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A carpe noctem guide to Nuit Blanche
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the newspaper University of Toronto’s Independent Weekly
Vol. XXXIII N0. 3
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s...an ornithopter!
Proposed changes to A&S meet opposition at town halls
JAMAIAS DACOSTA
YUKON DAMOV
DAVE BELL
By this time next year, the Faculty of Arts and Science may experience considerable changes if major planks of its existing Academic Plan are implemented. This past week, two town halls were held as part of a public consultation process. There was broad opposition expressed toward the plan, including concerns surrounding the consultation process itself, as well as the economic rationale underpinning the plan. Before an almost-full OISE auditorium, Meric Gertler, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, made a short presentation before handling questions from concerned parties. In his responses and by extending the consultation process into next summer, the Dean showed a willingness to compromise on parts of the Plan that were most controversial. Such a disposition, combined with hefty opContinued on page 3
September 30, 2010
Students reacted against cuts made to A&S at two town halls held over the past week.
University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) PhD student Todd Reichert has recently become kind of a big deal, especially in the world of aeronautical engineering. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of international interviews and media coverage, making headlines in every major media outlet worldwide. The big deal is Reichert’s recent triumph: the world’s first fully functional, human powered ornithopter, which Reichert and his team have dubbed “Snowbird.” What exactly is an ornithopter, you may be wondering? According to Reichert, it is a lightweight aircraft that takes flight just as a bird would: through the flapping of wings. Reichert began his project four years ago under the supervision of Dr. James DeLaurier, Professor Emeritus at UTIAS. “Dr. D,” as he is affectionately known amongst his students, established a research team in the 1970s that eventually led to Continued on page 2
Making LOVE @ UT Given the daunting size of U of T’s student body, most students find asking for lecture notes a challenge, let alone finding “the one” on campus. Despite this, the students behind Love@UT believe they have the solution to this problem. Love@UT is a brand new online dating service designed to help U of T students in meeting new people, starting a new relationship, or simply making friends. The brainchild of Joey Nodalo, Matthew Saunders,
Samantha Joel, Andrew Danks and Lori Lee, Love@UT seeks to make campus a “more friendly and romantic place.” “The U of T student body is so large that it creates a barrier for students to be able to find others with whom they can develop a meaningful connection” explains Danks. “In addition, we all have assignments, tests, and perhaps part-time jobs which leaves little room for building a social life.” Unlike other online dating sites, which match individuals up using automated algorithms,
Love@UT puts the work in the hands of the students. Students create profiles for themselves containing information regarding their academics, their appearance and their lifestyle. In addition, they can also write up little blurbs to provide more personalized information about themselves. Other students can search these profiles by filtering a number of properties (such as program of study, campus, drinking habits, hair colour, etc) and Continued on page 3
DAVE BELL
MNRUPE VIRK
The lust-tron says it all.
the news
2
September 30, 2010
Ornithopter cont’d from page 1
what DeLaurier refers to as “the Grandfather of the Snowbird” – the world’s first, successful radio controlled ornithopter flight in 1991, and later in 2006, a powered, piloted ornithopter using a small engine from a model airplane. It was this groundwork that made it possible for Reichert and his team to develop the world’s first human powered ornithopter. “Working in Dr. D’s lab, the dream was always there. Simulations showed that it would be possible.” DeLaurier agrees, “A student a few years back did a study with positive results. I indeed felt the distinct possibility of human powered ornithopter flight. I knew that Todd was motivated and athletically capable.”
“When [Reichert] flew over us you could literally hear him grunting as he was [operating the ornithopter]” -Dr. DeLaurier The Snowbird took flight on August 2nd at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Tottenham, Ontario. One of the biggest challenges was getting it off the ground. “We used a smart car, towing the Snowbird until it lifted off. During the 20 second flight, when [Reichert] flew over us you could literally hear him
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grunting as he was [operating the ornithopter].” DeLaurier describes, adding that Reichert had literally trained for months just to be able to do the 20 second flight. Although the ornithopter weighs in at a mere 94 lbs, the wing span is 105 feet, similar to that of a Boeing 737, and of course, the fuel is strictly human based. Reichert had to lose 18 lbs in addition to his rigorous training to be able to take flight. When asked what kind of practical use the ornithopter could have, DeLaurier replied, “I’m not sure that this will give rise to flocks of ornithopters taking to the skies anytime soon...however it is an incredibly useful educational tool as it extends the knowledge of unsteady aerodynamics and nonlinear structural analysis.” Both Reichert and DeLaurier also agree that the Snowbird is monumental in the sense that it is “the completion of the last of aviation firsts.” Reichert elaborates, “This is what man has always dreamed of doing. We’ve been able to go to the moon and back, but not fly like a bird. Now we can.” DeLaurier notes that the success of the Snowbird ornithopter project was also in part due to the ability of the project to attract capable volunteers. In particular, a father-son team who happened upon the Snow-
Reichert takes the ornithopter out for a spin. ity to streamline solutions saved days of work. “There were over 100 wooden ribs to make for the wings…a painstaking process. With each wing Robert Dueck was able to come up with solutions to improve the time and energy spent on each rib.” The Snowbird team, dubbed “the five amigos,” consists of Reichert, along with another U of T Engineering Grad student Cameron Robertson who played the role of chief structural engineer, the Dueck father and son team and of course, DeLaurier. Reichert says he is looking forward to finishing his PhD and has many ideas, as well as options due to the success of the aircraft, including the possibility of applying some of the engineering to aerodynamic bicycles. Dr. DeLaurier says of his student’s success, “For a Professor, students are often akin to academic sons and daughters. It was a proud moment, such a beautiful and amazing day.”
bird project in the summer of 2009, quite by fluke. Robert Dueck and his high school aged son Carson were visiting from Vancouver, and had initially stopped by the UTIAS building in hopes of getting a look at Dr. DeLaurier’s 2006 ornithopter, known as “The Great Flapper.” Upon suggestion, they instead made a trip to the Snowbird base in Tottenham, Ontario, where Reichert and his team were toiling away. The two ended up staying on for the rest of the summer, as well as returning this summer and were an integral part of the volunteer team. When asked about the experience of being part of this monumental project, the senior Dueck says: “It was exhilarating to be part of the project and to see the team through its production phase. The success as a possible aviation first is an added bonus…” Reichert credits Dueck’s abil-
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the news
3
A&S
cont’d from page 1 position, could suggest that the Plan will not be implemented as it currently stands. The Faculty’s Academic Plan for 2010-15 was released this past summer. The impetus for the Plan was last year’s $22M structural deficit (expenditures outstripped revenue) and a $60M cumulative deficit. In order to balance its finances, the Faculty embarked on a strategic, rather than across-the-board, reconfiguration of the Faculty itself to find savings and free up funds for specific goals regarding ‘the student experience.’ “The plan is largely about redirecting resources to improving the student experience,” says Meric Gertler, Dean of the Faculty. “For example, we want to be able to increase international opportunities for students, service learning, introduce firstyear multidisciplinary Big Ideas courses and increase counseling support in the college registrar offices.” The contentious issues in the plan involve restructuring within the Faculty. It proposes the creation of a School of Languages and Literatures that would involve disestablishing the departments of East Asian Studies, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Italian Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Spanish and Portuguese, and the Centre for Comparative Literature while amalgamating them into the school. The acclaimed and world-renowned Joint Centre for Ethics would also cease to exist. Ostensibly, this would decrease the overhead administration costs. “No faculty will be forced to move to another unit against their will. And it bears repeating: there are no proposals to cut undergraduate programs in the plan,” insists Gertler. These assurances haven’t assuaged the affected parties. “There are a number of mysterious things about it,” said Thomas Keirstad, head of the Department of East Asian Studies, which the Dean has promised will remain intact as a unit, perhaps as a Department. “There is a mismatch between the context that we’re given, which is principally about big budget deficits and what appears to be fairly modest savings in terms of what’s in the Plan. It might be that the Dean has much more modest goals from the various amalgamations or consolidation or cancellation of units in the order of a couple million dollars rather than the $22M that he keeps saying is the structural deficit.” The deficit was $22M for 2009-10, but by the end of 2010-11 it is expected to be a more modest $14M, according to a memo that Dean Gertler sent to the faculty two months before the Academic Plan was released. Furthermore, the memo states that the year after that, a $2.5M surplus is expected. This information undermines the argument presented in the Plan that it is designed to shrink the structural deficit. Other concerns question the consultation process, or lack thereof. A Strategic
Planning Committee (SPC) consisting of members of the Faculty was set up to direct the planning process. They asked for each unit in the Faculty to submit academic plans. These plans were then analysed by the SPC and used to create the Academic Plan. “The lack of real consultation from students, as well as staff, led directly to bad ideas like the proposed School,” said Gavin Nowlan, president of Arts and Science Students’ Union. No student was on the committee. “We made a submission and then the SPC met over the summer and then came out and said ‘this is happening’ and things began to be implemented. One of the centres was told that they were not going to be around next year,” said Adam Awad, president of the University of Toronto Students’ Union. Hints of a stringent top-down approach leave many student leaders unsettled. The most official opposition concerning the consultation process has come from the U of T Faculty Association, which has filed a grievance with the University. The ultimate outcome of the plan is still to be determined as consultation between the administration and affected groups are ongoing.
Finding LOVE@UT just got a whole lot easier cont’d from page 1
then scanning through the resulting profiles. If a profile of interest pops up, they simply send a message and see where the budding interaction go. Given the size of Love@UT’s user base already, students will have a lot to choose from. There are already 196 users signed up, with “new users signing up every day” according to creators. Contrary to the idea presented by the overfilled reading rooms at Robarts near closing, university does not have to be just about studying. In fact, university can be just as much about meeting new people, finding new relationships and making new friends as it is about poorly cited essays and piles of problem sets.
4
the arts
September 30, 2010
All night long ... Those passing through the University after sunset this Saturday may find themselves in a bit of a squeeze. Originally performed in 1977, Marina Abramovic’s Imponderabilia involves a narrow doorway flanked by two performers...in the buff. The space between the nude performers is tight, forcing viewers to turn sideways, inevitably choosing one performer to face. The participants have already started tweaking their diet and exercise regimes in preparation for the project in which visitors literally penetrate the “physically and emotionally intimate space between the performers,” says Program Coordinator Rebecca Gimmi. The project is part of this weekend’s Nuit Blanche exhibition, One at a time, concurrently curated by the University’s
Art Centre and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. The exhibit revolves around the means and procedure of measurement. Says Gimmi: “Each project reflects how one creates units of measurement to manage information on a daily basis.” One measurable work of art is that of Gerald Ferguson’s, by which viewers can see how large of a pile one million pennies produce. Being quite the logistical feat, works such as Ferguson’s are not typically viewed in an institutional setting. Gimmi sees the exhibition as a chance for students to experience “some of the greatest hits of conceptual art that are not often staged in institutions.” A large part of the exhibition consists of the re-imagining and re-installation of prominent conceptual artwork curated by Barbara
Carpe noctem A guide to Nuit Blanche on campus and beyond Aurora Zone A #5 273 Bloor St. West City dwellers will forget the lack of trees in town as they walk through a forest of light. Sensors will track visitors’ movements through the space, projecting streams of light from their individual locations. A rippling effect will be produced as the streams emanate from each visitor. As individual ripples collide, a complex pattern of light forms. The project gives Torontonians a chance to not only see the Northern Lights, but also to tangibly experience them. In a place where spotting a star is an unusual delight, walking through Aurora is not to be missed. Phillip Beesley’s work is located in the atrium bordering the Royal Conservatory of Music. -CARA SABATINI
Whimsical Wabi-sabi Presented by Bata Shoe Museum and Unincorporated Artist Collective Zone A #15 327 Bloor Street West The Bata Shoe Museum is transformed into a garden of giant orbs – made of paper. Immense origami spheres constructed of hundreds of pieces of paper, folded thousands of times, that will be illuminated throughout the entire museum. The installation’s focus on the spherical form is meant to mirror the natural beauty of symmetry. The project draws its inspiration from the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-sabi, which stresses minimalism, imperfection and the ephemeral. It brings to life the elements that define the night as Nuit Blanche: a temporal exhibition of beauty. -CARA SABATINI
Future City Presented by the Gardiner Museum, Diaspora Dialogues and the Humber School of Creative and Performing Arts Zone A #19 111 Queen’s Park On Nuit Blanche, the Gardiner Museum invites Torontonians to experience an alternate future for Toronto, in which the public city square belongs to artists and as a result, calls for different rules of civic engagement. Future City will be a multimedia installation involving sculpture, performance art, and poetry. In the artist-created city, civic responsibility requires that you “give a
September 30, 2010
the arts
One at a time Fischer, Executive Director and Chief Cu- to be even more intimately involved as rator of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. they are asked to record the number and According to Gimmi, the components of “energy level” of orgasms over a certain One at a time have the intentional effect amount of time. Viewers of the installof questioning “the academic and admin- ment will even be provided with their istrative organization of institutions such very own charts – so they can continue the artwork at home. as universities and art galleries.” Something even hotter will be served A key part of the exhibition relies on student involvement. Flags are to be in- by the city’s own artist and “Barchitect,” stalled to represent the birthplaces of Dean Baldwin, as he hosts the bar and U of T students and staff, recorded by grill for the evening – or rather all night. survey. This work of Danish artist, Jens In the Hart House courtyard, food and alHanning, showcases the multicultural- cohol will be available until 4 am. A drink ism of the school, displaying “a micro- – or two – might ease the passage back cosm of the ever-growing diversity of the through Abramovic’s Imponderabilia. city of Toronto itself,” says Gimmi. The Orgasm Energy chart requires by Cara Sabatini participants
Illustration by Dave Bell
little art in order to get a little art.” Future City is organized by Diaspora Dialogues, the Humber School of Creative and Performing Arts and the Gardiner Museum, each bringing their own concept to the installation. In the interactive exhibit, participants add to the alternative public city square, where artists call the shots. Diaspora Dialogues, a diverse organization of Toronto writers, have organized a “fused glass poetry performance,” called Nice Bumping into You. The piece is the creation of spoken word artist Heather Hermant and glass artist Melina Young. Participants add to an emerging dialogue using vibrant fused glass tiles posted on a large glowing light table. The Humber School of Creative and Performing Arts will be contributing four “especially designed and constructed wave-like installations” under the title of Planet Kindergarten. The installations seek to recapture the fun and creativity characteristic of childhood. Groups of Humber students along with professional artists and musicians will provide short improvised and interactive scenarios featuring shadows, music, film, and laughter in order to create Planet Kindergarten. The Gardiner Museum’s contribution to the Future City is an exhibit entitled, Face of Toronto. Organized by artist, Jim Hake, Face of Toronto is a unique installation seeking to create a ceramic mosaic from portrait photographs collected over the course of the night. Members of the public may have their portraits taken in order to be a part of the final product. The final piece will be exhibited at the Gardiner in December. As Canada’s only museum of ceramic art, the Gardiner Museum promises to present a display as unique as its mandate for Nuit Blanche. The Gardiner Museum is located at 111 Queen’s Park, right across from the Royal Ontario Museum. -MNRUPE VIRK
“El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote To You About Africa” Presented by the ROM and the Institute for Contemporary Culture Zone A #30 Nuit Blanche will see the world premier of the first career retrospective of internationally renowned Ghanian artist El Anatsui at the Royal Ontario Museum. His first solo show in Canada, El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa will span four decades of work from the artist and feature a vast array of media. El Anatsui is one of the most dynamic, influential, and culturally significant contemporary artists from Africa. He is most famous for his incorporation of found objects and everyday materials in order to create works evoking both Africa’s colonial past and the postcolonial present. Among the pieces within the exhibit will be El Anatsui’s stunning metallic tapestries. Created from metal bottle caps that have been flattened, folded or twisted and then stitched together with copper wire, the massive tapestries recall traditional Ghanian kente textiles. The exhibit will also include gestural acrylic and ink paintings that have never before been exhibited outside Nigeria, where the artist has been teaching since 1975. El Anatsui draws on both Ghanian and Nigerian cultural references and motifs to create these works. El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote To You About Africa features 63 pieces including wood and metal scuptures, ceramics, paintings, and drawings. Visitors will be able to see the development of El Anatsui’s ideas over the past four decades and be drawn into his thought-provoking and stimulating discussion of Africa’s complex histories, cultural themes, and social issues. -MNRUPE VIRK
5
the inside
6
September 30, 2010
Science
Inner voices not so bad after all ANDREW GYORKOS It used to be that talking to yourself was a sign of craziness, but now it turns out that it might just be a rather healthy practice. New research from UTSC, headed by PhD candidate Alexa Tullet and Associate Psychology Professor Michael Inzlicht, is demonstrating how using inner voices can lead to better self-
control. “We essentially had participants complete a classic selfcontrol exercise - the Go/NoGo task - while we attempted to block their inner voice,” explains Alexa Tullet. “During the Go/No-Go task, participants saw symbols that indicated that they should either press a button or refrain from pressing the button. The "Go" (press) trials were more common than the
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"No-Go" (don't press) trials, so the impulsive response became pressing the button.” Subjects had the luxury of using their 'inner voice' during these trials, as they were only focused on a single simple exercise free of distractions. “To block the inner voice, we had people complete the Go/No-Go task while they repeatedly said the word "computer," thereby preventing them from talking
to themselves in their heads,” continues Tullet. “As a control, we had participants do the Go/ No-Go task a second time, but this time they repeatedly drew circles.” “Drawing circles was also distracting - like saying the word 'computer' repeatedly - but does not occupy the inner voice. What we found was that occupying the inner voice caused people to act more impulsively to press the button more - relative to the control condition.” It would seem that the average mind is only able to use one voice, either the 'inner' or 'outer'
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one, effectively at a time. When the internal monologue is interrupted with external dialogue, full control over the words and actions of that person are compromised. “Situations where we are constantly talking make it difficult or impossible to use the inner voice and may have consequences for our self-control as a result,” concluded Tullet. “Being at a dinner party, for example, might result in us eating much more food (or drinking much more alcohol) than we would have if we were monitoring our actions.”
September 30, 2010
the diversions
7
the crossword
the clues Across 5. Sags 7. Unique 9. Run away 10. Not true 12. Throw out (as a legislative bill) 13. “The Book of ___� (2010 Movie) 14. Common video file codec 15. Straight to the point 18. Tuck away for future use 19. “___ facto� 20. Desktop shortcut 21. Cottage, in French 22. Soil 24. Bullets 26. Fire (as a weapon) 28. Ostrich cousin 29. Dictator ___ Amin 30. Slender 31. “Following� director Christopher 34. Killer whale 35. Capable of floating 36. Tornado
ANDREW GYORKOS
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8 Social not-working
Status update: a Facebook exodus?
Zuckerberg pinned to the wall in The Social Network
AARON ZACK
DAVE BELL
DAN CHRISTENSEN If there’s one thing that can be said about the trio of Aaron Sorkin’s script, David Fincher’s direction, and Jesse Eisenberg’s performance in “The Social Network,” it’s that they pull no punches to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, and if there is any amount of truth we can attribute to the story they told, it’s not difficult to see why. The story is that of Zuckerberg’s rise from his anything but humble beginnings as a Harvard computer programming prodigy to billionaire dot com CEO, through the lens of two lawsuits from peers whom he stabbed in the back on his way up. No time is wasted establishing Zuckerberg’s twin traits of lethal ambition and impressive ability to be an asshole. In the first scene, he mounts a rhetorical attack upon his girlfriend, borne out of an obsession with being accepted into an elite Harvard fraternity. Upon being dumped moments later, he requests forgiveness as if asking for a term paper extension. Eisenberg (Adventureland) can be credited with turning this nearly unforgivable jerk into a fascinating character of emotional depth. We can’t take our eyes off Zuckerberg, whether to see if he will crack a single smile through the whole picture or to watch him dangle on the precipice of slitting the throat of his best friend Eduardo Saverin, by whom he is sued in the presentday foreground of the story. In adapting from Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires,” Sorkin (The West Wing) fashions dialogue that is flashy,
September 30, 2010
at times to the point of being glib. His characters engage in snappy verbal sword fights or pissing matches. This in no way detracts from the film, however, and instead emphasizes the disappointing dichotomy between Zuckerberg’s peerless intelligence and wit, and his childish selfishness and starry-eyed infatuation with success. Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) once again masterfully crafts a dark, ominous tone throughout the film, and even manages to imbue euphoric party scenes and the bright, hip Facebook
“
headquarters with an uneasy sense of foreboding. This is aided in no small part by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score, which deftly blends the classical Hollywood soundtrack sensibility with the pair’s industrial and dark ambient roots. The result is the sounds of Zuckerberg’s harsh social and professional self-torture. You don’t have to use Facebook to appreciate this story of ambition and malice, but it may take membership to relate to Zuckerberg’s isolation – an isolation he’s managed to release upon all of us.
In today’s society, how does one balance the seemingly mutually exclusive worlds of data sharing and data privacy? This was the question on the minds of four young computer engineering students at NYU’s Courant Institute when they began to develop Diaspora, an open-source distributed network tasked with decentralizing the world of social networking. The four students, lya Zhitomirskiy, Dan Grippi, Max Salzberg, and Raphael Sofaer, funded their project through the website Kickstarter, which allows people to plead their case for funding to the net at large. The group initially asked for about $10,000 in funding, but the project quickly received an overwhelmingly positive response from the public, eventually receiving over $200,000 in individual donations. On their website, the teamed stated “Together, we have struck a chord with the world and identified a problem which needs to be solved.” Diaspora’s emergence marks a response to the recent privacy issues raised by social networking sites such as Facebook, whose voracious appetite for personal data have drawn ire from the public and from various privacy commissions. Diaspora aims to address these issues through a totally new approach to data sharing. The network functions via highly encrypted nodes or ‘seeds’. This is where Diaspora begins to diverge from popular social networking sites like Facebook. Whereas on Facebook, a centralized hub mediates interactions between users, Diaspora utilizes these encrypted seeds for direct computer-to-computer interactions, ensuring safe and private content sharing and communication. Speaking on the philosophy behind Diaspora, Mr. Sofaer explained, “In life, we talk
the campus comment
to each other. We don’t need to hand our messages to a hub and have them handed to our friends. Our virtual lives should work the same way.” Large social networking sites continue to dominate, it would seem, because of the convenience they offer users. But as these sites demand more and more personal information to participate, an ever larger portion of the public has come to censor what they post, or optout from networking entirely. “The value [networking sites] give us is negligible in the scale of what they are doing, and what we are giving up is all of our privacy,” said Mr. Salzberg.
“Our real social lives do not have entral managers, and our virtual lives do not need them. Eventually, today’s hubs could be almost entirely replaced by a decentralized network of truly personal websites.” -Max Salzberg Diaspora then seemingly exists not as an alternative to Facebook, but instead as the logical and ethical progression of social networking in general. In fact, the site will offer users virtually all the same features as Facebook (yes, even Farmville), and in addition, individual seeds will be able to ‘aggregate’ all existing information from sites like Facebook, Twitter and other social media to provide users a safe, secure and convenient social networking experience. Diaspora is slated to launch alpha testing later this month. To learn more visit www.joindiaspora.com.
”
DIANA WILSON
the newspaper asks: Last Thursday, Facebook’s servers shut down temporarily. Dare we ask the difficult question: what would you do without Facebook?
Krystal Walsh, 2th year Humanities I would be unable to stalk people. That’s always fun.
Connor Bailey, Construction Worker
Matt Hunt Gardner, PhD Linguistics
I pretty much live without Facebook anyway.
It would be more difficult to find and talk to acquaintances. I don’t have everyone’s number and I use it to plan parties. I would actually have to talk to my friends.