The Future | Issue 02

vol.77 issue.02

the future issue

contents weekly content 4. Letters 6. News 15. VUWSA 37. Arts 43. Odds and Ends

columns 1 6 . R a m b l i n g s o f a Fa l l e n H a c k 1 7 . Th e I n t r e p i d V C G u i l f o r d 1 8 . B e i n g We l l 1 8 . M āo r i M at t e r s 32. Sports Banter with Sammy P 33. Conspiracy Corner 3 3 . Th e S w e e t S c o o p 34. Shirt and Sweet with Eleanor Merton 3 5 . Th e B i r d s a n d t h e B e e s w i t h C u p i e H o o d w i n k 3 6 . H i s t o r y Th a t H a s n ’ t H a p p e n e d Y e t 3 6 . We i r d I n t e r n e t S h i t

features 20. Something Old Something New 2 2 . I n t e r n at i o n 2 4 . C o m e F ly Wi t h M e 2 7 . K e e p i n’ i t H y p e r r e a l

creative 30. Seamless Blossom

by Richard Clarkson XYZ Shoe b y E a r l S t e wa rt

2

the future issue

The future is the most important time. The past has happened. The present might be shit. But the future always has the potential to be amazing.

A

t university, our focus shifts from short to long term.

Mundane questions like what’s for lunch give way to longterm thinking. What am I doing with my life? Will this get me a job? Should I care whether it gets me a job? Am I someone who wants to marry people? Will anyone want to marry me? We obsess over these questions, hence this issue.

There is something about being a student that forces us to be preoccupied with the future. Fundamentally, we are here for our later selves. We have hope for the future: that our lives and our world will be better than they are and have been. We have anxiety about the future: whether we will get a job, whether World War III will break out, whether our five-year plan will work out. Our future is an escape. We dwell on it in class, in our new hostel, amid dense course texts.

Maybe it’s because we’re getting old. Do you remember where you were at the dawn of the millennium? That was 14 years ago.

Kids who were born then go to high school now.

Got a smartphone? Seven years ago, the iPhone did not exist.

Now you can’t live without it.

Plan to have kids? If so, you will be able to tell them that you are older than the internet.

Were you a ‘90s child? The year 1990 is closer in time to the Moon landing than it is to the present day. Cam gets off over these facts.

We spend so much time thinking about the future that we often forget that we are living yesterday’s tomorrow today.

But we should get excited about the future and its malleability.

For that reason, this week, our features are aspirational. Steph Trengrove examines the future of education and finds that it is likely to be more accessible, much cheaper and more diverse.

Alexandra Hollis thinks big about transport and finds that getting from A to B will get easier, and that soon B will come to us. Philip McSweeney digs a bit deeper and ponders what risks or effects advancements in technology may have on the way we experience life. Deep.

So do read them and get excited about the life of tomorrow.

But we must remember to be cautious in our optimism. The job market will pick up, but we might not get our dream one.

We might find the love of our lives, but they might leave us. We might be able to fly to Mars for a vacation, but they’ll still manage to lose your bags at the spaceport.

The future isn’t utopia. It’s just better than today.

L ove ,

Du nc an & Cam

www.salient.co.nz

3

LETTER of the

Some of us have $50k student loans

Dear Salient, It’s only your first week back and you’re already actively encouraging students to steal. Perhaps next time you could at least include a disclaimer stating that it is against the law and may seriously impact on a students career prospects if they are ever caught? Not to mention, being a thief, is really just being a dick.

Sincerely The moral high ground P.S. If you are in anyway confused as to why I think you are encouraging stealing, read the how-to articles “Cheat self checkout machines” and “Get fairer fares/Use a child snapper”

Yes, yes I am

Hey Salient,

Are you the fuckhead that broke into my car on Ohiro Road sometime in the last week? Is your friend that fuckhead? Firstly can you be a little less shit at breaking into a car next time?

Firstly, you didn’t need to smash the window and do a total half-baked attempt at jimmying the lock as well. There are much more efficient ways to break into a car.

Secondly, how fucking inefficient could you be? $300 of window damage for a $70 pair of speakers. Shit son - we could have done things differently and maximised our joint utility. Or was this some piss poor attempt at stimulus for the autoglass industry? Joke’s on you - some almost full bottles of piss and my watch underneath the blanket that you didn’t notice. You dumb fuck.

I guess that “you’re still young / that’s your fault / there’s so much you have to know” - grow up and break into my car properly next time man. Oh, and can I have my Cat Stevens tape back please?

Cheers, Tazza

4

the future issue

WEEK Dear Sarah, Amidst the flurry of drunken girls that filled the floors of Hope Bros on Saturday 1st of March shone a beauty by the name of Sarah.

The night had had its pickings, but still your face remains in my mind. After a desperate attempt to find you, through the exhaustive forces of modern social media, still I remain Sarah-less. My friend introduced me as “the man” – which I still am, however I am nothing without you. From memory you were wearing a black crop-top, however my eyes never drifted below your heavenly hips. I offered to purchase you a beverage but you and your blonde friend had to get going. Your last request was for me to add you on Facebook and mine was for a kiss goodbye. You delivered on mine, but I have failed on yours. Get in touch with the editor if this is you.

Tom

Kim Dotcom Dot Tumblr Dot Com

Dear Salient, Nobody reads the news these days. It’s true. There was this article in the Guardian about it. Salient should have no news and instead devote its journalistic resources to the creation of amusing Tumblrs.

Here are some suggestions to get you started: • Yo-pros sipping coffee dot tumblr dot com • Poops that look like Pokemon dot tumblr dot com • Children eating lemons that they think are oranges or mandarins dot tumblr dot com • First-years with eggs splattered over their face dot tumblr dot com • Cats interviewing Toy Story 2 figurines dot tumblr dot com In wild an-tumblr-tation, newmedialeg3d.+umblr.com

Eat me

Dear Mr Masticator,

I really enjoyed hearing you devour your meal next to me in our lecture yesterday.

Seriously, were you eating moose shit? It smelt so bad! It also looked horrible, like a mangled baby’s arm.

Other than you destroying my olfactory senses, the sound of saliva swirling in your open mouth was deafening. I don’t know what the lecturer was speaking of as all I heard was the sound of you slobbering.

I hope you choke on your meal, next time.

Regards, Model Citizen

The letter of the week wins a coffee from VicBooks.

Send letters to editor@ salient.org.nz

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5

PERSON OF LAST WEEK

Lupita Nyong’o last week won Best Supporting Actress at the 86th Academy Awards for her performance in 12 Years a Slave.

In her debut feature film, the 32-year-old played the role of Patsy, a gutsy African-American slave who is repeatedly beaten by her owner. In her acceptance speech, she spoke movingly about how, growing up, she had wanted to whiten herself in order to be beautiful.

BY THE NUMBERS

$ 10 0 Y oung N ats J ohn K ey

amount offered by the

for the best selfie

with

$2,000,000 N ew Z ealand A uckland last week

value of cannabis destroyed by raids around

police in

15 0 0 % the increase in places on drug and alcohol treatment programmes for prisoners since

2008.

0.9

cups per day

average per capita consumption of coffee by

N ew

Z ealanders

14 % of

B ritish

drivers surveyed who admitted being

distracted by attractive pedestrians , drivers or passengers while driving

$3, 600, 000 the amount an i P hone would have cost to produce in

1991

6

the future issue

NEWS

A

GOOD GUY GRANT GUILFORD

11 O’CLOCK SWILL

NEW VC A GC

BAAUER BOWS OUT BEFORE BEDTIME

by Jamie Neikrie

by Simon Dennis

cademic and educational leaders gathered last Monday to welcome the University’s new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Grant Guilford.

The powhiri to welcome Professor Guilford took place at Te Herenga Waka Marae, located at the Kelburn campus, and was attended by over 100 dignitaries.

Professor Guilford assumed his new role on 3 March, succeeding Professor Pat Walsh, who served as Victoria’s Vice-Chancellor for nine years.

Professor Guilford has expressed his goals to build on the accomplishments of his predecessor and lead Victoria into the top 50 capital-city universities in the world.

Speaking in broad strokes, Professor Guilford said that he hopes to frame Victoria’s national identity as one of business ingenuity and artistic creativity, sources of inspiration that would help Victoria achieve a place among elite capital-city universities.

“I mean expressing new possibilities through creative activity, incorporating the genius behind art, music and writing, the curiosity and insight that finds new solutions to complex issues, and the entrepreneurship that establishes new businesses,” Professor Guilford emphasised. “It is inspiration, innovation and leadership.”

Chancellor Ian McKinnon said Professor Guilford would bring “a wealth of leadership experience” to Victoria, and was an outstanding academic who has had a “highly successful career in research and teaching.”

“We are delighted to be welcoming Professor Guilford to the role of Vice-Chancellor. His commitment and drive for excellence make him a most appropriate choice to lead Victoria in the coming years,” McKinnon said.

Professor Guilford previously held the role of Dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Auckland, and was a member of the Senior Management Team. He has worked with the Institute of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences at Massey University in addition to his role at the University of Auckland.

T

he curfew placed on The Hunter Lounge by the University has angered students, with O-Week gigs ending early.

The 11 pm curfew that was in place for the recent O-Week Baauer gig is the main cause for student concern, with some disappointed students demanding their money back.

Less than 24 hours before the doors opened, a post on Facebook was the only indication for ticketholders that the show would start early and close at 11 pm.

One ticketholder spoken to by Salient even flew from Christchurch for the show, but missed it completely because they were not informed of the scheduling change.

Adding to the frustration was Ryan Hemsworth’s laptop plug not functioning during his set, which meant he had to leave the stage for a short time. However, he performed for an extended 15 minutes after his allocated time had run out.

Associate Professor of Campus Operations Rainsforth Dix said about the curfew that “events held in the Student Union Building are operated under a resource consent from the Wellington City Council. This includes some provisions that we are required to comply with, including restrictions on the amount of noise that can be made after 12 am.”

When asked if the University would be placing further curfews on events at The Hunter Lounge, Mr Dix said that it was their duty.

“It is the responsibility of the operator of each event to manage compliance with these requirements. Part of this is setting a finishing time for their event.”

11PM time the hunter lounge had to close due to a university imposed curfew

VUWSA President Sonya Clark said of the curfew: “the midnight noise curfew is definitely earlier than most students’ definitions of a night out… but Kelburn is a residential area, and it is crucial we respect the neighbours as much as possible. We do that by sending out a letter to the neighbours before Orientation and by following the noise curfew.”

When asked about the ability of VUWSA to run a good O-Week for the students, Ms Clark said that in the past, the University has been restrictive of off-campus events.

“We pushed back, and we now have been able to move the majority of Orientation gigs into town, which means the party can continue to go well into the night.”

www.salient.co.nz

7

NEWS

NICE UNIS FINISH LAST

Victoria University has downplayed the findings of an international universityrankings body which two weeks ago downgraded Victoria’s Law School, along with Modern Languages, Computer Science, Psychology and Political Science.

Salient reported on the rankings, released

by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), in last week’s issue. Victoria’s Law rankings dropped from 19th in the world in 2013 to 49th in the world in 2014.

Under the 2013 rankings, Victoria was the highest-ranked university for Law in New Zealand; in 2014, it has fallen to third, behind University of Auckland and University of Otago.

Law was not the only subject at Victoria whose rankings took a dive. Modern Languages, Computer Science, Psychology and Political Science all dropped in both New Zealand and international rankings.

Notably, Victoria is no longer in the top 50 universities in the world for Psychology or Political Science.

Professor Rob Rabel, Pro Vice-Chancellor International, called the QS rankings system “volatile”, and said that rankings were measured and interpreted in many different ways.

“One reason for the change in ranking for Victoria’s Law School may be citation rates, which vary from year to year and depend on when publications come out,” Rabel said.

He added that it was “important to note that Victoria’s Law programme remains in the top 50 in the world”, and that Victoria’s rankings in some subject areas had improved.

Victoria is now ranked 31st in the world, and second in New Zealand, for English

Language and Literature. It has also shown improvements in History, Chemistry and Sociology.

Rabel also said that Victoria’s position in university rankings has “remained relatively stable in recent years”, and he did not expect the rankings changes to lead to fewer students enrolling in Law. The QS World University Rankings by Subject have existed since 2011. According to the organisation, “the methodology for QS World University Rankings by Subject has been narrowed to include only those indicators that bypass the direct involvement of institutions.”

QS Subject Rankings are determined through analysing academic reputation, employability of graduates, citations per paper, and the h-index, which measures the productivity and impact of the published work of academics.

GOING UP

GOING DOWN

GOING VERY DOWN

ENGLISH LANGUAGE (LITERATURE)

MODERN LANGUAGES

VICTORIA UNIVERSITY L AW SCHOOL

UNI NOT EVEN MAD OVER DROP IN RANKINGS

by Sophie Boot

2013

2014

2013

2014

2 44

2 31

2 51 - 100

4 101 - 150

HISTORY

COMPUTER SCIENCE

2013

2014

2013

2014

5 200+

3 61-100

4 101 - 150

5 201 - 250

2013

2014

2013

2014

5 UNRANKED

4 301 - 400

3 49=

4 51 - 100

CHE M IS T RY

2011

2

19 2012

1

23

PS YC H OL OGY

2013

1

19 2014

S OCIOL OGY

8

P O LI T I C AL SC I ENC E

2013

2014

2013

2014

4 161 - 200

3 161 - 200

2 41

3 51 - 100

the future issue

49

3

NEWS

M

HOMOPHOBIC BREW

NO JOYCE HERE

ONE O-WEEK; TWO ABUSIVE BAND MEMBERS

GOVT PLAYS HARD TO GET WITH UNI COUNCIL

by Staff writer

by Gerald Lee

embers of Home Brew were hired for Victoria’s 2014 O-Week despite VUWSA saying they would not be hired after threatening a Victoria student in 2013.

Harry ‘Haz Beats’ Huavi, producer of hip-hop group Home Brew, and band member Tom Scott were both hired for O-Week. Prior to their 2013 O-Week show, Huavi threatened a Victoria student via Twitter. 2013 VUWSA President Rory McCourt told Salient he would put in place a policy to ensure Home Brew were not hired again.

Huavi performed a DJ set on 28 February, and Scott has been hired to perform with group @peace later this month. Both events are part of the ‘One Orientation’ lineup, planned by VUWSA and the Massey Wellington Students’ Association, MAWSA. VUWSA President Sonya Clark said: “MAWSA had planned and organised this show before the joint Orientation was co-ordinated, meaning that VUWSA had no control over the choice of artist”.

Clark also said that: “VUWSA does not and will never condone homophobic comments or physical threats against students”.

The tweets that led to VUWSA’s policy include: “I’m down in Welli this weekend just fuck this fuckers face up. Come test! Bring your friends il take them all on you faggots! Fuck you! [sic],” and: “I’ll smash your Dad if your too scared to face me [sic]”.

In 2012, Scott threatened music journalist Duncan Grieve on Twitter, saying he would “come see you and break your fucking little face.”

Clark did not comment on whether VUWSA would hire Haz Beats or other members of Home Brew for future events.

As Salient went to print, it was reported that a member of the band had punched a 17-year-old in the face during a performance at Lincoln University’s O-Week on the night of Wednesday 5 March.

Huavi tweeted on Thursday afternoon: “Did you expect me not to punch you in the face when your hand reached in my pockets tryna steal my wallet?”

Salient has chosen not to name the author of this article. In 2013, a Salient writer was threatened by Huavi after reporting on the abusive tweets he sent to a student.

V

UWSA may lose its seat on Victoria University’s governing body in the same year as regaining the seat.

Salient reported two weeks ago on the proposed changes, under which university councils would be forced to downsize and would no longer be required to have student and staff representation. The changes would have effect from the beginning of 2016.

Prior to 2012, student members of the University Council consisted of the current VUWSA President and a representative elected by the student body at large.

However, the implementation of Voluntary Student Membership in 2012 meant that, despite free membership, only around three-quarters of Victoria University students chose to become members of VUWSA. These membership issues caused the University to question VUWSA’s mandate to speak on student issues.

The University then removed VUWSA’s seat on the University Council and introduced the Student Forum. It was intended to be a representative student board with 35 positions and representatives from interest groups.

The Forum was plagued by problems, due to a lack of a clear purpose or systems of accountability. The Forum was given responsibility for appointing a student representative to the University Council, meaning the Chair of the Forum effectively replaced the VUWSA President on the Council.

In February 2013, VUWSA, the Pasifika Students’ Council and Ngāi Tauira all chose to withdraw from the Forum. VUWSA President at the time, Rory McCourt, claimed that the Forum: “isn’t the place for accountable, democratic student representation.”

At one of its last meetings on Monday 16 April 2013, the Forum failed to make quorum, with only ten members attending. As a result, the University dissolved the Student Forum and initiated a consultation process to determine a new structure for student representation.

Conducted last August, the results showed that 55 per cent of students believed that the VUWSA President should fill one of the two student seats on the Council. A third of students wished for the two seats to both be filled through student elections. In light of these results, the VUWSA President’s seat on the University Council was reinstated.

The first full University Council meeting for this year was held on 24 February. VUWSA President Sonya Clark said she was hoping to see the Council become more hands-on, and it was important for students to be part of the process.

“I see Council’s role as asking the big questions about the future of the University, what it looks like and where it is going,” Clark said.

The Chancellor, Ian McKinnon, has said that he is supportive of student representation, but has so far declined to comment substantively to Salient on the issue. www.salient.co.nz

9

NEWS

KNOW YOUR WHAT? STUDENTS MISTAKENLY THINK THEY ARE GETTING AMONGST THE BEST

by Steph Trengrove

D

ata indicate that money spent by tertiary institutions on advertising may be ineffectively spent, while the University continues to be unclear on how much it spends every year on advertising.

The Graduate Longitudinal Study baseline report suggests just 3.8 per cent of people in their final year of high school considered university marketing as being in the top three reasons that they chose the university they did. This figure is one-tenth of the perception of academic quality, and one-17th of having the course that prospective students wanted.

In 2013, ACNielsen revealed that Victoria University had spent $2,870,521 in 2012 – $170.15 per student. Of this total, $1,088,159 (39.7 per cent) was spent on television, $844,178 (29.4 per cent) on outdoor media, and $674,041 (23.5 per cent) on newspaper advertising. The remaining 7.4 per cent was split between radio, online and magazine advertising, in that order.

$600,000

Courtesy of Ollie Neas

The amount Victoria University claims to have budgeted for advertising in 2014

HALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR HALL

$2,870,521 The amount Victoria University actually spent in 2013 However, this year there has been a far less transparent breakdown of advertising spending at Victoria University. The University provided Salient with a figure of $600,000. When the discrepancy between this and prior spending was questioned, a University spokesperson said the $600,000 figure was the media costs for the University’s main recruitment campaign alone.

“The ACNielsen figure will also include other University advertising covering things such as events, staff recruitment, recruitment of postgraduate and post-experience students,” the spokesperson said.

The University would not give a figure on overall ad spending, but said that it was “comparable to most of its competitors.”

VUWSA President for 2013 Rory McCourt told Salient last year that money spent on tertiary advertising was better spent elsewhere.

He accused universities of “boasting” of their worth via television, radio and newspaper advertising, when current students were “desperate for tutorials and a decent lecture theatre.”

“These are dollars which could have been going into providing tutes for 300-level courses, or even a cut in our fees,” said McCourt.

10

the future issue

by Elise Munden

V

ictoria’s students in 2015 will have a new option for student accommodation available to them.

An office block at 175 The Terrace – minutes down the road from Joan Stevens and Boulcott Hall – has been leased by the University, and will be refurbished into a new hall of residence. The hall will accommodate 390 new students, making it roughly the size of Te Puni Village.

The new hall, which is yet to be named, will join the seven other fully catered halls already on offer to students. This will bring Victoria’s capacity for catered student accommodation to over 2000 places.

Victoria’s former Vice-Chancellor Professor Pat Walsh is confident that there is still a high demand for this type of accommodation. He states that “students coming to Victoria University from throughout the country and overseas are looking for quality accommodation.

Alongside the recent introduction of Boulcott Street Hall and Joan Stevens Hall on the Terrace, we are ensuring this need continues to be met.”

The new hall will undoubtedly also contribute to the profits of DSL Liquor, located on The Terrace.

NEWS

A FUTURE LITERALLY IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND

MO MONEY MO MONEY

by Francesca Shepard

by Sophie Boot

S

tudents looking for information about their career prospects will be able to do so from their phones, with a new government app now available.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has released the Occupation Outlook 2014 mobile app. The app gathers information from businesses, employers, the education sector and labourmarket analysts, with the intention to be a prime location for students to look when making decisions about the future.

Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce said that the free app is designed to provide instant information on the qualification requirements, job prospects and possible incomes for 50 occupations.

“The Occupation Outlook App is remarkably easy to use on smartphones and tablets, and is in line with the Government’s “Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce said that the free app is designed to provide instant information on the qualification requirements, job prospects and possible incomes for

50 occupations.”

GOVT PROPOSES CHANGES TO UNI FUNDING

C

hanges to PBRF funding may threaten the quality of research coming out of New Zealand Universities, the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) and Academic Freedom Aotearoa have warned.

The changes were announced last Thursday by Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce as part of the Government’s Tertiary Education Strategy for 2014–2019.

The Performance Based Review Fund (PBRF) assesses research quality, allocates funding based on results, and publishes information on research performance.

The Government has announced it wants to “reward tertiary-education organisations that attract external research income… and so placing a higher value on research that meets user needs.”

“The Government is considering one further proposal to increase the proportion of PBRF income allocated based on external research income (from 15 per cent to 20 per cent of the fund),” Joyce said.

The proposal has been criticised by TEU Vice-President Sandra Grey, who said some research, like asbestos health risk and river-

water-quality research, was not of interest to business but was still vital.

“Users of public research are not just those people who pay for it, but everybody. Just because an external agency does not want to pay for research does not mean it is less worthwhile than other research,” Grey said.

Academic Freedom Aotearoa chairperson Professor Jack Heinemann said that he was “concerned that those who offer research funds and contract research will have their needs met at the expense of the rest of New Zealand society.”

Further changes will involve simplifying the research assessment process, rewarding institutions which recruit and develop researchers, and strengthening public reporting on research performance.

In 2012, the Government committed to investing an additional $100 million in the PBRF over four years. This will result in the fund reaching $300 million in 2016/17.

Joyce said that this investment made it especially important to “ensure we are getting the best results possible”.

focus on delivering more innovative, userfriendly public services,” Joyce said.

Occupations are grouped under the industry pathway in the Government’s Vocational Pathways Programme, and include: Construction and Infrastructure, Manufacturing and Technology, Primary Industries, Service Industries, Creative Industries, and Social and Community Services.

Mr Joyce believes the easily accessible app will affect New Zealand families and students in a positive way by helping them to make “better informed” subject and future career choices.

The app is available to use on smartphones, tablets, iPhones, Android devices and iPod Touches, and can be downloaded from the App Store and the Google Play Store. www.salient.co.nz

11

NEWS

NEWS OF THE WORLD

SLOW NEWS WEEK

O

n 17 February, an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft en route to Rome with 202 passengers aboard was hijacked by the co-pilot and entered Swiss airspace. However, the Swiss Air Force stayed on the ground, because the budget only allows it to intervene in potential threats which take place during business hours, beginning at 8 am. “You have a budget and you have to prioritise,” said Swiss Air Force spokesman Juerg Nussbaum. The plane was escorted to Geneva by French and Italian fighter jets, and the hijacker faces up to 20 years in Swiss prison.

T

he American media embarrass themselves with these headlines when reporting on the success of 12 Years a Slave.

T

he crisis in Ukraine continued apace, as 16,000 Russian troops took over the region of Crimea without firing a single shot. Russian President Vladimir Putin contends that the troops are simply protecting Russian military assets in the region, a statement most observers dispute. At press time, high-level talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have failed to reach any kind of accord. Pro-Russian protests have spread across the eastern half of Ukraine – a 24-year-old nation-state of 44.5 million with strong cultural ties to Russia – in response to the recent takeover by anti-government, pro-EU protesters in Kiev.

Ukraine’s interim government is coming to terms with how dire the country’s economic situation is, fielding conditional loan offers from the EU and the United States. Despite the strong wishes of journalists and Congressional Republicans everywhere, the conflict doesn’t quite resemble the Cold War yet, but we’re getting closer.

A

study has found that being drunk doesn’t make men sexually predatory, and that men are more likely to target drunk women to harass and assault in bars. The study, by researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of Washington, analysed 1057 aggressive incidents as part of a wider study of aggression in bars in Toronto over a twoyear period. 25 per cent of the incidents involved sexual aggression, and 90 per cent of those incidents involved men harassing women. The intoxication levels of aggressors was not significantly related to their levels of invasiveness or persistence; however, the intoxication levels of victims was significantly related to the level of invasiveness displayed by aggressors. Robin Thicke was not available for comment.

iPREDICT 66%

There will be a National Party Prime Minister after the 2014 General Election.

34%

There will be a Labour Party Prime Minister after the 2014 General Election.

12

the future issue

60%

Next NZ General Election to be held on 27 September 2014.

61%

Conservative Party to win NO Electorate seats in the next General Election.

62%

A New Zealand republic to be approved in a referendum by 2020.

to meningococcal disease.

Get immunised and know the symptoms.

Talk to Student Health about vaccine options – even if you’ve been vaccinated before.

The best vaccines currently available protect against about half the meningococcal disease in New Zealand, for up to 5 years.

IMM0219

Call 0800 IMMUNE or visit health.govt.nz/dontwait for more info

www.salient.co.nz

13

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COME AND SEE THE STA TRAVEL TEAM AT VIC UNI TODAY Shop EA002, Easterfield Building (next to Vic Books), Kelburn Campus P: 04 499 5032 E: VictoriaUniversity@stores.statravel.co.nz

14

the future issue

RAWINIA THOMPSON ACADEMIC VICE PRESIDENT

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN Hello, Vice-Chancellor

L

ast Monday, while you were spending hundreds of dollars at the Vic Books pop-up store, queuing up for sausages or finding your way to your first lecture, Victoria officially welcomed a new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Grant Guilford.

The Vice-Chancellor, or ‘VC’, is the head honcho at Vic: they double as the CEO, and are in charge of leading the University into... the future.

This week’s theme is ‘the future’, and there’s no better time to think about what the future of Vic looks like, when we have a new Vice-Chancellor. This week, I’m about to enter the hallowed brick walls of the Hunter Building for my first proper chat with the new VC. While Vice-Chancellors aren’t generally known for getting out and about with students, Grant seems keen to change that, so I’m hoping he’ll be up to move our meetings to a student space as soon as possible. Here’s what I’ll be chatting to the VC about this week: Student Culture – what? It’s no secret that Vic doesn’t have the same sense of student culture as universities like Otago or Canterbury. Would you ever buy a Vic hoodie? Why? Why not? How can we build a strong sense of community at Vic, where it is easy to meet new people, and easy to make awesome things happen around campus without a lot of form-filling and emailing lots of different people? The Kelburn Hub and Rutherford House foyer could be full of student performance, art, interesting pop-up displays, new ideas and social comment.

How can we work with Grant and the other senior folk to make this happen?

Quality of Education. Universities are under heaps of pressure to pass more students and produce more research with less money. This worries a lot of us, because it can mean growing class sizes, less tutorials and more stressed academics.

It also means that students and staff tend to have less say over what their university looks like. What will Vic look like in five years, and how do we make sure it is a place where there is room for rigorous classroom debate, even with growing class sizes and pressure to make university courses more job-related?

If you have any ideas about the future of Vic, and how you think that the VC can work with students to make that happen, flick me an email or come say hi.

Kia ora whanau! Ko Rāwinia toku ingoa, ko te Academic Vice-President o VUWSA ahau.

As Academic VP, it’s my job to make sure you get a quality education here at Vic. Whether it’s making sure your lecturer’s PowerPoint slides are available to you, representing you as a student rep on University boards and committees, or lobbying central government on tertiary-education issues, I’m here to address academic issues big and small.

I’m keen to advocate for tertiary-education issues in the General Election and get students out to vote. I’ll be questioning why studying is only getting more expensive, and whether the quality of our education is getting any better as a result. Year after year, Vic raises our tuition fees to the max. It isn’t allowed to raise fees by any more than it does. We can’t afford to keep paying more and more when there are fewer tutorials, larger class sizes, entire courses have been cut, and others are often unavailable. Is a rolling 4% fee increase an investment into improving our education? Or is it simply a 4% annual salary increase for senior management?

As students, our voice at Uni is incredibly important, and it needs to be heard! I lead the Education Team at VUWSA, and together we train and support student representatives like Class Reps and Faculty Delegates who speak up for students in classes and faculties. By now, you should have elected Class Reps in your classes. My first experience of a Class Rep election set the bar really high. It was a hotly-contested election, with ten candidates giving minute-long speeches, one person even channelling Martin Luther King in re-enacting the “I Have A Dream” speech. I can’t wait to catch up with all our new and returning Class Reps at training over the next couple of weeks!

Feel free to call me, flick me an email, pop in to our office, tweet at me or ask me for coffee!

Your Prez,

S o n ya C L ARK M: 027 563 6986 | DDI: 04 463 6986 E: sonya.clark@vuw.ac.nz W: www.vuwsa.org.nz @sonya_NZ www.salient.co.nz

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POLITICS

Parliamentary Sass of the Week “It is absolutely fascinating that the Leader of the Opposition is focussed on train wrecks and shipwrecks. Doesn’t that sum it up for his week so far!”

John Key to David Cunliffe

R amblin gs o f a fallen hack

Y

ou already know who will win this year’s election.

It’s obvious. Key is bored, National’s out of ideas. They’re free-market ideologues straitjacketed by the compassion of New Zealand. They’re incompetents incapable of proper state management. They’re a selfserving capitalist elite and the people are waking up.

It’s obvious. Cunliffe is confused, Labour can’t find the right tone. They can’t reconcile their middle-class welfare tax and spendgluttony with the fiscal prudence sensible Kiwis demand. They’re devoted to a fictional proletariat a century into extinction. They’re hijacked by gay feminists, abandoning the working-class voters to whom they belong.

Political forecasting is the bedrock of hackery bullshit, the credential upon which our tribalism is constructed. The production of plausibility is how we know who’s smart and who’s not. Whether conspiratorial mutters between Backbencher pints or partisan panelists on TV One’s Q+A, how the polls will react to the latest controversy is the core of political sport. Reality doesn’t matter – within the wandering of the polls, accountability is impossible. What matters is that the speculation is interesting, that it’s surprising and clever, that it plays to our sense of justice, of irony, of comeuppance.

Truth will always come second to tragedy.

This love of a well-spun yarn is global.

American show The McLaughlin Group finishes each episode with its panellists making a prediction. 1000 of these

predictions were checked by Nate Silver, a stats geek famous for his own political forecasting. Of those that were testable, 285 were completely true and 268 were completely false. In Silver’s words, “the panel may as well have been flipping coins”.

Silver champions the latest fashion: statistics over speculation. But without the bullshit, the predictions get boring. During the last American election, we knew Barack Obama’s lead in most polls meant he would probably win. During the last New Zealand election, we knew the popular first-term government would be untroubled by an opposition barely capable of drafting a press release. Data can only put a number on the obvious.

Politics is hard. An election is an aggregation of four million voices, each driven by an intractable combination of material and mood. Into this batter of half-baked beliefs strike events. The Teapot Tapes. The Christchurch Earthquake. Pike River. The Global Financial Crisis. A Russian invasion of Ukraine. That which matters is almost always unforeseeable. To pretend we can forecast both the unpredictable and how the unpredictable will shake that amorphous ‘mood of the nation’ is entirely nuts.

But we don’t care. It’s fun to parade our pet theories to the world, showing off how well our smarts can turn to drivel. And certainty is bliss; there’s a joy in knowing which way the world will fall. Amid the churning of the political seas, we’re never forced to accept that we don’t.

by Jade d’Hack

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Top 5 Worst MPs on Twitter 1. Asenati Lole-Taylor – The benchmark. Pure awfulness.

Obsessed with street prostitution.

2. Clare Curran – Associate ICT spokesperson… who can’t use Twitter well.

3. Catherine Delahunty – Incomprehensible tweets. They make sense don’t.

4. Russel Norman – Blocks people who disagree with him.

Sanctimonious.

5. John Banks – Nothing but tweets on animal cruelty and denial of criminal charges.

In the House This Week 1.Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) – Gives the government more power to go after Student Loan debtors.

2. Victims of Crime Reform Bill – Provides more government support for victims of crime.

3. Electoral Amendment Bill – Makes voting more difficult by increasing verification standards.

4. Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill – Supports the implementation of the Trade Single Window component of the Joint Border Management System.

B y J o r d a n M c C lu s k e y

COLUMN

The I ntrepi d V C G u i lf o r d E P I S O D E 1 : A M A N W I T H A M I S S I O N

INT. 2002 Nissan Lancer.

“Victor-i-a was meant to fly, so stand up and touch the sky,” sang Guilford, surprisingly in tune. “You know Petersen, I can’t think of a finer woman than Nicki Minaj.

She’s strong, inda-pen-dunt, like a wild mare.”

“Should it not be ‘Starships’, Sir?” “Ah, yes, well ya see Starships don’t really fly, they more sort of ‘float’ due to a lack of gravyty, see. That’s the one thing I’m not too keen on, y’know, Miss. Minaj’s lyrics, they do lack a bit of substance. I like to give them more of an edju-cay-shun-al spin.”

Guilford slammed the brakes, parking behind the Student Union Building.

They stepped out of the car, in not-quite-kneelength togas.

For those of us just joining us, let me just say that there are two kinds of men in this world. Men with a mission, and men without a mission. Vice-Chancellor Guilford is a man with a mission, albeit a vague, murky kind of one which lead him to the Toga Party, searching for a ‘mole on the inside’, a student who might help him infiltrate the student body. Petersen is his assistant, who is the one who keeps me abreast of their escapades.

“Pass me my Aviators, Petersen.”

“You’re already wearing them, sir.”

“God damn it Petersen, these are my driving Aviators; I need my reading Aviators.”

They made their way around the entrance of The Hunter Lounge and joined the hormonal queue leading up to the door.

“Now, I’ve not bought any tickets, it’s hard to justify it in the budget, so when we get to the entrance just stay cool Petersen, stay cool.”

They got to the door.

“Hello, tickets please,” said the bouncer.

“God damn it, they’re onto us Petersen!

Run!” Guilford pushed Petersen inside, and

they quickly found themselves amid the crowd on the dance floor.

“What kind of mole are we looking for, sir?”

“Someone alone, someone who doesn’t look overly concerned with what happens at the University. Go survey out that boy over there, Petersen, and make sure you’re casual about it.”

“How do I be casual, sir?”

“Casual people don’t think about being casual, Petersen; that’s what makes them casual in the first place.”

“I shouldn’t worry about being casual?”

“Bloody hell Petersen; yes, you should worry about being casual. I asked you to make sure you were casual, worry about it.”

“Without thinking about it?”

“Precisely.”

“Sir?” “Petersen?”

“How do I make sure I’m not being uncasual?”

Guilford narrowed his eyes. Petersen scuttled off to the boy. ‘Starships’ began playing, and a girl next to Guilford screamed: “I. Fucking. Love. This song!”

Guilford turned and began to say, “Well actually, Starships don’t really fly, they more sort of ‘float’ due to a lack of gravy-” when he saw her – dancing alone by the door to the balcony, flailing ‘like a Friesian being chased by a bull in November’ he thought. Just the kind of person who had zero investment in anything less than three minutes in front of her, and probably taking one of the -ologies because someone had told her in 2009 that she was perceptive. She had mathematically straight dyed blonde hair.

“Petersen!”

No answer. “Bugger,” he thought, that’s right, Petersen was off worrying about being casual without thinking about it. He looked over to Petersen, when he noticed the bouncer

from earlier wading through the crowd in search of them. From the other side, the girl’s friends were returning from the bar. He sauntered up to her.

“Good eve-in-ing, what’s your name?”

“It’s Arcadia-Rae but, you’re fucking old, what the fuck you doing here?”

“Now look here, Arcadia-Rae: this is strictly confidential, but we need someone on the inside, someone we can trust. Is that you?”

The bouncer had seen Petersen and was swiftly walking towards him. Petersen was oblivious, still trying to win over the boy who was attempting to slip away.

“Are those motorcycle boots?” said ArcadiaRae. “They’re com-fa-ta-bul and provide support. But there’s no time for that.”

The boy had escaped from Petersen, which was when he saw the bouncer a little too late.

He grabbed Petersen’s hair and dragged him back through the crowd out of Guilford’s vision.

“Look here, I just need a yes or no. What do you say?”

“Um, yea, whatever.”

“They’re coming for me. Take my card, be in touch.”

Guilford dashed through the door onto the balcony, and clambered over the railing. He was trying to lower himself to the concrete below when his toga became caught, unravelling him into a pale naked pile below.

Arcadia-Rae and her friends came outside and looked down at him.

“By the way, who the fuck are you?”

Guilford tried to stand but merely groaned and fell back down.

“I’m Guilford, VC Guilford.”

by Hugo McKinnon

www.salient.co.nz

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B E I N G W E L L

I

suspect I am not the only person who from time to time lies awake in bed at 2 am thinking about the impossibly huge issue of eternity.

Once eternity is raised in my mind, a train of thought follows which includes other questions such as: “What’s the point of our existence?” and, “Where does something as relatively trivial as needing to get to sleep to get up to go to university in the morning fit in?’

An excellent book is The Antidote. Happiness for Those Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by English journalist Oliver Burkeman.

Burkeman devotes a part of his book to discussing our preoccupation with immortality and the extent to which we avoid facing the fact that we will all one day die. Religion, material possessions, alcohol and drug use, and other distractions all have a part to play in helping us cope with our fear of the future.

Burkeman proposes that we should spend more time on a daily basis reflecting on the reality of our eventual death and in essence realise that once we are dead we will have nothing to worry about. This is a simplistic over-summary of his argument, but nevertheless, we in Western countries are pretty good at avoiding subjects like mortality except at 2 am in the morning! Paradoxically, living well while at the same time reflecting regularly on death can help us to be more content and keep anxiety and fear at bay.

So what do I suggest is a way forward in this time when the future appears to be filled with increasing uncertainty, global warming, natural disasters, and difficult career prospects for university graduates?

Firstly, fear of and for the future is nothing new. We have been socialised to believe that we should have great control over our futures, and epidemic rates of anxiety among young people can be expressions of our preoccupation with the future. The answer lies in recognising the link between anxiety and an over-focus on the future, and putting in place strategies to spend more of our time and our emotional and thinking energy on living well today, accepting the reality of hardship, making choices to not obsess about unresolvable future fears, and limiting exposure to unduly bleak news stories.

We have more ability than we realise to hold an optimistic view of the future, and when we feel overwhelmed we should limit our focus to the present and remember that tomorrow, in all likelihood we will wake up and feel brighter than we did last night. If all else fails, I take great comfort from the overwhelming fact that the happiest people are the elderly – and wouldn’t you think that because they are statistically closer to death, they should be the most miserable!

G e rard Hof f man Manager Student Counselling Service Victoria University of Wellington

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M AO R I M AT T E R S

K

a mura, Ka muri.

This proverb represents the beautiful way in which Māori traditionally viewed the future. The idea is that we are all walking through life backwards. We can’t see the future just as we can’t see where we are going when we are walking backwards.

Instead, we look to the past to inform the way we move into the future. We learn from those who have gone before us. We regard the past and present as a single, comprehensible ‘space’ because that is what we have seen and known. We walk backward into the future with our thoughts directed toward the coming generations but with our eyes on the past.

The concept explains a lot about different aspects of the Māori worldview. Tradition and consultation with elders is important whenever a decision is to be made about the future.

Whakapapa and ancestry are key parts of Māori identity; who

“We walk backward into the future with our thoughts directed toward the coming generations but with our eyes on the past.” you are now is determined by all of the people who came before. Māori view land as a sacred taonga (gift) and believe we are merely kaitiaki (guardians) of the land. We do not inherit the Earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children.

We can learn a lot about the way we think about the future from this Māori proverb.

Speaking of the future, last Monday we welcomed the University’s new Vice-Chancellor, Grant Guilford, with a powhiri at Te Herenga Waka Marae. It was attended by Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, Chancellor of the University Ian McKinnon and Auckland University’s Vice-Chancellor Stuart McCutcheon.

The powhiri brought together past, present and future. V-C McCutcheon comes from Victoria’s past – he was the ViceChancellor here from 2001 to 2004. V-C Guilford will lead the University into a new era. He’s leaving behind Auckland University, where he was the Dean of Science. He will bring the skills he has learnt from his past roles to his new job.

Na Cameron Price

www.salient.co.nz

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JON

AG E : 8 5

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H EAGE L E: 4N A www.salient.co.nz

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FEATURE

E

ducation. While it’s easy to detest when you’ve got six assignments due in the next two weeks and about 500 readings to get through, it’s a pretty important aspect of life as we know it.

Nelson Mandela once said that an education is the most powerful weapon with which we can change the world. Most of us are students, voluntarily paying thousands of dollars to further our knowledge, and thus have some semblance of agreement with that statement. However, in the world today there are about one billion non-literate adults; one billion people who do not have the opportunity that we do have to not only better their own lives, but also the world in which they live.

But maybe, just maybe, this will not always be the case. A revolution has begun, and it is changing the way that we learn and redefining who has the right and the capacity to be educated.

The internet.

The idea that the web is changing the way in which the world functions is not novel, but looking at what it could do to the future of education is exciting, and stands as a beacon of hope in a future which has the potential to in other ways be very bleak. It is also not just theory – a wistful musing of what could be – the first steps have already been taken, and a trail into an improved future for education begun to be blazed.

One of the pioneers of this new reality is educational researcher Dr Sugata Mitra. In 1999, Mitra and his fellow researchers put a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi. Into this, they installed an internet-connected computer. Over the period in which the computer was left in the wall, children from the slum played with it, and in the process of doing so they learnt how to use it; going online and then teaching each other.

Mitra’s ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiments showed that children have the capacity to learn even without supervision or formal teaching.

Instead, when motivated by curiosity and peer interest, and when presented with a tool like the internet, they can teach themselves and each other. Mitra calls this “minimally invasive education”.

When the results of this experiment are applied to tertiary students, it suggests a new, more accessible path that education has the potential to take. If people have the capacity to learn and teach each other without university infrastructure, without professors

and lectures and tutorials, does this indicate a far cheaper means of gaining an education? If all it takes is a PC in a broken-down wall in an Indian slum for children to become computer literate, then surely this means that young adults have the ability to learn in courses that are made affordable and widely available by the internet.

George Mason University professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok believe that people can indeed learn outside of university walls, launching MRUniversity, a free online education project.

Set up with minimal costs, and made available to everyone with an internet connection, the professors aim to make wealth no longer a prerequisite for an education. “[People] don’t have to pay $50,000 a year to Harvard,” says Cowen: “you can go online and get something for free.”

“Education is changing rapidly, and we want to go to our graves feeling we were on the right side of history, so to speak.”

Of course, there are major hurdles to be crossed before this utopian future of education is realised. For one thing, in the world we live in today it is not enough to merely have an education – one must have the piece of paper that proves it. At the end of the day, that piece of paper is what we are paying for here at university. We could sit in on all the lectures we wanted to for free, but we pay thousands of dollars to have a certificate that says “I am capable” to employers because to simply be capable is not enough.

Obviously, nothing happens overnight, and not everyone is open to change. Before universities as we know them make way for a new future of virtual learning, the concept of what it means to be educated needs to evolve. This will undoubtedly be met with opposition from those for whom the current reality of education works – such as bricks-and-mortar universities who profit from the current requirement for a ‘qualification’. No doubt the changed future of education will be a drawn-out evolutionary process, rather than an immediate alteration. Maybe we won’t live to see a world in which everyone has at their fingertips an education, and thus the ability to make the world a better place. But among so many tidings of degradation and destruction in our futures and the futures of our children, the fact that something as important as education might actually get better is hopeful indeed. l www.salient.co.nz

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FEATURE

Wh e r e w e ’r e g o i n g , w e d o n’t n e e d r o a d s .

Wh e r e w e ’r e g o i n g , w e m i g h t n e e d s o m e r o a d s .

Wh e r e w e ’r e g o i n g , w e ’r e g o i n g t o h av e t o build even more roads, to keep up with the massive, almost absurd, demand for roads.

Wh e r e t h e f u c k a r e w e g o i n g ? A l e x a n d r a Hollis explores the future of transport.

Soaring High

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very year since the ‘60s, at or around New Year, people have been throwing up their arms, proclaiming the date, and crying “it’s [insert year here], where are our flying cars??!!?!!” Well, they’re here. Sort of.

There are currently two main possibilities for the first flying car of the 21st century; the PAL-V ONE, and the Transition by Terrafugia. The PAL-V ONE is more of a three-wheeled motorcycle than a car, and is equipped with a fold-out propeller at the top, which, when driven to an airfield, can be unfurled to turn the ‘car’ into a gyropter.

The Transition, when flying, looks like a conventional aeroplane; in ‘drive mode’, the wings simply fold up against the sides of the ‘car’. It’s pretty ugly.

The problem with these designs is that they’re not really flying cars; both options are designed for pilots and require the vehicle go to an airfield before taking off – they’d be better labelled ‘drivable planes’.

Terrafugia (their slogan: “We make flying cars”) do have a design for a more versatile, Jetsons-esque flying car: the TF-X. This car would have a vertical takeoff and landing like a helicopter; theoretically, you would be able to fly your car from right outside your garage. But this is hardly the mass-market transport of the future; Terrafugia says that the “development of the TF-X is expected to last eight to 12 years.” At the moment, they’re encouraging interested buyers to invest first in the Transition, which they’re anticipating will cost around US$279,000.

It’s also likely that there could be governmental restrictions on this technology, if it is ever successful. Post

9/11, it doesn’t exactly seem like a great idea to have more vehicles flying around, especially in urban areas. I don’t want to crush your dreams, but flying cars probably aren’t going to happen, and, even if they are, you’re not going to get one anytime soon.

Ta k i n g Y o u f o r a R i d e In the future, Google will either be a utopian, god-like enterprise, gifting the world with crazy inventions and holidaythemed doodles, or it will be the death of us all. It knows what you began to type into your search bar but then deleted. It knows the frequency with which you email your mother. It knows where you work and where you live. What’s scarier than a corporation which knows almost everything about you, and wields considerable wealth and power? That corporation, plus robots.

Okay, they’re not robots (but this is happening! See sidebar! Be scared!). They’re cars. Autonomous – self-driving – cars which Google has been developing since 2010, having successfully lobbied the governments of Nevada, Florida, California and Michigan for permission to test on the open road. They’ve racked up hundreds of thousands of miles testing this software, which is programmed with GPS (to give the car your destination), the speed limits of every road, and sensors, which enable the car to slow down at intersections and tell the person in the car if anyone is crossing the road. Just like with cruise control, the person in the car can step in at any time and override the autonomous controls, but, so far, Google says they haven’t needed to;

apart from a Google car being rear-ended while stopped at a light, there have been no accidents.

The idea of autonomous cars, able to pull their passengers into the path of oncoming traffic, or drive off a cliff, or into the side of their own houses, is kinda terrifying.

Computers break; computers can be hacked into. Who’s to say we should cede control to them? Well, according to NPR’s Alexis Madrigal, we may not even notice.

“Futuristic visions distract us from the ways in which cars are already making decisions for us,” he says, pointing out existing autonomous software in cars today. This includes Nissan cars correcting your sloppy turns, and Volkswagen Passats “countersteering” cars back into their lane if the driver drifts over the line. “By the time Google’s cars arrive in your driveway, you’ll be acclimatised to the idea of an artificial intelligence grabbing the wheel because you’ll have handed over control tens of thousands of times,” Madrigal says. This future is already creeping up on us.

I t ’s G r e a s e L i g h t n i n g They may be the cars of the future, but electric cars are by no means a new invention. In fact, they’ve been around since the 1880s. (I know; they had cars in the 1880s? They had electricity?) Presciently, in 1911, a New York Times article stated that electric cars were “cleaner and quieter” than petrol cars, and that, being the “much more economical” version, they had “long been recognised as the ideal.” But life – and Henry Ford – got in the way. Prior to technological advancements to combustion www.salient.co.nz

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engines, petrol cars were difficult to run, and their price had not yet been driven down by mass production. By the 1930s, competing against cheaper, easier petrol cars, electric cars had been phased out.

Now, they’re enjoying a renaissance.

But they are no longer the cheaper option; while many governments provide grants or incentives to owners of electric cars, in 2011, a Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership report stated that electric cars will only match petrol cars in price by 2030. The poster child for electric cars, the Tesla Model S, is currently more than twice the price of the average US car. Given this, it’s a testament to the quality of electric cars and the clout that being green brings that the Tesla Model S was named Car of the Year 2013 by at least nine publications, and given Consumer Reports’ highest-ever score – 99 out of 100. Even despite their inflated prices, in Norway, electric cars topped the monthly ranking of new-car sales three times in 2013. This is the nature of the electric car in 2014; given the choice between electric or petrol, a considerable number of people are choosing to go electric. With battery life increasing and prices going down, it seems like this is only going to continue.

Droning On But we may be beating down the wrong track when we talk about the transport of the future. Public transport, especially given a growing population, is doubtless going to be the mainstay of the cities. For commuters, however, there may not need to be any ‘transport of the future’ at all.

Because at the same time as we’re seeing electric cars, driverless cars, flying cars, and a myriad of other types of individual transportation in various states of production, we’re also seeing an increasing trend of things coming to us, rather than us coming to them. The age of the commuter is in decline; with the internet, more and more people are working from home.

We don’t actually need to go anywhere anymore; we already get our clothes from ASOS, order our groceries online, buy our books and DVDs from Amazon.

Amazon have recently unveiled their ‘Prime Air’ plan to drastically cut delivery times. Instead of boring old trucks, which 26

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can take up to five days to ship goods, they aim to get packages to customers within half an hour, by using unmanned aerial vehicles – drones. While it’s disconcerting to imagine the latest Jodi Picoult being whisked to your doorstep by the same sort of machine known to most of us for gunning down civilians in Afghanistan (and there is a worry that this may serve to normalise the use of drones in warfare), drones may well be the future of shortdistance freight shipping. They’re quicker than driving a truck on a road, cheaper than hiring a truck driver for the truck, and greener than the emissions the truck would put out. They’re also kind of cool.

W e ’ r e N e a r l y Th e r e Whatever the future is, it’s looking greener. Electric cars are poised to become major players in the next few years, and this is helped in part by some consumers’ eagerness to buy green; environmentally friendly sells, and car companies are aware of this. Making greener cars becomes not just an ideological stance, but a highly marketable strategy.

In fact, this ‘greener future’ might just be a side effect; while the Google car was not conceived as a green car, it has green side effects. The head of the project, Dr Sebastian Thrun, is “a passionate promoter of the potential to use robotic vehicles to make highways safer and lower the nation’s energy costs,” and John Markoff, writing for The New York Times, talks about the cars’ “potential to reduce fuel consumption by eliminating heavy-footed stop-and-go drivers and, given the reduced possibility of accidents, to ultimately build more lightweight vehicles.” We can see this again with Amazon’s use of drones; as freight vehicles, they are far more environmentally friendly than a truck, train or plane, but this seems to come second to Amazon’s main objective: getting shit to you on time.

We’ve got some really cool things happening in the next few years, as well as some potentially terrifying ones; things are going to get greener, and smarter, and more efficient. We’re going to get greener, smarter, and more efficient. It could be great. But we won’t have flying cars, and the robotic vehicles are about to descend; Google could still kill us all.

Revvin’ it up: other cool shit happening (in order of least to most scary) California High-Speed Rail – It’s going to cost upwards of $91 billion, and take at least 15 years to complete, but by 2030 there could be high-speed rail running between LA and San Francisco.

It’s estimated that trains could drive at up to 350 km/h, taking less than three hours to complete the entirety of the track.

Currently, the flight time between the LA and San Francisco is 57 minutes.

Martin Jetpack – Can you call something ‘new’ if it’s been in production for 30 years in a Christchurch garage? You can certainly call it very Kiwi. The Martin Jetpack has been a long time coming, but last year, the Civil Aviation Authority granted it permission to flight-test, and the company is currently looking for investors for their jetpack, which would cost around $150,000 and have a flight time of half an hour.

The Airlander – The biggest aircraft ever made, the Airlander is a hybrid blimp/aeroplane/helicopter that can stay in the air for THREE WEEKS. It uses hydrogen rather than helium (so hopefully no Hindenburg pt. 2), is green, and can carry up to 50 tonnes almost anywhere in the world. There are some really exciting ramifications for peacekeeping operations here, but also less peaceful possibilities: the Airlander can remain flying even with multiple bullet holes, so could be used for military purposes.

Boston Dynamics – Google owns them. The name sounds disturbingly like Massive Dynamic, the amoral corporation from the J. J. Abrams show Fringe (which was set in Boston). And they have a robot called the Cheetah which can run up to 46 km/h, surpassing Usain Bolt’s record for fastest human footspeed at 44.72.

Other robots include: BigDog, which can carry 340 pounds over rough terrain, and is funded by the US military, and SandFlea, also funded by the military, which can jump 30 feet into the air. This, Boston Dynamics helpfully points out, “is high enough to jump over a compound wall, onto the roof of a house, up a set of stairs or into a second story window.”

www.salient.co.nz

27

As a young boy about to leave high school, I took a momentary break from being an aloof dick and engaging with school events as little as possible to fill out a question for my school-leavers yearbook – “Where do you see yourself in ten years? Answer with one word.” My first prophecy, “incontinent”, was declined, as was my second (“indisposed”) and third (“Pokemon-Master”). My callow sense of humour aside, at the time I believed I was in control of my future; I wasn’t aware that, while there are some things I can control, other societal strictures and phenomena will hold me inevitably in thrall. One of these pervasive, permeating things is ‘hyperreality’.

‘H

yperreality’ is a term coined by a crotchety old academic, Jean Baudrillard, to describe a perceived societal shift away from an ‘objective’ reality and into a fabricated one. What we might perceive as reality is in fact a simulation. It’s not that these referents don’t exist, exactly, but that they are trapped in a recursion loop.

Consider the “most photographed barn in America” in Don DeLillo’sWhite Noise, whose representation as an item of banal fame is self-generating, or signs that don’t reference anything concrete but instead reference other signs in an endless and futile cycle. Essentially, hyperreality is the continuing erosion of the distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ that occurs as developments in technology are made. If this blather seems confusing and needlessly arcane, you’re not wrong, but rest easy; clarification is on its way. Deep breaths.

Imagine you’re in a theme park – Disneyland. You’re surrounded by the hustle and bustle of crowds, shrieking peals of children’s laughter, a faint scent of candy floss. You might be about to board a ride, or be moving from ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’ to the rollercoaster; no doubt, despite yourself, you’re having a great time. Then, when it comes time to leave, you enter the car park – and suddenly a weird sort of loneliness overcomes you. You find yourself “in the absolute solitude of the parking lot – a veritable concentration camp”.

The juxtaposition with the fun you had at the theme park couldn’t be more stark.

This is how hyperreality was described to me as a fresh-faced first year, and I think it’s the most effective illustration because it avoids the theoretical explanations one usually couches it in, opting instead for a visceral ideation we’re all likely to have felt. The theme park here represents the virtual and the artificial stimulation of human consciousness, while the car park is the alienation that comprises the human condition, and which Disneyland attempts to allay.

In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a spurned lover attempts to erase the memories of his relationship. Eternal Sunshine is a decade old now, and though science hasn’t quite managed to locate specific memories and rewrite experiences in the nebulous realm of the brain, it’s no longer out of the realm of plausibility. Researchers have discovered a gene, TET1, that overwrites old memories with new ones, and it is already being proposed as a treatment for posttraumatic

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the future issue

stress disorder after successful trials on mice. This ability to construct a reality that did not actually occur blurs the lines between what’s real and what’s not, and is certainly an example of what Baudrillard foretold.

Similarly, in the recently released Her, a man falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system (voiced seductively by Scarlett Johansson, so it’s not as ridiculous as it sounds). This is the phenomenon of love placed upon a pre-programmed, technologically advanced machine; but is it necessarily entirely artificial if the feeling is genuine, aided but not induced by technology? This is where those worried about the increasing prevalence of the hyperreality have perhaps genuine concern – what if, in the course of technological and media progress, we somehow lose our humanity along the way?

That said, I had a few qualms with this hyperreality business.

How do you decide what constitutes ‘reality’ and ‘non-reality’?

It seems a bit tenuous at best, and at worst an extension of the scare-mongering sanctimony with which most of the elderly tend to view technology. And, even if it is true, is it necessarily a bad thing if it makes people feel happy and fulfilled? How do you decide what makes someone genuinely happy or fulfilled anyway? I feared we were fast entering psychological and philosophical territory that I could not broach on my own, so after getting rebuffed by the Politics department (not one of them was qualified to speak on postmodern theory smgh), I turned to English Lecturer Dr James Meffan for guidance.

Dr Meffan (who I affectionately call Dr Meffanphetamine) began our discussion by explaining that the concept of ‘hyperreality’, for those who agree that it is a phenomenon, is an immensely divisive one in the academic community. Some “pessimists” perceive it as a pernicious assault against what it means to be human that results in desensitisation and could even result in us being consumed by, “well, virtual reality”.

There are others, however, who believe in its emancipatory potential, and that recognising that the hyperreality can result in one positively critiquing one’s own perceptions and why we hold them.

In the course of my research, I chanced upon a couple of papers that took especial umbrage with the ‘mediascape’ (neologism courtesy of David Hill) aspect of hyperreality.

According to these authors, the influence of hyperreality could

be attributed to all manner of antisocial behaviours – one even implied that hyperreality could be ascribed as an influence in the tragic, infamous Columbine school shooting. I put this to James, but after giving the question due consideration, he remains sceptical. “If, after a school shooting, the culprit was interviewed and said that they thought the whole thing was a game [without consequences] then I’d be terrified… but they all say, you know, I just wanted to get back at the fuckers [who tormented me]. I think it’s reasonable to say that most people can tell the difference between a video game and real life, if you will.”

So that’s the naysayers accounted for. What is the justification of those in the pro- camp? Part of it is semantics, or more specifically semiotics – according to some proponents of postmodernism, all social signals are trapped in a recursion loop anyway. James uses our conversation as example – you can nod your head at appropriate intervals and maintain eye contact, which we know represents attentive listening, while in your head you can be a million miles away. All behaviour is learned and, because of social influence, performative – all of our actions and reactions are channelled through a loop of signs that we know to be appropriate, and this compromises their authenticity. As such, on a purely symbolic level, ‘hyperreality’ serves to make clear what was once ambiguous; that all signs are manufactured anyway.

Another defence of hyperreality, and perhaps a more tangibly useful one, is that it forces us to question what we consider to be real and fake. This feeds into James’ fascination with narratology: “one of the most basic narratological principles is that the more time we spend with a character, the more likely the writer is to elicit sympathy from the reader.” This isn’t just a flash in the pan – “people wonder why three triplets, from New Zealand, can die in a mall fire and the whole country feels it… while when in China 10,000 peasants get killed in a flood and people are indifferent.” The narratological principle extends beyond the realm of fiction and seeps inexorably into our lives. This insidious Western narrative doesn’t dehumanise the Chinese peasants in the scenario, not exactly, but it renders it less real and more palatable because the New Zealand triplets have a perceived right to our sympathy. Hyperreality can provide us with an opportunity to interrogate why we feel that some things are more real and present than others, and reflect on the societal influences that make this so.

But now, back to the future: with ‘hyperreality’ increasing its dominion as technology advances, how are we coping with it? James asserts that things have changed already. “Ten years ago, people used to complain about people who were famous just for being famous, but now we’re less inclined to question it.” The reason for this, James hypothesises, is that we’ve become inured to circular symbolic loops. Whether the ramifications of this increasing tolerance to the hyperreal will be detrimental remains to be seen, but James is tentatively optimistic about the future. “Hyperreality makes us question our own uniqueness,” and by extension societal influence; and, as any Philosophy student will tell you, one must necessarily know the parameters of the cage one is trapped in to have any hope of getting out.

My interview with James clarified a few things, but I am still wary of accepting hyperreality as an unimpeachable theory. For one thing, I think it makes a highbrow claim in its definition of ‘hyperreality’. While the internet, video games and television are often seen as examples of components of hyperreality, more ‘sophisticated’ pursuits such as literature do not get cast in its net – this in spite of the fact that literature, almost by definition, requires the boundaries of the real and the fictional to blur. I also think that if hyperreality does exist, its infiltration of ‘real life’ is so entrenched it seems bizarre to not think of hyperreality as just a facet of life. Imagine you’re so terrified of hyperreality you run off into the forest to live an ascetic and hermetic life, avoiding technology at all costs; who is experiencing something that does not constitute ‘reality’ as we know it to be?

Thusly I leave you, with my relationship with hyperreality still conflicted and unresolved. If I may offer one observation of my own before I depart: by now, you’ve surely noticed that feeling grief, despondence, frustration, fury feels just as, if not more, human than feeling happy. If you’re using hyperreality as a tool to achieve constant happiness, then be warned that you’re missing something essential to a fulfilling experience.

But to my mind, a theory of hyperreality is flawed because there’s no reason why hyperreality can’t offer a full range of human emotion – and it’s no one’s business telling you that the things that make you feel the way you do is wrong. Go forth and cry to The Notebook, shoot hoodlums on GTA and ride the Fear Fall. It’s your life. Make of it what you will.

www.salient.co.nz

29

CREATIVE

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ll know that 3D printing is the future. The 3D printer will, in the future, allow us to personalise our everyday objects. How cool is that?

S e a m l es s B lo s s o m 2012 design graduate, Richard Clarkson, created the Seamless Blossom at Victoria University School of Design. It is the world’s first inflatable object made using a 3D Printer. Using photosensitive polymers, it replicates the natural blooming of a flower.

You can see more Clarkson’s work at http://richardclarkson.com.

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the future issue

CREATIVE

XYZ SHOE The culmination of a Masters thesis completed at Victoria University Design School, Earl Stewart’s XYZ shoe is an exploration into design pluralism. A podiatrist bases the sole’s design on accurate 3D scans of the feet to ensure comfort, stability & alignment for the benefit of the individual.

You can see more of Stewart’s work at http://cargocollective.com/ earlstewart.

www.salient.co.nz

31

Sports banter with sammy p Winter

T

is

Coming

he approaching winter means that the sporting calendar completes its annual transformation of codes and competitions, so I thought it appropriate to preview a few highlights and talking points of the upcoming season.

Football: What is there not to love about the FIFA World Cup? In no other sporting event are there so many global superstars or such high-quality on-field action, consolidating it as the most eagerly anticipated tournament on the planet. While Germany and Spain lead the European contingent, the host nation (Brazil) and Argentina are the top contenders from the Americas for the tournament, which kicks off in Rio in June.

Rugby: Will the All Blacks’ domination continue? Of course it will. Will the Chiefs complete a threepeat? I say yes – a great coach in Dave Rennie, a growing ability to close out the tight games, and an impressive collection of on-field leaders such as Aaron Cruden and Liam Messam ensures that the Waikato men are once again New Zealand’s best chance of claiming the title. And how about that Benji Marshall? If he can keep the Blues backline straight and read the game competently, there’s no reason he can’t challenge the country’s top number 10s.

NRL: There’s nothing better than chilling

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the future issue

on the couch on a Sunday afternoon with a quarter-pack and some Sunday-afternoon footy on the box. The only thing that is usually missing is a successful Warriors outfit. Sadly, I see this year being no different – although some brilliant pre-season form from Shaun Johnson and the exciting signing of British star Sam Tomkins will energise their attack, expect the discipline and defence of teams such as Manly, the Roosters or Melbourne to grind out another grand-final result.

Commonwealth Games: In my humble opinion, the games barely warrant a mention. They have ignited no real hype or excitement as of yet, and Delhi’s hosting of 2010’s tournament was abysmal. Nevertheless, the games kick off in Glasgow on 23 July.

Around the grounds: If Tiger can straighten up his driver he’ll win a major (or two), the availability of NBA stars will dictate results at the FIBA World Cup in Spain, and after Wawrinka’s triumph in Melbourne, expect the giants of world tennis such as Nadal and Djokovic to claim the three remaining slams.

In Wellington: Like last year, both the AFL and NRL make a cameo appearance in the capital this year, with the Warriors taking on the Tigers on 29 March and St Kilda hosting the Brisbane Lions at the Cake Tin on Anzac Day. Unfortunately, it looks like it could be another fruitless year for the likes of the Phoenix and the Hurricanes.

In Wellington

this week:

Saturday, 4.35: Cake Tin – Hurricanes vs Cheetahs.

Top 3

on the box:

3) NRL: Souths @ Manly, Sky Sport, Friday, 9.40 pm.

2) A-League: Adelaide Utd @ WSW, Sky Sport, Saturday, 7.30 pm.

1) Super Rugby: Stormers @ Chiefs, Sky Sport, Friday, 7.30 pm.

Top 5 sporting rivalries

5. Federer v Nadal: The thing that has made this rivalry so special over the years is the sheer quality of on-court action these guys provide. And although Rafa and Federer have a mutual respect for one another, there still exists an uneasy tension between the two when they meet on court.

4. The Ashes: It’s rational to say that there’s a fair bit of hatred between the Australian and English cricketers. It’s also one of the most competitive sporting traditions: after 132 years of Ashes cricket, the ledger is dead square with each team having recorded 68 series wins.

3. Frazier v Ali: These two blokes really didn’t get along.

They were also elite fighters who gave us some of the greatest fights ever seen, such as the ‘Thrilla in Manila’ and ‘The Fight of the Century’.

2. State of Origin: State against state, mate against mate.

There’s nothing quite like the State of O – the best-quality rugby league on the planet mixed with passionate inter-state hatred.

1. Real Madrid v Barcelona: We could have just as easily compiled a top-five football-rivalry list. We’ve isolated El Clasico as the most distinguishable footballing rivalry as it’s a mouth-watering on-field battle between two of the world’s most famous clubs, and also symbolises a set of historically engrained political and cultural tensions within Spain.

The Sweet Scoop With Julia Wells

H

ello, and welcome to The Sweet Scoop!

I’ll be your baking hostess, taking you through a year of fortnightly columns, featuring cakes, biscuits, desserts, pies and all manner of sweet treats. I focus on recipes that are both simple and delicious; ones that don’t require complex equipment, expensive ingredients, or difficult/time-consuming techniques.

Although baking is often represented as something complex and mysterious, a ‘you’ve either got it or you haven’t’ situation, nothing could be further from the truth. If you follow a recipe and don’t accidentally leave it overnight in the oven, then baking is as simple as highschool social studies.

This cake is a good example of that. I’d hate to be seen to be over-selling myself, but this cake is amazing. Actually amazing. I’m very

Conspiracy Corner “The Man By

A

Golden Snub” Incognito Montoya with the

s I can only be as relevant as the internet connection in my classified hideaway will allow me, this week I’ve been examining a conspiracy that unites the high-profile and the low-profile, the stars and their viewers. The question on everyone’s lips, now compounded after the events of the 86th annual Academy Awards; why hasn’t Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar yet? And more importantly, how in the Nine Realms did Matthew McConaughey manage to win?

DiCaprio’s loss is particularly bitter this year. His latest film The Wolf of Wall Street was sweeping American ‘award season’. So-called because the movies released before the big awards shows are timed so that the geriatric Old Boys Filmgoers Club (‘the Academy’)

fussy about chocolate cakes. I hate it when they’re dry, and when they’re not chocolatey enough. I even hate Nigella Lawson’s chocolate cake.

Ever since first making this one, I’ve made it for every birthday/occasion I can, and it’s been stunning every time. It is deliciously decadent: deeply chocolatey cake, filled with cream and jam, and topped by a ganache.

It’s simple to make, and uses basic cupboard ingredients. And if you leaving out the filling and icing, it’s vegan. Cakes don’t get much better than this.

C ho colate Ca k e

For the cake: • 1 ¼ cups flour • 1 ¼ cups white sugar • ¾ cup cocoa powder • 1 teaspoon baking powder • 1 teaspoon baking soda • ½ teaspoon salt • ⅓ cup vegetable oil • 1 teaspoon vanilla essence • 1 teaspoon white/cider vinegar • 1 cup of strong coffee (instant is fine)

stays fairly moist, so watch carefully. It is done when the top is soft and springy, when a skewer comes out clean, and when it shrinks slightly from the tin edges. Leave to cool, then slice in half horizontally (I use a long knife, but some swear by dental floss). Fill with jam and whipped cream, and cover the top with ganache.

For the ganache: • 100 mL cream • 100 g dark chocolate Heat the cream in a pan until just boiling.

Turn off and add the chocolate, which will melt. Stir until smooth, then pour over the cake.

For the filling: • jam (optional) • whipped cream

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Mix all ingredients together until smooth. Pour into a greased tin and bake (about 30 minutes). The cake

can nominate them because they saw them recently. So, already, it’s a pretty rigged game.

DiCaprio’s depiction of Jordan Belfort, the money-grubbing scumbag/economic genius from Wolf just wasn’t good enough for the Academy to finally throw the wolf a bone.

One would think that when the stars aligned in the seats of Dolby Theatre, it would be DiCaprio’s time. Even a lowly numerologist can tell you it’s auspicious, with the number 86 being associated with ending or eradicating.

“The question on everyone’s lips, now compounded after the events of the 86th annual Academy Awards; why hasn’t Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar yet?”

But it’s not enough to look at the mere signs; like the man said, we have to go deeper.

The kick came for me while I was scouring for reviews of Wolf, specifically where wealth disparity in the audience was highlighted.

The general consensus from the ‘99 per cent’ viewers was that they felt that the film doesn’t go far enough in calling Belfort an outright villain. However, the top of the pyramid sees different. Business Insider reviewed the

film among an audience of Goldman Sachs employees, who actively cheered as DiCaprio snorted coke, wallowed in cash and acted like a psychopath, as if to say: “Finally, a rich white male character that represents me!”

The honour for Best Actor went to Matthew McConaughey for his role in Dallas Buyers Club as a rodeo cowboy afflicted with HIV. It’s this sort of performance that the Academy tends to reward: an established, handsome actor playing a beloved American icon afflicted with a condition to ‘overcome’, but one that doesn’t detract from his appearance. It’s safe and down-home enough for the old folks, but with just enough modern context and respect to those the movie depicts so that liberal whippersnappers don’t kick up a fuss.

If the Oscar went to DiCaprio instead, it would reveal the Academy for what it really is: rich people giving each other golden statues to reward themselves for making money off the middle class. Ironically, when it comes to Oscar bait, McConaughey has mastered the inception needed to persuade the Academy.

And so, as DiCaprio weeps snacking on the chocolate inside his Golden Globe, the conspiracy persists.

www.salient.co.nz

33

“Your future is now and you have no choice but to do your own grocery shopping. This is why, over and above talking about your hopes and dreams, I’m going to teach you how to do your grocery shopping.”

S h i rt & Sw e e t w i t h E l e a n o r M e rt o n

y o u r w e e k ly c o l u m n o n h ow t o b e a n n oy e d but still cute.

D

earest and most lovely readers (I’m being nice now so that I can be mean in some brackets later), the future will doubtless be bright and full of very exciting things that will make you happy and carefree and this is not what I want for you which is why we are not going to talk about those parts of the future. We can talk about your future though. Your hopes and dreams, your great loves and successes, your trials and tribulations and worries and I’m not being genuine. Your future is now and you have no choice but to do your own grocery shopping. This is why, over and above talking about your hopes and dreams, I’m going to teach you how to do your grocery shopping. And I’m going to teach you how to do it in a way that best supports the cute/shirty paradigm which I am trying so hard to embed in the heart of each and every one of Victoria’s best (and by best I mean miserly bunch) (and by miserly bunch I mean you). And so, without further ado:

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the future issue

H ow t o S u p p o rt t h e P a r a d i g m W h i l e G ro c e ry S h o p p i n g First of all, I don’t want to alienate any readers and so if the cute/shirty paradigm is not your thing, I have included an alternative. If your paradigm jam is more of the intense/dangerous/a little bit crazy, I have something that may interest you. It’s a little game catchily named ‘freak out the checkout worker with the right combination of items’. If you want the fast track to weird looks, I suggest a pregnancy test and single coat hanger. (This one is especially effective if you’re a guy.) Another option would be fish fingers and custard, which will convince people that you’re a crazed Doctor Who fan and we don’t need to talk about how I know this.

However, if you actually do need to purchase legitimate life-sustaining items, you need a different way to uphold the cute/shirty paradigm. The first thing one must do when attempting to present to the outside world the reality of one’s deep-seated despondence for and annoyance at everything external (read shirtiness) yet also your complete eligibility for the role of fairy at a children’s birthday party, is wear the right facial expression. This facial expression will probably fall somewhere between quite stoned and maximum flirt level. Once this expression is fixed in place, the actual process of shopping can begin.

Now, if the items you need to purchase are by definition intimidating as well as indicative of cuteness, like a black leather studded kitten collar (letting people know

that you are both punk and also a kitten owner), then you will not have to try so hard. However, if you need to buy toilet paper and carrots, the right facial expression will not be enough to help you. What you will need, is the full-deal body language.

This demands an elongated neck and the direction of eye contact away from anyone else’s eyes. This will let everyone know that you are better than them, and the fact that you are buying toilet paper automatically makes that toilet paper better than theirs.

Furthermore, a slightly exaggerated amount of attention paid to where you are stepping will reinforce your deceptive friendliness to onlookers. Also, be sure to leave your trolley in the middle of the aisle while stepping delicately to the shelves to retrieve your next purchase. Lead all of your movements with your toes.

However, I imagine that some of you perhaps want to utterly solidify your paradigm presentation, and so I will at this point share some potent knowledge with you. If you manage to smile a little, still not making eye contact with anyone, drifting a little through the sea of the supermarket, you will appear to anyone observing to be the cutest and yet also most disengaged and relatively unimpressed being in the supermarket. You will be annoyed but also comfortable and confident, and you will be shirty and cute.

If you successfully hold each of these in place, then you will have successfully upheld a paradigm during your grocery shop, and I am proud. Your future is bright.

BIRDS & bees W I T H C U P I E H O ODW I N K I

wa n t m y b oy f r i e n d t o f u c k m e when

wav e . when

I’ m

riding the crimson

It is the time I wa n t i t t h e

of the month most, but he

just seems terrified.

W h at

O

do

I

do?

h honey, if I had a dollar for every time I’d been cock-blocked by my period, I’d be Making. It. Rain. I’d also have suffered a lot less sexual frustration in my time. (Seriously womb, do you have to stage a full-on evacuation on the first day in four months when it looks like I might be getting some?!)

Aside from causing me serious distress, however, I can’t say that my pez has ever made me feel particularly horny. Generally, I’m so cramped and crabby that I’m surprised anyone wants to talk to me, let alone bang. But, dear reader, you are not alone! A brief consultation with Dr Google tells me that wanting to shag during Shark Week is a fairly common phenomenon, and is likely caused by all the buzzy shit going down with your hormones. What’s more, period sex is also said to reduce cramping and make your period end faster!

So, what to do? First things first, it’s totally natural for your boyfriend to find the whole bleeding thing a little weird –

remember how terrifying your mum’s period chat was when you were ten? That being said, just as you and I got used to the monthly fanny fountain, so should he. If he makes you feel dirty or ashamed about being a fertile goddess, then tell him where to shove it. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Even if your man doesn’t feel comfortable having sex as you normally would, it just takes a little creativity to ensure you both still get to have a good time. I refuse to subscribe to the idea that period week = blowjob week (sorry, guys). Next time Aunty Flo comes to visit, you could try…

Sex in the shower – it’s hot, heavy, and clean all in one!

Throw down a manky old towel on the bed and get your guy to wear a condom so none of your lady liquid touches his precious penis.

If he’s not convinced by the protection a thin sheath of latex will provide, try banging with a strap-on or get him to do you with your dildo instead.

Make your clit the star of the show – put a tampon in and get him to rub/ vibrate that delightful ball of nerve endings silly.

DIY: wank like you’re a teenage boy who’s just discovered Brazzers.

Finally, a wee word of warning: never, [ITALICS: never], fuck with a tampon in. Sure, you might naively think that leaving one in is a great solution to your intercourse impasse – a wee cotton dam to stem the flow while you bone. Not so! Not only is ramming the tam going to be really uncomfortable, but you also run a very serious risk of getting it stuck up there. Don’t think that’s possible?

Go talk to someone who’s paid good money to get one removed by a medical professional.

someone

Just like distressed debt, this is one hella high-risk investment. If it all works out, this mutually beneficial business could be an overnight success – but the chance of a crash is very high indeed.

While it might be a pleasure doing business with her now, unless you make it completely clear that you intend to cash in quickly, your bargain will be an unconscionable one. The parameters of your agreement must be set out in no uncertain terms prior to engagement.

In short, if you don’t want to destroy her business confidence, and you’re sure that you’re only in it for the tap’n’gap, then maybe it’s best that you diversify your portfolio. Seek out short-term investment with some liquid ass-ets elsewhere, until you’re ready to commit to her in the way that she wants.

Yours, Ms Hoodwink (MBA) Not enrolled in ECON130? Translation: If you’re after something casual but they want a relationship, then you gotta cover your arse, and tread with caution.

Let them know how you’re feeling BEFORE you bang. Even then, you have to ask yourself – is it worth the heartbreak?

Trust me, you’ll find DTF galore on Tinder/Grindr/Blendr.

Got a burning question for C u p i e ? A s k h e r a b o u t a l l m at t e r s o f t h e h e a rt … a n d o t h e r r o m a n t i c o r g a n s a n o n y m o u s ly at a s k . f m /C u p i e H o o d w i n k

Got

a b u r n i n g s e n s at i o n i n y o u r

nether regions?

H e a lt h

Good luck, Cupie xx If

Dear Eligible Bachelor(ette) of Commerce,

Give Student 463 5308,

a call on

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wa n t e d t o c o n d u c t s o m e m u t u a l ly b e n e f i c i a l b u s i n e s s , d o e s it make me a terrible person if

I’m

I

go for it, even though

p r e t t y s u r e s h e e v e n t ua l ly

wa n t s s o m e k i n d o f l o n g - t e r m investment, but

I

don’t?

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35

H istory Th at H a s n ’ t Happened Y e t Introduction (idea of the future)

A

s a History student who promotes the past and its significance, a debut column focussing on ‘the future’ seems altogether contradictory. Indeed, the very future content of this column seems dicey at best as I grapple with ideas/events that are happening at present, or indeed haven’t happened yet. However, maybe the future and the past aren’t that different. The future is informed by where we are and the present is informed by where we came from.

If this is the case, what does history mean for the future? For what is the future if not

We ir d i nt er ne t sh i t W ith H en ry & P h i l i p Lost Media

W

hat do a TV presenter’s televised suicide, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s first tape, and Shaq O’Neal’s never-released album have in common?

A particularly horrid answer might have it that each is equally awful, but there is a markedly more specific connection than that: all three feature as entries on Lostmedia.wiki.com, one of the most enthralling websites I’ve had the pleasure of perusing in ages.

The Lost Media Wiki attempts to document “a history of lost media (audio 36

the future issue

history that hasn’t happened yet?

Our fears for the future are often tangled together with our ideas of the past. In the same way you learn not to wear white pants to a party again in form two, the world is scared of its own skeletons. We’re scared of Russia’s power and its government’s seeming lack of humanity because the last time Russia had some clout it involved war, gulags and a large Communist bloc. We’re scared of Iran’s nuclear weaponry because the world can end, and because it almost did in 1962 when the Soviet Union and the United States played the world’s most dangerous game of nuclear poker. We worry about Xinjiang separatists in China because there have been more wars based on some warped sense of patriotism than I can count on my hands.

Without wanting to make sweeping generalisations about human nature (as I am not wont to generalise; nor to sweep for that matter), there remains so much of history in which humans seem to repeat themselves. People seem to have a sense of unease about this ‘future’ of ours, regardless of how repetitive history implies it is. We have always worried that things have

gone too far. We worry about Lady Gaga the same way the 1950s worried about rock’n’roll.

Miley’s twerking is Elvis’s hip-gyrations. Shock tactics have come and gone in the same way before, and guess what, it’s still not a big deal.

But are we doomed to live a future according to the past? In the past 50 years, the human race has revolutionised ideas and technology that were previously hundreds of years in the making. Is everything cyclical? If history shows us anything, it’s that this abstract concept ‘the future’ is unique in that it can be a source of fear and a source of hope. The ‘future’ has kept people going in times of genocide; it has spurred the idea of peacekeeping and goals of being carbon neutral by 2016/2020/tbc.

I suppose we can assume that we’ll learn from some things that are happening at the moment, whereas others seem doomed to repeat themselves. It will be the hope of this column to explore just that.

or video, fiction or non-fiction)”, which encompasses “totally missing media to rare or unreleased media”. There are articles on rare artistic efforts, limited releases and indefinitely shelved works. In more macabre territory, it also details documents and evidence used in court that have been heavily restricted, securely vaulted or totally destroyed.

The thrill of the website, obviously, stems from the mystery involved with pieces of art that cannot be easily accessed (all the more enticing in our era of easy file-sharing). Even more cool is that, while reading, your mind inevitably considers the prospect (however small) that these might one day come to light. The knowledge that in all likelihood these rarities are wasting away neglected in someone’s basement is simultaneously frustrating and enchanting, and that’s what keeps me coming back.

Never underestimate the power of the unknown.

Forgotify In a similar vein, Forgotify.com compiles all the songs on Spotify that haven’t received a single play – some ten million of them – and sidles them up you in a playlist.

I’ve idled away hours trawling through the obscurities, and though inevitably the results are a mixed bag (although there are gems to be unearthed – I’m especially fond of Iranian violin improvisations), that seems beside the point.

When it comes to more antique songs, there is something eerie about voyaging through the ancient dead, the dust-coated relics and the long-forgotten – this is music that presumably someone once loved, once danced to alone or with a partner in an attic somewhere, and the experience is rather haunting. Other songs depart to almost entirely uncharted waters. Don’t miss the trip.

http://lostmedia.wikia.com/

By Philp McSweeny

by Nicola Braid

http://forgotify.com

MUSIC

ScHoolboy Q – Oxymoron (review)

by Henery Cooke

S

cHoolboy Q is hard to lock down.

His voice bounces and climbs between tones, his temperament cold, celebratory and regretful in equal measure. A gangster (of sorts) since age 12, he’s now very into caring for his daughter, when he’s not rapping about sliding himself into your cousin or dealing a whole load of drugs, that is. Hence the title – Oxymoron, both a self-diagnosis and a prescription-drug reference.

Oxymoron is a good album, not a great one. I can see myself pulling it out for the next three or so months, but not decades from now. Another West Coast rap-opera, much like labelmate Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, Oxymoron is a journey through the darker side of LA, only Q

seems to be having a lot more fun. Kendrick’s presence hangs consistently over Oxymoron – Q used to be his hypeman. He features on the album’s lead single, ‘Collard Greens’, a gem of a track that shines ever-brighter among a weak stable of tracks that begin the album. (Kendrick seems to predict this, starting his verse with: “This your favourite song”.)

The album doesn’t really pick up again until the Portishead-sampling seven-minute two-part title track ‘Prescription/Oxymoron’, which comes just after the dreadful ‘Studio’. Here, Q spends the first half of the track sampling his daughter attempting to wake him from an OxyContininduced coma, before diving into a second half chronicling the selling of the same (“you get one for 30 if you let me hold your titty”). It’s all a bit on the nose, but good rap generally isn’t about subtlety, and Q gets away with sounding sincere in both his home and street personas.

The latter half of the album is much better than the first, featuring decent appearances from Tyler, Kurupt and Raekwon, funner production, and unsurprisingly, the other two singles, ‘Break the Bank’ and ‘Man of the Year’.

Q is undeniably an excellent rapper, and the in-house production team behind him are competent, if a little safe. Oxymoron] is worth a listen or ten, but not a place in the West Coast canon.

Quick Listen

By Henery Cooke

Le1f – Hey EP

L

e1f sounds effortless. The New York–based rapper/producer has recorded an impressive catalogue over the last few years, but with this EP he finally ‘arrives’, confident, polished and, as ever, openly gay (but Macklemore is the only rapper for the gayz!!!). There are very few seconds on this five-track EP in which you can’t hear his intensely seductive voice, floating above and within trappy beats that bubble and click all over your headphones. Every track is a keeper, but ‘Sup’, ‘Boom’ and 2012 mainstay ‘Wut’ (which basically featured the beat to ‘Thrift Shop’ a long while before ‘Thrift Shop’ came out) are particular highlights, as well as the phrase “LGBTQties” and a line in ‘Boom’ where he compares the guy he is with to a web browser. Wow.

Albums you should look out for in 2014

by Salient’s music contributors 2013 was a banner year for music.

Here are the upcoming releases that could make 2014 just as good.

Alt-J’s second album Azealia Banks – Broke with Expensive Taste Band of Skulls – Himalayan Bill Callahan – Have Fun With God Brand New’s fifth album Chance The Rapper’s debut album Chief Keef – Bang 3 Chlöe Howl – Chlöe Howl Cloud Nothings’ fourth album Coldplay – Ghost Stories Common – Nobody Smiling Frank Ocean’s second album Freddie Gibbs and Madlib – Piñata Grimes’ fourth album Johnny Cash – Out Among the Stars Kanye West’s seventh album Lana Del Rey – Ultra-Violence Mac DeMarco – Salad Days Nicki Minaj – The Pink Print Panda Bear – Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper Pusha T – King Push Real Estate – Atlas Riff Raff – Neon Icon Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 2 TNGHT’s debut album or second EP TV on the Radio’s fifth album War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream

Pharrell Williams – G I R L

P

harrell is 40. It may not show on his face (like, at all), but it’s starting to become apparent from his output. His last solo album, 2006’s In My Mind, featured Pusha T, Snoop, Kanye West and Jay-Z; G I R L features Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys and Miley Cyrus, and Pharrell never gets close to rapping. G I R L is at all times intensely pleasant; each track would fit right in with ‘Happy’ on a summer blockbuster’s soundtrack.

But this is a little unfair. Pharrell has always felt a bit doe-eyed, even among the drugs and strippers of In Search of..., and he did produce Justin Timberlake’s debut solo effort. Your boring flatmate might love G I R L, but that doesn’t mean you can’t too. Like everything Pharrell makes, the album is bursting with sex, but it’s a whole lot less lecherous than last year’s rapey ‘Blurred Lines’, although Pharrell recently told Pitchfork that he thinks the criticism was “misconstrued”.

Standouts are hard to pick, since they all kind of blur, but opener ‘Marilyn Monroe’ and the Miley Cyrus–assisted ‘Come Get It Bae’ are both stuck in my head right now. Pharrell’s been pushing the envelope for over a decade, and he’s hard at work producing a new Pusha T album – he deserves this comfortable stable of bangers. www.salient.co.nz

37

BOOKS

IN REVIEW by

Lamplighter

K e r ry D o n ova n B z row n

by Nina Powles

L

amplighter is set in a place somewhere between folklore and to the strange art of lamplighting which is becoming arcane in reality, on the brink of civilisation and wilderness. It’s a coming- the world of the novel. I wonder whether there are parallels with of-age and ‘coming out’ story, but it goes a lot deeper than that. real life in the way this old coming-of-age tradition is tantalisingly Lamplighter asks questions about fear, identity and prejudice that wonderful at first, but then descends into something sinister when make it a ‘crossover’ novel challenging enough for teenage and adult Candle learns frightening things about his grandfather’s past. “That’s readers alike. The story grapples with darkness in a way that’s rarely a sharp reading,” Kerry concedes, but I think I’ve read too much been done in New Zealand young-adult fiction, and never in such a into it. “I guess Candle’s main conflict is homophobia, but it’s not richly layered alternate universe. The village of Porbeagle is infused his coming out that’s driving the narrative. I guess my experience with tales of swamp monsters – but where do the real horrors lie? living in a small South Island town – my parents and family were Kerry Donovan Brown lives in Wellington, and is a recent supportive, but there was homophobia from people peripheral to graduate of the International Institute of me – it came really easy to me to write Modern Letters at Victoria. Last week, he about that …” he trails off, unsure he’s shared some thoughts answered my question. But what he I t ’ s a c o m i n g - o f - a g e really with me on Lamplighter. says makes perfect sense. and ‘coming out’ He arrives an hour late, a bit all over He names Ursula Le Guin as one of story, but it goes the place with his book launch the next his favourite writers and The Last Unicorn a lot deeper than day, apologising profusely and offering to as his favourite book. “I’m influenced t h a t . L a m p l igh t e r buy me absolutely anything on the menu. by young-adult writers – so it was going asks questions I insist it’s fine and feel rather sorry for to show through in the book.” As for about fear, identity having put him in such a state. He’s not New Zealand young-adult books with a a n d p r e j u d ic e an Intimidating Published Author at all. ‘coming out’ narrative? There aren’t many. that make it a He’s a totally normal young person who’s I realise I’ve hardly seen even one, though ‘crossover’ novel humbled by it all, and eager to talk about in North America it’s become increasingly ch a l l e n gi n g e n o u gh this book that means a lot to him. mainstream for young-adult writers to for teenage and “Where does the village of Porbeagle write queer characters. Kerry mentions a d u lt r e a d e r s a l i k e . come from?” I ask. The first thing that titles his teacher pointed him towards struck me was the vivid setting. I knew if I when he was young, but these are the were to open my copy of Lamplighter right kinds of books that would’ve scandalised now on the table between us, I’d be transported completely to a schools back then. “In the year I was born, it was still illegal to be murky, sunken swamp world. “It’s actually semi-autobiographical,” gay. My hope for Lamplighter is that it finds a wider audience in the Kerry tells me. “The village is similar to the little South Island community.” settlement where I grew up.” He adds hastily that of course his Kerry says Lamplighter really came alive when he spent five weeks grandfather’s not a lamplighter, but in some ways it’s real. down south in his hometown. When he got back to Wellington, he “What about the names of the other towns and settlements?” wrote the bulk of it at Zealandia. “I love the crossover of wilderness I loved the names, so I have to ask. “Naming is always such a and civilisation.” This is evident in the book; there are many complicated thing for me. I’ll often get bogged down trying to name paradoxical points of contact between modern life and myth. And places. The place names in Lamplighter – Porbeagle, Anchorite, if it weren’t for someone that pointed him towards the IIML, he Hellgrammite – they immediately felt good.” There’s something reckons Lamplighter probably never would’ve happened. great about hearing the word ‘Hellgrammite’ pronounced out loud.

I hope he’ll write more stories set in this world. He thinks he Kerry tells me it’s an imagined version of Wellington, and it’s the might. “I want to explore the idea of fear – not terror, not fear of name of a fearsome aquatic larva. “I imagined a New Zealand that monsters, but fear for one’s own happiness. Maybe that’s just the was more preoccupied with the natural world,” he says, “and I think sort of state I’m getting to in my life – I sometimes fear for where I’m about what it’d be like if our towns were named after minerals or going. But I would like to go back to this world. What’s great about microscopic creatures.”

Lamplighter is that I kind of knew I was onto something. Once I had We both have trouble articulating our thoughts when it comes the bulk of it down, I knew that it was a story worth telling

38

the future issue

FILM

C A P I TA L C U LT U R E

by Philip McSweeney A

f o r t hc o m i n g c o m e d y s e r i e s s e t i n o u r v e r y o w n

generating a lot of buzz.

P hi l ip M c S w e e n e y

W e l l i n g t o n , C a pi t a l C u l t u r e ,

is

got drunk with a couple of its cast members,

and what he discovered

Will Surprise You.

A

lthough Capital Culture was only filmed last summer, it’s a them. Honestly, we couldn’t have done this without them [and all project that’s been five years in the making. “We first had the the other volunteers] and we are so, so grateful,” Izzy says, while Gin idea when we were all living in Melbourne,” Izzy tells me, “and we nods in vigorous assent. I’ve heard this line a lot in my time, but it’s were living next door to these scenesters… They’d sometimes have never sounded as genuine as it did coming from them. Is there a ‘silent parties’, y’know; we’d walk past their flat and there’d be about second season in the works? There’s a bit of hush-hush at that, but a 20 people in there and none of them were making any noise,” she certain mischievous glance indicates that Capital Culture isn’t quite continues, chuckling at the recollection. finished yet.

Capital Culture is a forthcoming Obviously, based on the parodic “ W e fi r s t h a d t h e mockumentary web series conceived by characterisations, there is going to be a bit idea when we were all four young women and close friends – of awkwardness with family members – living in Melbourne,” in alphabetical order, Isabelle, Martine, I z z y t e l l s m e , “ a n d w e when I ask if there’s anything in the series were living next door Miriam and Virginia (although she that they’d be embarrassed to show their to these scenesters… prefers the diminutive Gin) – that delves grandparents, they both wince. “Yeah, They’d sometimes fearlessly into Wellington’s hipster culture. definitely,” Izzy says with a twinkle, before have ‘silent parties’, Obviously, their perceived pretentiousness talking about a close-up of her derrière y ’ k n ow ; w e ’ d wa l k past their fl at and is the main butt of the joke, but is it, I (in costume!) while myself and Gin there’d be about 20 ask, a kind of gentle lampooning, or more laugh uproariously, before talking more people in there and of a satirical jab? “Both,” they resound in seriously about a drug-taking scene that none of them were unison. “I mean, we’re definitely playing they decided to leave on the cutting-room making any noise,” heightened versions of ourselves,” Gin floor. And though there’s awkwardness, explains, “maybe qualities that are in there there’s nothing overtly offensive – Gin but don’t really come out – do you know what I mean?” fields my query about whether there were some self-imposed limits, I do, and though I’m loathe to make an obvious comparison, I saying: “Yeah, like no racism. I mean [the aforementioned] Chris can’t hear the terms ‘heightened versions’ and ‘four 20-something Lilley, he’s funny and he can do stuff like that with aplomb, y’know, females’ without thinking about Girls. Was it an influence? “I mean, but we’re not at that level yet.” we all love Girls,” Gin says tentatively, and would take it over Sex Other than that, the big concern is how the series will be received. and the City(!), but she also stresses that their mini-series was in an Already, YouTube commentators have called it derivative, and “even embryonic shape well before Girls came into the limelight. Instead, though we think it’s hilarious, we don’t know if other people will.” she cites Chris Lilley as a major influence (“So funny!”).

But, having seen the trailer and been given an insider’s look into the The events surrounding the filming of Capital Culture bespeak process, I think these girls will be able to leave the criticism in their something like a success story – the group took their pitch to wake. Don’t miss it – Capital Culture could well become cultural PledgeMe and raked in more than enough of the money required, capital. and enlisted friends and acquaintances to make cameo appearances or provide technical assistance as required. The result, however, C a pi t a l C u l t u r e o ffici a l l y p r e m i e r e d o n looks much more polished than the bare-bones nature of filming Y o u T u b e o n S u n d ay . A l i n k i s ava i l a b l e o n would imply, and this is thanks to the “tireless” work of an editor our website, www.salient.org.nz and director “who were absolutely fantastic… I’m so glad we got

www.salient.co.nz

39

VISUAL ARTS

Cinema & Pa i n t i ng

H e l e n Ca l de r : Qua l i a 7 6 0 - 6 2 0

A DA M A Rt GA L L E RY

E N JOY GA L L E RY

by du nca n hop e

by si mo n g e n n a r d

he electronic doors slide open. A shoe squeaks against the wooden floor as I inhale my first intoxicating breath of the Adam’s cool, purified air. My pupils, dilated by the saturation of light, gaze upon expansive white walls that are pregnant with possibility. The gallery has invited me in. Not knowing what lies around the corner of the Upper Chartwell Gallery is alluring, evocative, and sexy. It could be anything.

Like going to the cinema, walking into a gallery is a multi-sensory experience. We are bombarded by images, the aromas present, and the sounds produced in the environment. We are here to be entertained, challenged, and enlightened. We are to view art. It is at the intersection of these two cultural phenomena that the Adam’s latest exhibition begins.

Cinema & Painting offers an insight into the confusing world of genre-bending art. The works in this exhibition concurrently occupy different artistic identities. Judy Millar’s Space Work 7, for example, is an 11.1 x 4.3 m painted sculptural installation which sprawls across the gallery’s first exhibition space. Beginning as a strip of paint smeared across the wall, the piece extends obtrusively into the viewers’ space as it morphs into what looks like an unfurled film reel. Evoking cinematic imagery and energy, Millar’s installation is a hybrid of a multitude of artistic genres and the perfect opening line in the exhibition’s dialogue.

Around the corner in the Upper Chartwell Gallery, Diana Thater employs theatrical lighting and found architecture to enhance the viewing of the engorged daisies being projected on to the gallery’s wall.

The effect is both mesmerising and disturbing. While the environment is surreal and inviting, the projection of oversized daisies is reminiscent of the psychedelic boat-ride scene from the original Willy Wonka film.

Intriguing, but creepy as fuck.

The standout piece for me has to be Phil Solomon’s film, American Falls. Subjecting archival footage from America’s colonial history to chemical decay, Solomon’s film appears to spill out from the screen as we watch the corroding and destruction of American history. The images are distorted, and as the film transitions from one cultural touchstone to the next, viewers are served up a complex and re-edited past of the land of the free.

Cinema and Painting is one of those rare exhibitions that challenges its viewers on every level. Questions like: ‘What is a film?’ and ‘What/where is the boundary between film and painting?’ are raised constantly throughout the show. It’s confusing, and playful, and above all else, it made me think.

40

the future issue

Y

T

S

ometimes it’s nice to be told where to look. You’re having an eye exam, for example, and you’re getting more intimate than you thought you ever would with the plastic machine pushed against your face. Someone is giving you instructions, and you’re weirdly comfortable because there’s little room for error. Later, you tell the optician that you’re colour-blind: you have trouble with greens and reds. You can tell the difference between the two, you can interpret tonal variation; you’re colour-blind because you’ve been told so, but you can’t explain how you see differently.

The word ‘qualia’ comes from the Latin ‘quale’ (meaning literally ‘what kind’), and is concerned with individual instances of subjective experience. It’s this space, where subjectivity reaches beyond elucidation, that concerns Helen Calder’s current exhibition at Enjoy.

The gallery is occupied by two metal racks. One, rectangular and wheeled, stands in the centre of the space; the other juts out from the left-hand wall. On each rack hang strips of commercial paint in tones of red, ranging from the highest to lowest frequency visible to the human eye.

The structures operate by implication. Reading a work of art is always contingent on each viewer’s individual inventory of experiences, and Calder’s work teases at this. Paint, in its release from pictorial space, is granted a physical presence. To be both what it is and isn’t. The metal bars strain under the weight of the forms and the room is, for a moment, an abattoir. The paint flesh. Rubbery, viscous and limp. In Calder’s work, bodily overtones are unrelenting.

In the next moment, the forms adopt something comical about them: they become tongues, or giant fat fingers. The work inclines to both potential and deca, allowing for movement in its sparsity.

It’s difficult to tell where the work ends, whether the frames are mere accessory, whether the window and the wall-mounted frame are in conversation with each other. Calder’s work is playful and seductive; it subverts the masculinist tradition of the previous century’s abstraction; she allows you to enter the work at your own pace, and holds you once you’re in.

(PS for those of you who are interested, I’m down a further .5 in both eyes and my new glasses will make their campus debut this Friday.)

THEATRE

3x20 b y ja k e b r o w n

F

or the graduating class of Toi Whakaari, the 20-minute self-devised solo performances shown as part of the Go Solo season serve as a sample of what they can offer the professional theatre world. In this regard, having Keagan Carr Fransch, Susie Berry and Brynley Stent perform their solos again in 3x20 at BATS proves that it has been successful.

Keagan Carr Fransch opens the show with Waiting for GodDoor, a study of different personalities seen in the confines of a waiting room. Carr Fransch cleverly uses distinct physicalities and voices to snap between the different characters we meet, which range from a talkative, confident Hispanic woman who dreams of running her own hair salon, a mute Bangladeshi orphan and a Martin Luther King–esque preacher. They all tell the receptionist why they deserve to have their appointment now, but it is never clear what the group is waiting for in the first place. Fulfilment?

Asylum? A literal doctor’s appointment? Carr Fransch’s disparate characterisations ensure that the ending is as ambiguous as she intended.

Susie Berry continues the show with her own physically stylised Journey to the Drive Thru. Berry uses hip-hop choreography and a mishmash of songs to jump between scenes of her driving, squeezing into a pair of jeans, trying to resist the temptation of eating the banana hidden under her desk at work. It soon becomes apparent that her unhealthy relationship with food is the key issue here. While Berry’s precise movements are successful in capturing her various emotions of frustration and temptation, I can’t help but think that setting the action to aggressive songs like ‘New Slaves’ to show the food’s level of control over her is a cop-out that could have instead been a chance to give her character a voice.

The highlight of the show for me was the character that Brynley Stent shows us in the final piece, Buy Anything… Except for That. With a Southern drawl and the occasional grit of the teeth, an old, dishevelled woman walks onto the stage carrying a tower of trinkets on her back.

She tries to sell us each one with a story of its origin – “Andre Agassi’s old racket” that he used to “kill Confederates in the Civil War” is a special standout. At times it feels that these quirks, while charming, could cause her to be just another ‘batty old crone’ trope, but the violent stories behind these objects ensure that her characterisation is nuanced enough to be not just funny, but heartfelt and strong.

Without having seen Go Solo 2013, it is unclear why these three different pieces made the cut to be performed at BATS together, but until I find out, I am happy to just assume they were simply chosen because they are a great showcase of the acting and devising talents of tomorrow.

H a i k u fo r F r i nge W i n n e r s Best Music Disclaimer: the writer of these haikus did not see any of these shows. (LOL.)

Fringe Fave ($5000) Miss Fletcher Sings The Blues – Cuba Creative/The Bakery Solo and winning Miss Fletcher tries with music To teach many things

Lines From The Nile – Rowena Simpson and Douglas Mews British navy and One hundred and seventy Year old piano

Best Visual / Digital Arts

The Ochre Workshop – Charlotte Andrew Natural ochre On limestone blocks exhibit Best of the Fringe The Bookbinder – Trick of the Light Growing. also tea Best Marketing Theatre Famous Sharron: The Fame Game– Highly Commended Famous Sharron A Midsummer Night’s Dream– International Bright Orange Walls Improv improved with glamour Best Theatre Spandex and sparkle The Bookbinder – Best Newcomer Trick of the Light Theatre I Could Live Here – Leather and paper Would You Rather Productions Magic and stories are a Kiwi road tripping True trick of the light at its best. Fun and rowdy Most Original Concept Yeah you would rather Dinner with Izzy and Simon Stand Out Performer Intimate and, well...

They Saw A Thylacine – Hard to haiku if not seen Justine Campbell Unconventional What’s a thylacine?

Best Comedy Haiku is not the place to Why Do I Dream? – learn that. Try Google Sabrina D’Angelo Best Solo Show Evidently Everything is Surrounded By Water – Funny funny lols all round my accomplice Also very strange No idea about Best Production Design Traces: Ghosts From the Archive – this one. What’s a soul anyway?

How do you lose it?

Longstaff Productions Basement music shadows Spirit of The Fringe A+ for strange promenade Award Traces leaves traces Jennifer O’Sullivan Best Outdoor / Circus James Nokise IQ2 – The Town Centre b y E l e a n o r M e rt o n Future Hotel for This issue appropriate Sound interactive www.salient.co.nz

41

FASHION

Th e F u t ur e of Fa s h ion

by Elise Munden

F

ashion is cyclical. Every few decades, the next generation decides to look to the past for inspiration for the future. Here is a slick summary of how different eras of fashion have been recycled in recent years:

Victorian and Early 20th Century lace, beards, high collars

OV E R S E E N AT V IC

Art Deco

sequins, shift dresses

World War II

camo prints, Doc Martens tailored cotton dresses, red lipstick

‘50s

What was your favourite moment of the summer?

‘60s

Getting dumped.

John Lennon sunglasses, daisy prints

‘70s

crochet, crop tops, ‘bohemian’

‘80s

fluoro colours, sportswear

‘90s

double denim, clashing prints, red tartan

T

hese styles took an entire century to evolve. However, over the last ten years, we have seen each of these trends resurface in magazines and shop windows for only one year each. The speed with which fashion rotates today is due to, well, The Internet, and the ease with which observations about historical clothing trends can be shared and popularised. So, if you want to be a self-proclaimed ‘Trendsetter’ (I really hope you don’t want to), simply pick a decade and style yourself according to the appropriate film as follows:

Victorian and Early 20th Century Gone With the Wind

Art Deco King Kong

World War II The Thin Red Line

‘50s

Rebel Without a Cause

‘60s

Bonnie and Clyde

‘70s

Dazed and Confused

‘80s

Pretty in Pink

‘90s

Wayne’s World

42

the future issue

Eleanor Third-year English Literature

WHATS ON

summer watching this Wes Anderson film under a night sky after exploring the twilight markets in the park.

When: Wednesday 12 March, 8.30–10.30 pm Where: Waitangi Park, 107 Cable St

Music

Books Poetry Reading: “McCahon Series” Some of the country’s best known poets respond to the series of paintings [ITALICS: Walk (Series C)] by Colin McCahon.

When: Saturday 15 March, 2 pm Where: Ngā Toi Arts Te Papa, Level 5 of Te Papa Free entry

FAS H I O N Groin Gazing Vice have released a photo spread of men styled to suit particular stereotypes, e.g. ‘The Boy Next Door’. The point of difference: the photos are tight-shots of boners. 5 stars.

Film Films by Starlight - Moonrise Kingdom Make the most of the final remnants of

Neko Case Why haven’t you already got a ticket to this? $43.

Where: James Cabaret When: Wednesday 12 March, 8 pm Fox and Wolf Free! At a venue that won’t be around for long.

Where: Mighty Mighty When: Wednesday 12 March, 9.30 pm Baths Baths, much like his namesake, is warm and welcoming, but still quite weird. This show will be huge. $30.

Where: Bodega When: Friday 14 March, 9 pm Orchestra of Spheres and Audio Tears Orchestra of Spheres are fucked up, in a good way. $5/$10.

Where: Mighty Mighty When: Friday 14 March, 10.30 pm @Peace The Wellington album-release show for @ Peace and the Plutonian Noise Symphony.

Featuring support from Race Banyon, Jay Knight, Tom Scott, and Dam G. $20 student ticket too. Should be huge.

Where: Bodega When: Saturday 15 March, 8 pm Yo La Tengo Indie royalty! In the luxurious, excellent sounding Opera House! $28 or $58, depending on your level of fanboy.

Where: The Opera House When: Saturday 15 March, 8 pm

Visual Arts The Portrait Writer: Jill Trevelyan Hear biographer, curator and art collection manager Jill Trevelyan conversation with critic Megan Dunn on writing about art, artists and colourful histories. $18. Book at festival.co.nz.

When: Wednesday 12 March, 3.15 pm Where: Embassy Theatre Idea + Design = Text?

Designers Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielińsky discuss inspiration, favourite designs and dream projects. $18. Book at festival.co.nz.

When: Monday 10 March, 12.15 pm Where: Hannah Playhouse Notes/Artist Books on Music When: Until 15 March Where: Bowen Galleries

VBC GUIDE BREAKFAST 8 .10 A M

MONDAY

10 A M NOON NOON 2.00PM 2.00 4.00PM

DEAD MAN MONDAY

WITH CASEY & JOSS

TBC

WITH ELEANOR & SIMON

STREET KNOWLEDGE

WITH SAM & HUGH

TUNES WITH TAMBLY INFIDEL CASTRO

WITH PHILP MCSWEENY

2 1 4

FRIDAY

TWO HOURS WITH TIMTAM

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

DEAD BOYSʼ PIRATE RADIO WITH WILL

DEAD AIR

WITH PEARCE

DOMO ARIGATO

WITH MR ROBATO

THURSDAY DRIVE WITH A.D.D

WITH CASEY & JOSS

WAKE N BAKE

WITH OLLIE & ASHER

SASAENG SATURDAYS

WITH SAVANNAH

THE SALIENT SHOW

WITH GEORGE ARMSTRONG

RAW POLITIK

[T B D]

WITH HUGO

7. 0 0 9.00PM 9.00 11 . 0 0 P M

THURSDAY

MUSIC, NEWS, INTERVIEWS, GIVEAWAYS

ROBANDTAMMY

11 P M 1. 0 0 A M

WEDNESDAY

THE VBC BREAKFAST SHOW JIVING JAMES & GROOVING GREG

DRIVE 4 - 7PM

TUESDAY

WITH CIARAN SOPHIE

BAD SCIENCE WITH LOU

SUPERFLUOUS SUPERHEROS

SIGNAL SOUNDS

WITH TIM & ALEX

WITH HOLLY, S TUMBLE, GOOSEHEAD & VIC SERATONIN

WITH MATT & FRIENDS

THE B-SIDE REVOLUTION

WITH RICHARD

PRE-LOAD

THE NIGHT SHIFT WITH CHRIS

www.salient.co.nz

43

PUZZLES

Two Speed Quick Clues

but inflicting defeat (12) 13. The area of what was once temporary accommodaton (6) 15. A woodworker who becomes a member (6) 17. The affliction of one who experiences irregular beatings (5-7) 20. Stick to prohibition outside (5) 21.

Opposite directions included in characteristic conveyance (7) 22. They put on other people’s clothes! (8) 23. Permanent settlers have come to this (4)

Across

1. Record books (4) 3. Mergansers (3-5) 9. Frolicked (7) 10. Measure of length (5) 11. Ousting (12) 13. Scope (6) 15. Woodworker (6) 17. Cardiac disorder (5-7) 20. Relay bar (5) 21. Passage of goods (7) 22. Display cabinets (8) 23. Remain (4) Down

Target

O

S

E

P

M

A

N

E

U

8 2 7 9

Cryptic Clues Across

1. They provide fuel records (4) 3. Observed Gates and Clinton - they’re ducks (3-5) 9. Behaved playfully - subjected to a search (7) 10. Measure a young bear by it (5) 11. Making the pitch too big -

3

4 1

5 7

7

9

3 9 5 1

9

9

44

the future issue

6

8 4

2

9

1

7

5 1

7

7 2 6 4

5

2 3

4 7

9

7

3

5

6

8 4

9

7 3

6 2

5

1 4 6 5

3 4

8 7

9

9 6

2 9 6

8

7 6

1

4

3

6

3 3 8

1

1 3 2 5

9 6

6

2 7 8

1. Surplus remained on top (4-4) 2.

The conductor is caricatured, we hear (5) 4. They figure out the total number of poisonous creatures (6) 5. Presumably he’s not in the front rank of foresters (12) 6. Noble arrangement about an Eastern country (7) 7. Position from which to take aim, one hears (4) 8. Figures are cut on them by blades a foot long (7-5) 12. Describing the cleric who is unusually spritely (8) 14. Upholder of the board (7) 16. Pressman tried to change nothing inside (6) 18. Promotes sales - item of property put back inside (5) 19. The position of one who has retired (4)

2

8

5

Down

1. Remnant (4-4) 2. Steer (5) 4. Vipers (6) 5. Rustic person (12) 6. Asian country (7) 7. Location (4) 8. Icy sporting areas (7-5) 12. Ministerial (8) 14. Supportive framework (7) 16. Newspaper boss (6) 18. Valuable commodity (5) 19. Having retired (4)

6 8

5 4 9

9

4

7

By Zac Marsland

www.salient.co.nz

45

NOTICES International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) Open meeting “1914-2014; The glorification of World War 1 and preparations for WW3” Thursday March 13, 2.30 pm Meeting room SU218, Student Union Building The international campaign to celebrate WW1 is aimed at promoting nationalism, patriotism and militarism as conflicts between the major powers escalate, creating potential flashpoints around the world, any one of which could trigger a global conflagration.

Vic OE – Vic Student Exchange Programme Why not study overseas as part of your degree?!

Study in English, Earn Vic credit, Get Studylink & grants, explore the world!

Weekly seminars on Wednesdays, Level 2, Easterfield Building, 12.50 pm EXCHANGE FAIR COMING UP 27 MARCH! Prizes, food & more!

Website: http://victoria.ac.nz/exchange Visit us: Level 2, Easterfield Building Drop-in hours: Mon & Tues 9–12, Wed–Fri 10–12

Pasifika Law Students The Pasifika Law Students’ Society (PILLS) will be having their Annual General Meeting on Friday 14 March 2014 at 15 Mount St, Pasifika Haos, from 5.30 pm till 7.30 pm.

There will be a brief mingle following the AGM. We hope to see you all there.

If any questions or queries please email Tia (cultural officer) at tiafaiaoga@gmail.com.

International Socialists The Horrible History of the National Party When: 6.30 pm, Tuesday 11 March Where: SU219, Student Union Building Hosted by the International Socialists.

46

the future issue

If you want to send something to the Salient Notices Page, please do.

Notices must be 100 words or less.

They must in by Wednesday at 5 pm.

Send them to us at editor@salient.org.nz

machine, dryer, internet, phone line with unlimited national toll calls) and a sweet deck. One room is $120 per week, the other is $130 (plus expenses). You would live with two guys and a cat, all of whom are easy to get on with. Applicants must be sane or interesting.

To check it out or for more details contact Steven.Loveridge@vuw.ac.nz.

Goju Ryu Karate

CAREERS 2014/15 Internships and Graduate Jobs!

Applications closing soon: UBS – 10 March DLA Phillips Fox – 20 March Buddle Findlay – 20 March Minter Ellison Rudd Watts – 20 March EY – 24 March Audit New Zealand – 25 March Grant Thornton – 26 March PricewaterhouseCoopers – 26 March Crowe Horwath – 28 March Woodside Energy – 28 March Wilson Harle – 28 March Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust – 30 March Deloitte – 30 March Unilever Australia & New Zealand – 31 March Microsoft Corp – 1 April Citi – 3 April Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust (Māori) – 1 June Details on CareerHub:www.victoria.ac.nz/ careerhub Start preparing your CV – attend workshops, get your CV checked…

ROOMS AVAILABLE Two rooms available April–June (exact dates negotiable) in a quiet Thorndon neighbourhood. Extremely handy to the CBD and a 15-minute walk to uni, the rooms are sunny, spacious and located in a warm flat with modern utilities (washing

Thursdays 6–7.30 pm Rec Centre Long Room Sundays 4–5.30 pm Rec Centre Dance Room Email:VUWkarate@gmail.com karate.org.nz/dojos/vuw VUW student 2 for 1 deal: join up with a friend before 24 April 2014 and only pay membership and training fee for one student (both must be current students at Victoria University)

Film Society Victoria University proudly presents, the phenomenon sweeping the modern world and taking audiences by storm: Film Society! Drop by the Memorial Theatre at 6 pm on Thursdays and pay absolutely nothing at all to witness the exotic wonders and glamorous sights we have to offer. This week on the 13th, come on down and be disturbed and delighted by the original Wickerman, and then soothed by the gentle caresses of the French, Intouchables. Those interested in a little extra can become VIP members for only $10, and have the chance to win all kinds of things. Find us here: https://www. facebook.com/groups/vicunifilmsociety/

contributors editors: Duncan McLachlan & Cameron Price d e s i g n e r : I m o g e n Te m m news editor: Sophie Boot c r e at i v e e d i to r : C h l o e Dav i e s c h i e f s u b - e d i t o r : N i c k Fa r g h e r distributor: Joe Morris f e at u r e w r i t e r : P h i l i p M c S w e e n e y ( c h i e f ) , P e n n y G a u lt , Alex Hollis n e w s i n t e r n s : S i m o n D e n n i s , S t e p h Tr e n g r o v e

arts editors: Nina Powles (Books), Charlotte Doyle (Film), H e n r y C o o k e ( M u s i c ) , R o s e C a n n ( Th e a t r e ) , S i m o n G e n n a r d ( Vi s u a l A r t s ) , E l i s e M u n d e n ( Fa s h i o n ) general contributors: Nicola Braid, Jake Brown, Sonya Clark, Richard C l a r k s o n , A n d y Da l e , H u g h H aw o r t h , G e r a r d H o f f m a n , Duncan Hope, Emma Hurley, Russ Kale, Eve Kennedy, G e r a l d L e e , M o l ly M c C a rt h y, Jo rd a n M c C lu s k ey, Hugo McKinnon, Zac Marsland, Eleanor Merton, Gus Mitchell, Elise Munden, Ollie Neas, Jamie Neikrie, Sam N o rt h c ot t, S a m Patc h e t t ( s p o rts w r i t e r ) , Fr a n c e s c a S h e p a r d , E a r l S t e w a r t , R Ä w i n i a Th o m p s o n , J u l i a W e l l s

contributor of the week Philip McSweeney Advertising Manager Ti m W i l s o n sales@vuwsa.org.nz 04 463 6982 F u n d e d b y Vi c t o r i a U n i v e r s i t y o f We l l i n g t o n s t u d e n t s , through the student services levy

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47

you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking racing around to come up behind you again i’ve been to the year 3000 not much has changed but we live underwater and your great great great granddaughter is pretty fine what is the future but history that hasn’t happened when we are young we invent different futures for ourselves when we are old we invent different pasts for others in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes where we’re going we don’t need roads where we’re going we might need some roads where we’re going we’re going to have to build even more roads where the fuck are we going the present is undefined the future has no other reality than as present hope the past is no more than present memory this is the way the world ends not with a bang but with a whimper ka mura ka muri the future ain’t what it used to be choose your future choose a life choose a job choose a career choose a family choose a fucking big television you have to choose your future regrets que sera sera whatever will be will be the future’s not ours to see que sera sera every saint has a past and every sinner has a future why didn’t i learn to treat everything like it was the last time my greatest regret was how much i believed in the future the past is always tense, the future perfect the future’s not a promise it’s a threat if you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever in this bright future you can’t forget your past