviewing Amanda (right), Montreal, February 11th, 2017, photo taken by Mariana (left).

Sydnie Baynes1, Anaïs Charbonneau-Poitras2, Damian Fitz3, Charlie Galea McClure1, Maya Gilmour4, Florence Kinkead5, Gaëlle Marcil6, Ross Paraskevopoulos6, Pascale Richardson-Haughey7, Kajamathy Subramaniam2

1st Year, Cinema Communications, 22nd Year, Social Sciences, Psychology Profile, 31st Year, Liberal Arts, 1st Year, ALC, 51st Year, Graphic Design, 62nd Year, ALC, 72nd Year, Social Sciences Distorted Storytelling, 2017 Mixed media 1 4

The medium in which a story is told not only brings the story into focus but also “distorts” it in some way, a glitch of sorts that may be less obvious when there is only one medium involved—i.e. when we’re reading a book or watching a film—but that we hope is highlighted in this piece, which tells a story through multiple media at once.

The story is a simple one: a young girl is walking home. She passes a tree. Transformation occurs. Meanwhile, time is passing, from day to night back to day.

As the observer moves from one medium to another, they are invited to consider the ways in which each medium might be distorting this simple story, along with the other glitches distorting the story as well—for example, the glitch of each artist’s interpretation of the story; the glitch of the observer’s interpretation of each work of art; the glitch of the potential limitations in the artist’s knowledge and skill; and the glitch of the different ways each observer weaves a narrative out of these distinct pieces. All these glitches, and others, change our experience of the story; in fact, change the story, or, in Marshall McLuhan’s famous words, the message itself.1 These works are by design meant to elude the traditional seamlessness of storytelling. In one work the girl might be walking home alone; in another, she might encounter someone. In one work the girl might be represented literally; in another abstractly as a kind of blossoming flower suggesting the metamorphosis of the inner female self. However, through their repeating elements (the girl, a tree, transformation) and their juxtaposition in a temporal sequence (each work takes place at a particular time of day), the works nevertheless invite the observer to weave them together into a narrative, however distorted.

“The medium is the message.” Marshall McLuhan

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1 My walk home leads past a birch tree, its spring buds still unopened.

I used to dash up its sandpaper bark, when its body was flaked and differentiated by erratic grooves and nooks mirrored by the winter sun.

Once a beacon, now it is a relic of safety that gradually shrivelled and shrunk from its top to its diminished trunk.

As my walk approaches its end, I awake from hibernation, a little taller, with larger shoes and newly-mastered shoelaces, the birch, no more than a solitary stump, still waiting, bare and frightened, and I who have outgrown the games that once made up my living.

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3 As the Girl wanders through the forest, she sees nothing in the dark night. She stumbles through the trees, without knowing where she is going. The wind is the only other movement; everything else is still. The branches rustle, the wind whistling through them, but in the dark, the Girl is blind to them. She does not wish to stay in the forest any longer. Among the noises of the dark, she is scared.

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5 As the Girl wanders through the forest, she sees nothing in the dark night. She stumbles through the trees, without know ing where she is going. The wind is the only other movement; everything else is still. It dances around the trees, whistling through them. The branches rustle, but in the dark, the Girl is blind to them. She does not wish to stay in the forest any longer. In the noises of the dark, she is scared.

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7 A little girl with fire in her hair and thirst in her throat and a great longing in her young heart, regardless of the harsh sun, the millions of sun-burnt rocks that hurt her feet and the small cacti that tear her dress, walks on yearning for and seeking her lost home.

Parchedness preys, the lonely Saguaro cactus, king of the desert, in the distance beckons with its multitude of arms.

When she collapses at its feet, admiring its tree-like stature, a small owl peers down from a cavity in the cacti’s flesh, observing the child with eyes the shade of Heleniums.

She forgets her raging thirst, its hallucinogenic canter/banter which forms amidst the owl’s words: “What is a little girl doing so far from home in the Sonoran Desert?”

In her belief that the creature is mocking her, the unjarred child begins to cry, her tears hitting the desert sand, rapidly and irrationally accumulating into a small river which sweep the girl away in its current.

The owl from its hollow follows her with its gaze that amidst its burning eyes seemed to melt colour while the girl is swiftly transported somewhere closer to home.

In the desert fading into the distance the ancient Saguaro houses an owl that has rekindled her vivid wish to return home, which seems possible again in the river’s lulling current.

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Jennifer Smith

Faculty, Anthropology Glitches in Social Science Research, 2016 Observations and commentary (excerpts) In collaboration with Julie Johnson (Faculty, History), Ben Lander (Faculty, History) and, Mark Beauchamp (Faculty, History) Julie Johnson, Ben Lander and, Mark Beauchamp asked their students in Research Methods (RM) to write a short reflection on their personal experience with glitches in research. In RM, Social Science students conduct independent research, and for many this is their first experience collecting and analyzing data. This piece features reflections from students who conducted interviews in RM in the Fall 2016 semester. RM students in the Winter 2017 semester are invited to share their reflections as well by adding them during the exhibition in a designated repository.

These reflections include (but are not limited to) discussing one or more of the following: • unexpected information/results • challenges with conducting research in the social sciences • confronting previously unacknowledged biases • discovering an academic skill that needed development or discovering a gap in their skill set • a slip in methodology • a statistical (or noticeable) outlier • an apparent impossibility • much much more!

Gabriel Balass, Syrine Boussada, Tabatha Hall, Rend Noureddine, M.cah Pearl, Jessica Sciortino, Shenthuuran Sooriyakumaran 1st Year, Social Science Glitches in Social Science Research, 2016 Text Gabriel

Jessica

One notable glitch occurred during my interview with Mr. Z. During the interview, I had a beginner’s tendency to interject at certain points during the interview—this urge usually stemming from a sense of curiosity or desire to share my personal experiences. However, when conducting an interview for research purposes, silence is highly encouraged and interruptions generally frowned upon. I found that there were a few instances when my interjections unexpectedly opened up a new point or brought more authenticity and comfort into the interview. There was one particular instance, or glitch, where I had naively interjected to mention a personal experience of mine that related to something that Mr. Z was discussing at that moment, and it brought about a very interesting point that otherwise would have not been heard. This point ended up being a crucial part of the interview. That said, there were also instances where I should have refrained from interrupting. But, as mentioned in S.P.A.C.E.’s description, a glitch can “be seen as both negative or positive.” Overall, I will refrain from interrupting as much in future interviews, but I am satisfied with the effect that certain glitches had, such as the one mentioned here.

During RM this semester I encountered many unexpected struggles with my research project. Getting together with the person that I was trying to interview proved challenging due to time and availability limitations. Another example of a glitch is how during the research interview there was one point where the participant felt nervous and anxious about responding because some of the questions were personal. I helped them understand the beautiful story behind the experiences they were sharing with me and, in the end, there was a great result.

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M.cah

I had a glitch in my interview. I had been doing research on how to maximize the efficiency of cycling and making it safer for the public. I had read about statistics and research papers on the subject, and I had myself used cycling as a method of transportation. I was sure I was going to hear a similar outlook/position on the subject from my interviewee, but that was absolutely not the case. He was a bicycle activist working as a government official and what he told me was that it did not matter how effective or efficient you

could make cycling, what really mattered was if it was fun.

If it’s fun people will want to bike. He said it is not about external factors like saving the planet, or the fact that it can be faster and/or less expensive, but that it is all about how you feel when you bike. That really made me think. Why did I start biking? Well, because I found it really fun. I realized that on some days, biking back home after a day at work or school was the highlight of my day. In a way, I tried to approach my topic too professionally, and, I learned, there needs to be a personal connection, something that is stronger than statistics or numbers, and my interviewee showed me that.

Shenthuuran

Just like how life is messy and never goes the way you want it to, I have realized my project in Research Methods (RM) is much the same. When carrying out my project on the topic of crime, drugs, and gangs in Montreal, I encountered many glitches along the way. One of the apparent impossibilities was trying to get an interview with an experienced police officer with background knowledge in battling the notorious Hells Angels biker gang. There were many challenges when trying to find my interview candidate because most police officers barely have time to sit down and be interviewed and, on top of that, may not be interested in doing an interview which they are not required to do.

Another glitch during my research methods project was the development of social skills that I needed to be able to do my interview. I am a very quiet and reserved person so it was difficult for me to place myself in a completely new environment, such as the police station. I had never asked law enforcement agents questions before and after completing this task I felt like I had broken a barrier in my mind which made me feel like I had accomplished something.

showcase my uniqueness as a writer. In terms of an interview with a friend of mine, I also didn’t receive the results I anticipated, but there is some beauty in the glitch of not knowing what a person is going to present you with.

Rend

When I conducted my first interview, I was supposed to interview my uncle. I mentioned the project to him but never gave him detailed information about it or a specific date to do it. A week before, I sent him a message to meet up, just to find out that he was out of town for the next two weeks.

I had to interview my mother last minute instead and I was scared I wouldn’t finish on time. For my second interview, I had learned my lesson and called my cousin and set a date with him two weeks in advance.

Syrine

One thing that I learned that I didn’t know before (and that amazed me) was how much my mother did for us. I never knew how much she suffered in life and how many people challenged her capacity to work and succeed in life. She had low self-esteem for a long time and often thought she would not be able to accomplish anything. This contributed to her decision to become a stay-at-home mum and give her love and presence to her children. She did not have the support and help she needed when she was young and chose to help and support us [her children] through life in ways she didn’t experience herself. Also, she does not want us to give up on our studies. Honestly I cannot thank her enough because she helped me a lot and while I know that it is a mother’s role to help, not all mothers give up so much for their children. I don’t need money to be happy; having my mum is already a treasure. I want to make her proud and thank her for everything.

Tabatha Hall

This semester has been the most challenging for me.

Approaching my courses I thought it would be easy, specifically in my RM class where I was comfortable with the idea of being a researcher of accessibility. Firstly, I believed that the skills and tactics would come natural to me, but I realized that the endeavor of placing and immersing yourself into a topic is much more difficult than I thought.

I encountered such questions as: am I able to read academic articles and understand what the most pertinent information is; am I able to analyze what the authors are trying to express; and, lastly, are my opinions and points of view accurate? The glitch of not directly understanding your research topic makes you work harder and makes you prevail.

I realized without these undetermined and unsuspected experiences in my journey, I would not have been able to 83

Jerome Bertrand

Graduate, Professional Photography Found Youth, 2014-2015 Digital 29.7 cm x 43.2 cm each print A couple years ago, I delved into urban exploration and documented my adventures. Revisiting the images, I found a common thread in a few specific pictures. The details in these shots hadn't caught my attention in the past. When taking the pictures, I would try to capture the essence of abandoned or deserted places that were in a state of decay.

But when editing the pictures, I realized I had caught some very archetypical objects of youth. Toys and other symbols such as a school portrait of a young boy seemed odd and out of place. It’s as if this self-contained aspect of life was expressed. Material things could speak a language that differed from their environment. I feel a sort of anguish regarding these scenes because everything is broken, and childhood is so sacred that it’s unsettling to find these symbols resting in the havoc of time passing. On the other hand, I feel empathy knowing there was once light and joy between the walls and a trace of it has been left behind. It touches me because it pushes me to explore my inner child and remember how I grew up. As an artist, my purpose is to leave an impression that leads to reflection. I have kept hope in the darkest of times when capturing or creating objects that would make their own statement and generate individual thoughts or interpretations by the viewer. I believe these four images communicate something in a dialect that the subconscious alone can feel.

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Andrew Katz

Faculty, English, Creative Writing Mosaics of Canada, 2017 Student dialogue, writing and production

The inspiration for this project came following a talk at Dawson College in September 2016 by Samantha Nutt, author of Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies and Aid and founder of the international humanitarian organization War Child. Samantha Nutt was asked what she thought might be a productive intersection for students to explore between her work and the theme of GL.TCH. Her answer: the glitch between the events, activities, laws, statistics, etc. of our country that glitch, for better and for worse, with commonly encountered or clichéd images of Canada.

No conception of Canada is perhaps more familiar than the idea of the “Canadian Mosaic,” and since Nutt’s talk a group of students and teachers together have begun to explore ways to defamiliarize or glitch the Canadian Mosaic—beginning with the term “Canadian Mosaic,” which suggests a single mosaic whose different parts can all be identified as Canadian, whereas in fact there are populations living within Canada who do not identify themselves as Canadian. Hence the change in the title to Mosaics of Canada (a title that is still open to discussion).

The long-term goal of this project is to create in Dawson College, in some form, analog or digital, a GL.TCHed Mosaics of Canada display—a living work that students, faculty and others, within the Dawson community and beyond it, can continue to engage with, critique, edit, and add to; a work that, by design, would always be glitched since no single or even multiple mosaics can capture the entirety of our country. Yet the work would serve to keep open the question of who we want to be, who we imagine ourselves to be, and who we are as a country, along with other related questions, encouraging participants to explore perceptions, realities, solutions, and interconnections in areas such as Canadian domestic affairs, foreign affairs, and the environment, among others.

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The project offers a number of challenges to the Dawson Community. One is the challenge of content: what will be included in the mosaics? Another challenge is organization: how will the content be displayed so that it can be navigated, discussed, challenged, added to, etc? Still another challenge is aesthetics: how will the content be made accessible and engaging and invite further exploration and participation?

We envision this as a multi-year project, and our goal for this year has been to begin the discussion and invite anyone interested to get involved. Groups of students, teachers and other members of the Dawson community, including the Dawson Peace Center, have started to meet to collect and do research, to propose content and designs, and to explore potential pitfalls in the project, all of which we hope will become starting points for discussion and for learning.

Presented in this exhibition are the works of two students, one focused on the question of content, the other on the question of the organization of information and aesthetics. These works are not intended to be representative of the final content or form of the Mosaics of Canada but as examples that inspire further discussion and contributions.

They are the first two offerings in the making of the larger work, inviting others to consider what they might potentially contribute.

Samantha Nutt also promised that if we build this project at Dawson, she will come back to Dawson to inaugurate it and speak about it.

Fanny Lortie

2nd Year, Cinema-Communications Mosaics of Canada, 2017 Digital 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm

In making this image that glitches bullets for semi-clean, semi-dirty water, among other odd-seeming changes, I am trying to bring attention to a particular problem or glitch in Canada: namely, that, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada, 50 % of the water systems in First Nations reserves is classified as ‘medium’ or ‘high’ risk, which means it has a medium to high risk of “producing unsafe drinking water or poorly treated wastewater,” as specified in their “Environmental Indicators” section under “First Nations Water and Wastewater System Risk.”1

live in a region of Ontario referred to as “Chemical Valley” that is suffering from pollution (which affects the water systems, amongst other things). A person living there is quoted in the National Observer article as follows: “We say that this is another form of genocide, [..] We’re really facing the cost of oil. People don’t know that this is what it’s costing. It’s people’s lives.”2 My hope is that the oddness of the picture, its unnatural nature, the surrealism that glitches its realism, can also evoke an unnatural feeling in the viewer, and a desire to address this glitch in our country.

The idea of using a man in colonial-style British army uniform comes from the 2015 National Observer article, “First Nations lead protest against pollution in Ontario's Chemical Valley,” on the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, who

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“First Nations Water and Wastewater System Risk.” www.ec.gc.ca.

Environment and Climate Change Canada, Government of Canada, 27 Apr. 2016 (last updated). 21 Jan. 2017. https://www.ec.gc.ca/indicateurs-indicators/default.asp?lang=En&n=EA902CF7-1 Dinshaw, Fram. “First Nations lead protest against pollution in Ontario’s Chemical Valley.” nationalobserver.com. National Observer, 7 Sept. 2015.

21 Jan. 2017. http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/09/07/news/ first-nations-lead-protest-against-pollution-ontarios-chemical-valley 2

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Andrew Di Leo

1st Year, Graphic Design Mosaics of Canada, 2017 Mixed media 21.8 cm x 20.5 cm x 13.8 cm

What we perceive Canada to be is based on raw data gathered from our personal experiences and history, from the media we consume, and from the social connections we build. It is, in other words, a subjective image, real only to those individuals who have experienced and constructed it.

Among different individuals and groups in Canada, different images of Canada seem to exist, with many of these images being at odds with each other.

What interests me in this project is the idea of exploring the glitch between commonly accepted images of Canadian identity and a representation of Canadian identity that more accurately reflects the sum total of our country’s policies and actions, along with each individual’s and group’s experiences. Exploring this glitch is, on the one hand, so colossal an undertaking as to be an impossibility, and yet, on the other hand, an exciting challenge, one that could disrupt perceptions, state realities, and forward solutions, ultimately helping all people in this country to learn from our past, be aware of our present, and look ahead towards the possibilities and challenges of the future, together.

The installation proposed is a geometric grid construction created by horizontal and vertical beams. The intersecting beams would create square spaces that are 17.8 centimeters wide and high. A square tile of 15.2 centimeters is placed within each space and installed upon a vertical shaft, allowing it to rotate by hand.

Each tile would thematically represent a glitched perception of Canadian identity. One side of the tile would display a visual representation of an issue, and the opposing side would contain textual information expanding on the perception, exploring a glitch in that perception, and suggesting solutions.

Right: Prototype for one unit in the Mosaics display, showing how each unit will feature a central element that can be rotated to reveal a potential glitch in our understanding of our country.

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Above: Digital visualization of the completed mosaic.

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Megan Lozzi

1st Year, Child Studies, Social Science Uncanny Nation, 2017 Essay excerpt

America in the twentieth-century was arguably an uncanny space; a nation that was once the epitome of wholesomeness turned unfamiliar in this period of turmoil. Specifically, the 1950s, a post-war period in the developing nation, was filled with hope and optimism. Strangely, at the same time, uncanny feelings of the “familiar made strange” began to arise, as the country began to deal with modern issues, such as those discussed in In Cold Blood (Wasson 133).

Truman Capote’s account of the Clutter family murder in In Cold Blood utilises gothic concepts such as repression and the uncanny to create a story that evokes fear, not only because of the gruesome murder, but because of Capote’s ability to turn what would otherwise seem like the most traditionally American city into a place of horror. We see these gothic concepts in his underlying ideas; those that are implied rather than explicitly stated. Through an urban gothic perspective, these tropes work to depict a communal fear of “a return of old horror or atavistic decline” (Wasson 132). In other words, repression and uncanniness work to address unfamiliar violence and familial collapse specific to the era. Capote’s drawing of clear parallels between the town of Holcomb and American society suggests that issues like the return of the repressed and the introduction to and subsequent fascination with violence threatens mid-twentieth century America the same way it does the people of Holcomb, specifically the Clutter family. Despite writing a book based on true events, Capote’s manipulations of facts, emphasis on context, and focused details allow him to convey his own implications and suggestions about this one murder as a reflection of something larger in the growing nation.

Capote conveys his ideas efficiently by depicting the struggles of America as suffered by one family that is ultimately representative of the nation. This message is best received when we understand mid-twentieth century America for what it was: a time of change and tension thinly veiled by the idea of the perfect nuclear American family, which was arguably not even the true American family. Capote’s subtle use of gothic concepts such as the repression of the past, the uncanny within a tight-knit community, and the degeneration of the modern nation, turns what would otherwise be considered just another unfortunate murder into a profound critique of the state of American society.

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Through further analysis, we can see how Capote further addresses issues concerning what is historically repressed in terms of homosexuality, women, and black people, as well as the how this made the country “unfamiliar” for many of its more conservative inhabitants. With every character, even the seemingly insignificant ones, Capote is making a statement about class, gender, and race that challenges the notion that America is the most wholesome, homely, and accepting nation on earth. Capote’s focus on the modernization and change of the country may be depicted negatively due to the impending communal deterioration, but he suggests that this change in “morality” can only be a positive thing for those who don’t fit the identity of a traditional American.

Capote, Truman. “In Cold Blood.” New York: Vintage Books. 2012.

Ellison, Harlan. “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs.” Deathbird Stories.

New York: Collier, 1983. 2-19.

“Home.” The X-Files, produced by Chris Carter, directed by Kim Manners, season 4, episode 2, Fox, 11 Oct. 1996. Netflix Canada, www. netflix.com/ca/.

Punter, David. “The Uncanny.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Ed. Catherine Spooner, Emma McEvoy. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. 129-136.

Savoy, Eric. “The Rise of the American Gothic.” Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 167-188.

Wasson, Sara. “Gothic Cities and Suburbs, 1880-Present.” The Gothic World. Ed. Glennis Byron and Dale Townshend. New York and London: Routledge, 2014. 132-142.

The excerpt above is from a more extensive text that can be found online at: space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/ the_gl.tch_exhibition

Sahar Bakhtiari

1st Year, Illustration Mixed media 43.2 cm x 27.9 cm This illustration was created in association with Uncanny Nation

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Thérèse Nguyen

1st Year, Health Science The American Façade, 2017 Essay exerpt

In the late 1950s, Truman Capote and Harper Lee traveled to Kansas to gather information about the recent murder of the Clutter family, interviewing neighbours and friends of the family, as well as the murderers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, an investigation that inspired Capote’s non-fiction book, In Cold Blood. A novel in the tradition of the American Gothic, In Cold Blood allegorizes America as a deeply disturbed place, divided and alienated by class, sexuality, and hollow notions of the meaning of success, and it frames Holcomb as part of a generation both repelled and attracted by violence.

The book exposes how faith in social and material progress isn’t enough to keep the American dream alive. This dream is impeded by the darker side of America’s history.

Just one example is colonialism and its consequences. Most inhabitants of America disregard their dark colonial history.

People don’t wish to remember the traumatic event; as a result, it is locked away and buried. The nation conceals its past, but “there is no irreducible law which has the strength to permit or to forbid such ‘returns,’ however unwelcome or misshapen they might be” (Punter 136).

The Clutters are perceived as a nuclear family and the United States as an ideal nation, with no troubles, but both hide deep secrets that break apart the perfect image of the American dream and make the family and the nation seem ‘unhomely’ (Punter 130). For instance, the Clutter family’s mother, Bonnie, is excluded by the town because of her mental issues and her failure to fill the role of a traditional housewife. According to the urban gothic, cities are equally a source of both physical and psychological deterioration (Wasson 132), and sites of corruption and violence caused by dismissed problems such as class, racial and sexual issues.

Dick and Perry are both products of the city, the children of poverty and alcoholism, and their murder of the Clutter family, a symbol of the ideal nation, reflects the return of the nation’s repressed elements.

The book also emphasizes the Gothic’s uncanny framing of small urban and suburban areas as homogenous and yearning for something else, which leads to violence. The inhabitants of Holcomb all have very similar and ordinary lives: they work, own farms, attend school socials, go to 92

church, etc. The village is described as very peaceful and unremarkable: “few Kansans had ever heard of Holcomb. [...]

[D]rama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there” (Capote 5). It is “disturbingly devoid of history”. Yet this normalization can be oppressive (Wasson 136), and the people express their repressed emotions and frustration by turning against themselves and creating a collective and subconscious craving for things to change, a lusting for violence. As soon as the murder is announced, the townspeople start viewing each other with suspicion for the first time, locking their doors: “they believed that the murderer was among themselves” (Capote 88). By suspecting each other, they generate an atmosphere of distrust and fear never felt before. There is a collapse of conventional moral values. The Clutters were no more than a sacrifice to stir up some excitement in a town where there was none.

Capote suggests that if Dick and Perry hadn’t done what they did, someone else eventually would have.

Throughout the book, we realize that the novel is a critique of 1950s America. The Clutter family is a representation of the nation. This is why the violence targeted at an all-American family is so symbolic. The murder attacks not only the town, but the idea of the American dream.

Capote, Truman. “In Cold Blood.” New York: Vintage Books. 2012.

Punter, David. “The Uncanny.” [selections] The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Ed. Catherine Spooner, Emma McEvoy. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. 129-136.

Savoy, Eric. “The Rise of the American Gothic.” Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 167-188.

The Seventh Victim (1943) d. Mark Robson. p. Val Lewton.

Wasson, Sara. “Gothic Cities and Suburbs, 1880-Present.” The Gothic World. Ed. Glennis Byron and Dale Townshend. New York and London: Routledge, 2014. 132-142.

The excerpt above is from a more extensive text that can be found online at: space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/ the_gl.tch_exhibition

Abdul Buhari

1st Year, Illustration Mixed media 27.9 cm x 43.2 cm This illustration was created in association with The American Faรงade

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Elissa Baltzer

2nd Year, Illustration & Design Stepping onto the Shores of Normandy, 2016 Plaster, wood and hand gathered shells 22 cm x 22 cm x 22 cm

This piece speaks of my connection to times and places in relation to a part of my own history and my shared historical past. This sculpture is of my own foot cast in plaster.

The title could speak of things gone wrong, huge loss of life, the lives of many “glitched� by forces beyond their control.

In the imperfections of the plaster, I incorporated shells that I had gathered on the shores of Normandy, an area strongly connected with Canadian history. The foot, my foot, has spent enough time in the water to be covered in sea life.

Along the beach where these shells are found, strange cement masses are still visible, leftover from wartime, nestled into the dunes. Over time we forget the horror, but like the little shells wedged into the missing parts, pieces of the past remain in our memories and collective consciousness. In the current political landscape we live in, remembering is key.

Glitches in our social and political landscape, if left untended, can catalyze vast forces that may cascade out of control.

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Acknowledgments

Gratitude to all participants, students, faculty, staff and others, including those individuals and entities listed below.

Guidance and assistance: Neal Armstrong, Mark Beauchamp, Nelly Dahan, Guiseppe Di Leo, Dipti Gupta, Julie Johnson, Julianna Joos, Ben Lander, Rajesh Malik, Rebecca Million, Julian Nemeth, Brian Rahilly, Mark Van Vliet, Kris Woofter, Amanda Beattie, Andrew Katz, Aaron Krishtalka, Maimire Mennasemay, Kenneth Milkman, Frank Mulvey, Richard Shoemaker, Jennifer Smith and Joel Trudeau Editors, creative directors, exhibition coordinators, and prepress file preparation: Amanda Beattie and Frank Mulvey Exhibition design and additional photography: Frank Mulvey

SSAP Coordinator: Tina Romeo Office of the Director General: Donna Varrica Admin. Support Agent, Visual & Applied Arts Programs: Helen Wawrzetz Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery Committee: Andréa Cole, Don Corman, Geoff Carley, Mary Di Liello, Guiseppe Di Leo, Raymon Fong, Olivier Forgues, Scott Millar, Wakenhnhiiohstha Montour, Luc Parent, Ramona Ramlochand, Michel Séguin and Donna Varrica S.P.A.C.E. committee and advisors

Administrative assistance, file management, proofreading: Ursula Sommerer

Individual contributors (photographs, scans and digital files)

Graphic design: Catherine Moleski

Note: material from collective projects often represents a selection from larger sets of content, visible on the S.P.A.C.E. explorations pages at space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca

Design elements incorporated into cover design: Mathieu Larone Dean of Academic Development: Barbara Freedman

© 2017, Dawson College

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication GL.TCH / introduction by Maimire Mennasemay, Kenneth Milkman, Aaron Krishtalka, Richard Shoemaker, and Andrew Katz ; edited by Amanda Beattie and Frank Mulvey.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery from April 6 to April 20, 2017.

ISBN 978-1-55016-325-4 (softcover) 1. Dawson College--Students--Exhibitions. 2. Dawson College--Faculty-Exhibitions. 3. Dawson College--Alumni and alumnae--Exhibitions. 4. Art, Canadian--Québec (Province)--Montréal--21st century--Exhibitions.

I. Mennasemay, Maimire, writer of introduction II. Milkman, Kenneth A., writer of introduction III. Krishtalka, Aaron, 1940-, writer of introduction IV. Shoemaker, Richard, 1945-, writer of introduction V. Katz, Andrew, 1975-, writer of introduction VI. Beattie, Amanda, 1979-, editor VII. Mulvey, Frank, 1960-, editor VIII. Dawson College, issuing body IX. Warren G. Flowers Gallery, host institution N6547.M65G68 2017 96

709.714'2807471428

C2017-901452-8