Theatre @ York presents ‘Dido, Queen of Carthage’ March 18 to 24

Aeneas recounting the Trojan War to Dido, a painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. This scene is taken from Virgil’s Aeneid, where Dido falls in love with, only to be left by, the Trojan hero Aeneas.

“Worlds of Exile,” Theatre @ York’s 2017-18 season, culminates in Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, an epic story in an intimate and innovative new production directed by Peter Hinton. Blending classical text with a compelling contemporary approach, Dido, Queen of Carthage previews March 18, opens March 20, and continues to March 24 in the Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre on York University’s Keele Campus.

Shadowed by war, Dido, Queen of Carthage is the original tragic love story with its hero Aeneas, the exiled prince of Troy, compelled by Fate to leave his beloved Dido, Queen of Carthage to fulfill a political destiny. Aeneas, the son of Venus, is one of the Trojans who escapes from the city after it is destroyed. In his exile he seeks refuge in Carthage. Learning of Aeneas’ experience and loss, Dido falls in love with him, only to be forsaken shortly after. Torn between her personal abandonment and national sacrifice, Dido performs an ultimate act of resistance.

Aeneas recounting the Trojan War to Dido, a painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. This scene is taken from Virgil's Aeneid, where Dido falls in love with, only to be left by, the Trojan hero Aeneas.
Aeneas recounting the Trojan War to Dido, a painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. This scene is taken from Virgil’s Aeneid, where Dido falls in love with, only to be left by, the Trojan hero Aeneas. Image: Wikipedia

Dido, Queen of Carthage is Marlowe’s first play, written when he was just 19 and still a student at Cambridge. Inspired by the fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, the story of Dido and Aeneas has stimulated artists for two millennia; from Ovid to Henry Purcell to modern-day science-fiction like Battlestar Galactica, with its exiled travellers seeking a prophesied new home. It isn’t hard to see the story’s appeal.

Peter Hinton“Marlowe is considered the ‘bad boy‘ of Elizabethan drama,” said Hinton, a director, dramaturg and playwright. “Always controversial, he was a homosexual, a convert to Roman Catholicism and some say even a secret agent and spy. We are setting this production in 1593 in the Deptford [London, UK] tavern in which Marlowe was murdered that year. In a case of great synchronicity, the tavern was an infamous halfway house for political refugees. We’re using this as an imaginative point of departure for the play, adding some historical info around Marlowe and his death, poetry and music.”

Hinton has worked across Canada and directed over 80 productions. He has been the associate artistic director at Theatre Passe Muraille and Canadian Stage in Toronto, artistic director of the Playwrights Theatre Centre in Vancouver, the dramaturg-in-residence at Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, and artistic associate of the Stratford Festival. From 2005 to 2012, he was the artistic director of the National Arts Centre (NAC) English theatre, where he created a resident English theatre company, with actors from across the country and programmed the NAC’s first season of Canadian plays. Hinton has taught at the National Theatre School of Canada, Ryerson University and, since 2012, he has been the professional mentor for the York University/Canadian Stage MFA program in directing. In 2009, Hinton was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Dido, Queen of Carthage features the 12 actors from the graduating class of the Acting Conservatory program. All elements of set, costume, lighting and sound are designed and executed by undergraduate theatre production students.

Theatre @ York’s season “Worlds of Exile” explores longing, belonging and displacement. Exile, refugee, asylum-seeker, nomad, migrant and immigrant – these terms share a sense of displacement and a feeling of otherness. While some of these terms can be defined in legal and political terms, others speak to a rift that generates a social and psychological condition. With “Worlds of Exile,” York’s Department of Theatre reflects on aspects of the varied experience of persons who, either by choice or as a result of imposition, are living outside their home of origin, are othered by virtue of colonial exile practices, who have returned home only to find it unrecognizable, or who, as the children or grandchildren of exiles are living in two worlds.

Each Theatre @ York production this season will include an American Sign Language interpreted performance, as well as a Relaxed performance designed to reduce anxiety and provide a safe, enjoyable experience, taking into account variable sensory, communication or learning needs and abilities.

From March 18 to 23, performances will take place at 7:30pm. On March 21 and 23, the performance will take place at 1pm, and on March 24, at 2pm. All performances will be staged in the Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre, Accolade East Building.

Performances begin at 7:30pm each night. Previews will take place March 18 and 19. The Wednesday, March 21 evening performance will be an American Sign Language interpreted performance. The Thursday, March 22 evening performance is a Relaxed performance.

Performance times, pricing and tickets are available online through the York University Box Office, or by phone at 416-736-5888.

Renowned pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico to deliver Faculty Spotlight concert Feb. 8

Christina poses with a piano
image by Bo Huang
Christina Petrowska Quilico

York University music Professor Christina Petrowska Quilico, a world renowned pianist, will give a signature performance Feb. 8 at York University, from 12:30 to 1:30pm in the Tribute Communities Recital Hall, 112 Accolade East at York University’s Keele campus.

The concert is part of the Faculty Spotlight series offered by the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University.

With the intriguing title “Global Sirens,” the concert will feature Petrowska Quilico performing an eclectic program featuring composers around the world. The concert is free and open to the public.

Possessing passion and sensitivity, phenomenal technique and “dazzling virtuosity” (New York Times), Petrowska Quilico is a compelling force, whether she is playing a Liszt piano solo, a Mozart chamber work, the Grieg concerto or the premiere of a new work by a living composer. CBC Music named her one of 20 “can’t-miss classical pianists” of 2014 and one of Canada’s 25 best classical pianists in 2015.

Born in Ottawa, Petrowska Quilico studied at Juilliard, and went on to study in Paris and Germany with Ligeti and Stockhausen. Her professional career has taken her across the U.S. and Canada, as well as to Taiwan, the Middle East, France, Germany, Greece and Ukraine. She has appeared in recitals in Carnegie, Alice Tully and Merkin Halls, and as a soloist with most of Canada’s leading orchestras and the symphony orchestras of Greek Radio and Taipei.

She also collaborated frequently in concert and recorded four CDs with her late husband, the famed Metropolitan Opera baritone Louis Quilico. As well, she is a passionate interpreter of the music of her first husband, the celebrated Quebec composer Michel-Georges Brégent.

Petrowska Quilico has premiered close to 200 works. Of the more than 35 concertos she has performed with orchestra, 19 were contemporary, 10 of these premieres. Composers Pierre Boulez and John Cage gave her special coaching prior to her performances of their music.

In recorded output, few artists can match Petrowska Quilico, particularly for contemporary repertoire. Among her more than 47 CDs are five albums comprising eight Canadian piano concertos, and solo and chamber works by contemporary Canadian and international composers. Along with these, she has recorded the likes of Chopin and Debussy; Tangos Brasileiros, for the 150th anniversary of composer Ernesto Nazareth in 2013; and her highly praised Liszt bicentennial CD (“Quilico plays exquisitely … brilliance without ego” – Fanfare magazine).

Christina Petrowska Quilico with compser Ann Southam. Photo by Andre Leduc

Four of Quilico’s CDs of Canadian music have earned Juno Award nominations, three of them for concerto CDs and one for the solo piano cycle Glass Houses Revisited by the late Ann Southam (1937-2010). Petrowska Quilico is very closely associated with the music of the Southam and has devoted six CDs in three albums to Southam’s music, including the piano cycles Rivers, Glass Houses and Pond Life. The CD Glass Houses Revisited was highly lauded, named one of “30 best Canadian classical recordings ever” by CBC Music, and remains one of Centrediscs’ all-time bestsellers. In March 2016, Petrowska Quilico performed selections from Rivers and Glass Houses to an enthusiastic audience at Montreal’s Innovations en concert.

She has also garnered praise for her Centrediscs recording of Michel-George Brégent’s 16 Portraits, which the composer had described as “études romantiques.” The SRC’s Espace Musique called it Une véritable révélation!, while Fanfare magazine termed the études “‘studies’ in the emotional or intellectual sense.”

In addition to her concert career, Petrowska Quilico is a professor of piano and musicology at York University in Toronto and a published author and artist. At York University, she formed a duo with her colleague, Professor Jacques Israelievitch, former concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. In addition to many joint performances, they recorded the Canadian music CD Fancies and Interludes for Centrediscs and the complete Mozart sonatas for violin and piano, on the Fleur de Son label, a project finished only months before Israelievitch’s death in 2015.

Among Petrowska Quilico’s upcoming projects are a two-CD Centrediscs set comprising Classics with a Twist, which includes Montreal composer John Rea’s Las Meninas; and Worlds Apart, which features, among other works, Michel-Georges Brégent’s Geste and Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux’s Assemblages.

Canada Research Chair creates extraordinary art installation in Korea

“Requiem for Hybrid Life” flyer. Reproduced with permission of the New Media Research Association
“Requiem for Hybrid Life” flyer. Reproduced with permission of the New Media Research Association

It’s hard to imagine an aesthetic experience that weaves together art, music, virtual reality, mathematics, philosophy and software engineering to create an out-of-this-world encounter. If you were in Seoul, Korea last fall, you may have been lucky enough to experience this first hand.

Last October, York University Professor Graham Wakefield, Canada Research Chair in Interactive Information Visualization, contributed to an art exhibit at South Korea’s Seoul Museum of Art. “Requiem for Hybrid Life,” curated by Kyoungmi Kim of the New Media Art Research Association, ran from Oct. 17 to 23, 2017, and featured the work of Wakefield and fellow artist-researcher and recent York University Visiting Professor Haru Ji.

What Wakefield and Ji created, after a feverish four-day installation process, was breathtaking.

“The excitement created by new immersive technologies that can generate life-like interactive experiences parallels the enthusiasm brought about by the birth of cinema,” says Wakefield. “Interactive virtual worlds and mixed realities will be increasingly important forms of creative content in the future,” he adds.

Graham Wakefield
Graham Wakefield

Wakefield, who came to York University three years ago, is a core member of the high-profile Vision: Science to Application (VISTA) program and the director of the Alice Lab for Computational Worldmaking in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD), which constructs responsive artificial worlds experienced through mixed/hybrid reality technologies, including Virtual and Augmented Reality.

“Conservation of Shadows” integrates with historically charged space, creates something new

The title of Wakefield and Ji’s installation piece in the Seoul show is “Conservation of Shadows” (2017). Part of an ongoing series called “Artificial Nature,” it is composed of 330 kilograms of salt; 12 nD::Node programmable circuit boards used to write and upload computer code developed by fellow AMPD researcher Professor Mark-David Hosale; 72 vibration motors, 132 bells, 150 meters of wire, two Kinect 360s, motion detectors for computers; and one HTC Vive HMD, which is a virtual reality system.

Model for “Conservation of Shadows”
Model for “Conservation of Shadows”

The Seoul exhibition space is quite large and barn-like with old timbers through which one can see the sky during daylight hours. It is rich in history that directly contributed to the installation, as part of the overall experience: “This building, an extension of the Seoul Museum of Art, used to be part of the Korean government’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. It was used for the storage of infectious diseases and materials and various other forms of biological matter. So, it has a very charged atmosphere,” Wakefield explains.

What visitors experience is unparalleled

Close up on bells in the installation space
Close up on bells in the installation space

Visitors enter the vast, dimly lit room, which features a series of well-placed bells – 132 miniature bells, in fact – attached to cables hanging from the ceiling like organic tendrils. The bells and their circuits were constructed with the assistance of four students in York’s Digital Media program: Nicholas Abbruzzese, Filiz Eryilmaz, Adiola Palmer and Amir Bahador Rostami.

The resulting sound creates a haunting interactive ambience. “The miniature bells are activated by small vibration motors — the same kind that makes a cell phone vibrate. These bells and motors surround the installation space, hanging down from the rafters at different locations and different heights,” Wakefield explains. “The bells aren’t perfectly manufactured, so each has a slightly different tone, which helps create a richer and more variegated sonic experience,” he adds.

Visitors feel and hear the salt granules crunching underfoot with each step as they progress farther into this engaging environment. Shadowy images, ghostly vortexes that represent other life forces, are projected downward from the ceiling where they mingle with the visitors’ shadows – each such interaction being distinct, unpredictable and impossible to replicate.

“Conservation of Shadows” (2017) Graham Wakefield and Haru Ji
“Conservation of Shadows” (2017) Graham Wakefield and Haru Ji

Those individuals choosing the virtual reality option can experience another layer, a different reality, where they witness mesmerizing, three-dimensional (3-D) flecks of dancing white formations that move together like a murmuration of birds against a limitless black background. In this alternative reality, fellow visitors to the installation space are captured as mysterious black voids, fully incorporated into the virtual reality setting. In this way, the visitors themselves become shadows that, again, interact with the projected shadows.

The bells are also replicated in the virtual reality space, such that the motors become more active and the bells ring more intensively when triggered. The effect  ̶  organic, technological and metaphysical  ̶  is unforgettable.

Wakefield wanted the images and sensations to swim together to create a compelling imagined world. He describes this process: “We imagined unknown new beings growing fond of the wet texture of old wood [timbers overhead], the fragrance of sunshine smeared between cracks, and the quietness of murmuring and whispering. To let the new beings live, we extended senses to mix realities surrounded by softly ringing bells and the crunch of salt underfoot as their shadows pass by; and an alternate perspective through head-mounted display in which we become the shadows around which new beings play.”

This static two-dimensional image offers a glimpse of what the dynamic, 3-D images look like in the virtual reality option
These static two-dimensional images offer a glimpse of what the dynamic 3-D images look like in the virtual reality option

Audience response was overwhelmingly positive. “One of the comments that we received, many times, was how well the installation fit the space, given its unique character and history,” says Wakefield.

Wakefield’s work will shape future of arts and entertainment sectors

Wakefield’s forward-looking work will lead to the development of new artworks and technologies for emerging art forms and creative industries. His research will help meet the demand for more immersive, dynamic and open-ended interactive experiences in the arts and entertainment sectors.

“Entertainment and software industries are already investing heavily in these areas while acknowledging the need for new software and aesthetic practices,” says Wakefield.

To learn more about Wakefield, visit his faculty profile. For more information about “Artificial Nature,” visit the website. To learn more about the Alice Lab for Computational Worldmaking, visit the website.

To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch, watch the York Research Impact Story and see the snapshot infographic.

By Megan Mueller, manager, research communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, muellerm@yorku.ca

The REDress Project comes to York University this March

The Indigenous Students Association at Glendon, in partnership with many campus partners announces that The REDress Project will be hosted at York University this March.

The REDress Project created by Jaime Black will feature an art installation using donated red dresses. The project was created to focus on Missing and Murdered Women (MMIW) in Canada

First created by Winnipeg-based Métis artist, Jaime Black in 2010, The REDress Project uses red dresses to draw attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) in Canada. The project has a national scope and brings focus to the more than 1000 unresolved cases of missing and murdered women, girls and two-spirited persons. The goal of The REDress Project is to create an open discussion about the gendered and racialized nature of oppression of Indigenous women since colonization. Using donated red dresses, Black creates an installation art project that serves as a visual reminder of the missing and murdered women, girls and two-spirited persons.

The REDress Project comes to York University this March

The York University community can take part in the project by contributing their own red dresses to the project. Red dresses will be collected at various locations on the Keele Campus from Feb. 1 to 26. The dresses will then be used to create an art installation at York University in March. The organizers are hoping to collect 300 dresses for The REDress Project. Any community member who would like to donate a dress to the project can drop it off at any of the following Keele Campus locations:

  • The RED Zone (Vari Hall)
  • Community Safety Centre (William Small Centre)
  • Office of the President (1050 Kaneff Tower)
  • Tait McKenzie Centre
  • ACMAPS (111 Central Square)
  • Centre for Aboriginal Student Services (246 York Lanes)
  • Kinsmen Building reception
  • Office of the Dean, Faculty of Health (HNES 443)
  • Admission Client Services Welcome Desk (W320 Bennett Centre for Student Services)
  • Registrarial Services Triage Desk (W120 Bennett Centre for Student Services)
  • Office of the Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies (York Lanes 230)
  • Office of the Dean, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (201 Joan and Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts)
  • Department of Dance, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (301 Accolade East Building)
  • Department of Cinema & Media Arts, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (223 Centre For Film & Theatre)
  • Winters College Office (Winters 121)
  • Department of Visual Art & Art History and Department of Computational Arts, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (235A Joan and Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts)
  • Office of the Dean, Faculty of Environment Studies (139G Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies Building)

Dresses can also be dropped off at three Dress for Success locations:

  • 188 Lowther Ave., Toronto, ON M5R 1E8
  • 320 Bayfield St., Unit 121, Barrie, ON L4M 3C1
  • 10 Peter St., Orillia, ON L3V 5A2

The REDress Project is part of a week of special events running from March 5 to 9.

  • On March 5, from 3 to 4pm, in the Glendon cafeteria at the Glendon Campus, Jingle Dancer Wendy Brewster and the drumming group Spirit Wind, will perform
  • On March 6, from 1 to 2pm, in Vari Hall at the Keele Campus, Wendy Brewster and Spirit Wind return to give another performance.
  • On March 7, from 6 to 8pm, at the Lunik Co-op Café at the Glendon Campus, Glendon’s Anishinaabe Linguistics Professor Maya Chacaby will give a keynote talk.
  • On March 8, from 6 to 8pm, at The Underground Restaurant in the Student Centre at the Keele Campus, The REDress Project Creator  Jamie Black will deliver a keynote presentation prior to a panel discussion featuring York University Professors Bonita Lawrence, Ruth Kolezar-Green and Nicole Penak with Aboriginal Students Association at York executive member Erin Goulais.

More information as it becomes available will be posted on YFile and the York University Events page.

Music Colloquium focuses on musical expression

Professor Philip Alperson has been invited to deliver the next Music Colloquium. Alperson is currently a Fulbright Scholar at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland.

The colloquium will take place Jan. 25, from 2:30 to 4pm, in Room 237 Accolade East Building.

Philip Alperson
Philip Alperson

The focus of Alperson’s talk is musical expression, which at once is one of the most familiar and bewildering aspects of musical practice. Works and pieces of music are frequently described in affective or expressive terms. Composers and performers are said to express themselves through their music. Listeners often take the expressive aspects of music to be among the most important features of their experience of music. Teachers tell their students to “play with expression.” Music itself is said to be an expressive, if not the most expressive, art.

In his talk, Alperson will offer an overview of several ways in which philosophers have approached the topic of expression in music, including cognitivist, non-cognitivist, symbolic, and associationalist theories, and areas of intersection among these theory types.

He will explore some of the substantive and procedural presuppositions about modes of musical understanding that ground these theoretical strategies and will examine some aspects of expressive musical expressive practice that philosophers have generally regarded as marginal. Alperson will argue that these “marginal” varieties of expression involve questions about musical performativity, modes of musical production, and the range of appreciative practices that are important to the ways people create, understand, and value music. He will argue that thinking about these “marginal” varieties of expression opens up our understanding of the kinds of musical practices with which philosophers – and others – might concern themselves.

In 2010-2011, Alperson served as the Styrian Endowed Professor at the Institute of Music Aesthetics at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz, Austria. He is also a Senior Scholar at Temple’s Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture, and Society of which he was the founding director.

Alperson’s main interests are in aesthetics, the philosophy of the arts, theory of culture, value theory, aesthetic method, and theories of interpretation and criticism, with special interests in the philosophy of music and philosophical questions concerning creativity, performance, and improvisation. Alperson was the editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the journal of the American Society of Aesthetics, from 1993 – 2003 and is the General Editor of the Blackwell Series, Foundations of Aesthetics. He is currently at work on a book on the philosophy of music. He is also a jazz musician.

Film industry panel explores sexual harassment Jan. 23

Since The New York Times first published a news story on Oct. 5, 2017 chronicling accusations of sexual predation levelled against Harvey Weinstein, many men and women in film and media industries around the world have come forward with their own stories of harassment and assault at the hands of powerful men.

On Jan. 23, from 12:30 to 2:30pm, the Department of Cinema and Media Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University, is convening Culture Shift: Gender and Diversity in the Film Industry, a panel of industry leaders, filmmakers and activists, to discuss the issue of sexual harassment and the powerful interventions that are reshaping culture within the Canadian film and television industries. Admission is free and all are welcome.

The panel features Theresa Tova, president of ACTRA Toronto, Rina Fraticelli, executive director of Women in View; Jill Golick, president of the Writers Guild of Canada (York Screenwriting faculty); Anita Lee, executive director, NFB Ontario Studio; York BFA grad Chelsea McMullan, documentary filmmaker; and Melanie Chung, producer and director.

This panel is both timely and empowering as it discusses the effort to transform embedded hierarchies of privilege within culture industries.

This event will take place in the Nat Taylor Cinema, N102 Ross Building, Keele Campus.

Theatre @ York features English language premiere of Deportation Cast

Image shows a young man's face and the word deported over it

Theatre @ York’s 2017-18 season, dedicated to “Worlds of Exile,” features a subversive take on German playwright Björn Bicker’s Deportation Cast, translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte and directed by Keira Loughran. This compelling exploration of uncommon elements of the refugee system opens Jan. 25 and continues to Jan. 27 in the Foster Studio on York University’s Keele campus.

Deportation Cast reveals the fragility and privilege of the political systems we in the first world take for granted. It demands a more complex and personal response to issues that are otherwise easy to keep in the realm of global issues,” said Loughran. “It challenges us as artists to engage with open hearts in the tragic circumstances this family is caught in, and to share the cost of and culpability for those circumstances in our own lives.”

It is a story of refugees: what happens to the families that are denied refugee status and are sent back to the countries they fled? What are the strategies they have developed to cope with the weight of being part of the machinery – a machinery that is meant to regulate one country’s well-being but causes distress and fear for those it rejects?

Graphic of two people with deported stamp over themSixteen-year-old Elvira has lived most of her life in Germany, is well integrated, has friends and has just fallen in love with a German classmate. But her family is Roma and fled the war in Kosovo when she was six. Their refugee status was never confirmed. Now, their hometown has been declared “safe” and the family is deported with little warning or time to prepare. Roma are not only stigmatized in Germany, but face prejudice and discrimination with little hope for employment and integration in Kosovo.

Elvira’s boyfriend, Bruno, breaks off all contact with his pilot father when he finds out he flew the plane that deported Elvira’s family. But we also meet the doctor, immigration office administrator, an over zealous social worker, and the pilot’s new girlfriend. All have their strategies perfected that allow them to play their role in the officially accepted system; they all face their breaking points when the professional crosses into the personal realm.

Germany is the new country of immigration, and more than any other European country it has developed opportunities to confront and express this new reality with projects involving refugees in its rich theatre landscape. Canada is, by comparison, an old country of immigration, but it too is facing the challenges of a great new wave of Syrian immigrants

Loughran has been pushing the boundaries of Canadian theatre for more than 20 years as a director, producer, actor, dramaturg and playwright with companies across the country. Her company K’Now Theatre, has produced two shows, garnering seven Dora nominations and winning three. Loughran currently serves as associate producer for the Forum and Laboratory at the Stratford Festival. Directing credits, include The Aeneid and The Komagata Maru Incident for Stratford, and Pu-Erh for which she received a Dora nomination for Outstanding DirectionUpcoming, she will direct The Comedy of Errors at Stratford.

Bicker lives in Germany and works as an author, director, curator, cultural project leader and dramaturg. He has written 15 plays, four radio plays and three works of prose. His projects focus on social awareness and community engagement, and he has facilitated countless initiatives that integrate immigrants (legal and illegal) in the artistic process and enable interaction about living in exile with the local population. Deportation Cast has had over a dozen productions in theatres across Germany.

The Goethe Institute commissioned Schreyer Duarte’s translation of Deportation Cast. Originally from Germany, Schreyer Duarte works as a translator, director (Hamlet/Shakespeare in High Park) and dramaturg (Canadian Stage). She has translated over a dozen plays from German into English, which have been staged in Toronto, Stratford and London, United Kingdom.

Theatre @ York’s season “Worlds of Exile” explores longing, belonging, and displacement. Exile, refugee, asylum-seeker, nomad, migrant, immigrant, these terms share a sense of displacement and a feeling of otherness. While some of these terms can be defined in legal and political terms, others speak to a rift that generates a social and psychological condition. With “Worlds of Exile,” York’s Department of Theatre reflects on aspects of the varied experience of persons who, either by choice or as a result of imposition are living outside their home of origin, are othered by virtue of colonial exile practices, who have returned home only to find it unrecognizable, or who, as the children or grandchildren of exiles are living in two worlds.

Performances for Jan. 25 and 26 are at 7:30pm and Jan. 26 and 27, 2pm in the Foster Studio, Room 207 Accolade East Building, Keele campus. Admission is free but audience members must sign up at https://goo.gl/VvGKNX.

Film course runner-up for International E-Learning Award

The online course Cinema and the City’s virtual tour of the history of cinema that uses Toronto as a model has earned York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) recognition far beyond the Ontario capital’s urban boundaries.

Film 1900: Cinema and the City, as it is known in course listings, was the runner-up for 2017’s top e-learning prize in the academic division of the International E-Learning Awards, given annually by the International E-Learning Association. Winners of the academic division awards were announced on Sept. 28 at an international conference in Budapest. The University of Calgary took top spot, with honourable mention going to Fachhochschule Campus Wien in Vienna, Austria. (Submissions for this year’s competition open March 15 and are due by June 10. Contact the Teaching Commons for details.)

Gillian Helfield
Gillian Helfield

“It was a big surprise and I was very pleased to be so recognized,” says Professor Gillian Helfield, the course director, who had received funding from the Academic Innovation Fund to turn the blended course into a fully online offering.

Cinema and the City is geared toward non-film majors, focused on giving them “an understanding of film’s foundations and development as an urban phenomenon and instilling a deeper connection between cinema and the city,” she explains.

“The course illustrates how cities are represented in cinema and how the city is part of cinema, focusing on the mutual influence of the two, beginning in the late 19th century; students see how the city and the cinema ‘grew up’ together.”

Helfield sees the city and the cinema as “benchmarks of modernity and mobility” that helped shape our social environment. The course syllabus takes the students on a tour of cinema and the city, using Toronto as a model. The lectures are filmed partly at city intersections or in neighbourhoods, which correspond to the subject matter of that week’s unit.

For example, lecture two, which is about the development of the Nickelodeon and early silent cinema, is introduced at the corner of Yonge and Adelaide Street, site of the city’s first Nickelodeon theatre; the beginning of lecture three, which addresses the city’s representation in 1930s film as a modern Utopia or Dystopia, is filmed with the Financial District’s skyscrapers in the background. Sports films in lecture eight are discussed using the old Maple Leaf Gardens as a backdrop, while Chinatown is home base for lecture nine’s exploration of urban ethnic identity in the cinema.

For their final assignment, the students are required to create their own “Cinema and the City Tour,” which they must illustrate with a brochure or map. They can combine cinema and the city in any number of ways, such as using urban film festivals, film studios or film locations.

“I want to get the thinking about city and the cinema, but also remind them that Toronto is one of the top film cities in the world,” Helfield says.

The course, which regularly draws between 400 to 500 students, is considered a foundation course within the faculty. In addition to the online lectures, the students are asked to take part in online discussion forums with their fellow tutorial group members and teaching assistants.

“As it is an online course, I try to emphasize the importance of participation and engagement,” Helfield says.

To create and design the course, she worked closely with the staff in AMPD Computing Services, including Technology Coordinator Lillian Heinson.

The team supporting the creation of Cinema and the City: From left, Reiner Bello (Video Production, AMPD), Gillian Helfield (Cinema & Media Arts, AMPD), Lillian Heinson (Instructional Technology Coordinator, AMPD Computing), Sennah Yee (Admin, AIF), Nancy Asiamah-Yeboah (Video Production, AMPD), Natasha May (Teaching Commons)

“We had so much fun creating it,” Helfield says. “There’s also a great crew of students helping us, who filmed me on location, designed the website and created a beautiful jazzy montage to introduce each lecture.

“We’re continually improving it, making it look more cinematic. There’s new software coming out all the time that AMPD Computing keeps abreast of. There’s a great synergy and it’s wonderful to collaborate with other people who love what they are doing and are so good at it!”

Consider the course a gift from current film aficionados to the next generation of film lovers.

By Elaine Smith, special contributing writer to Innovatus

VPRI looking to engage in collegial conversation around Artificial Intelligence

3d rendering robotic hand working with virtual graphic

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is of great interest to the research world today, potentially driving innovative problem-solving. Both the federal and provincial governments have imagined this potential. The Ontario government has invested in the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a flagship of its development in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to make Ontario a source of high-quality professionals and to attract an industrial base of the information technology (IT) and the AI sectors. The Ministry of Research, Innovation & Science is also commissioning a report to develop a provincial strategy.

York has interdisciplinary strengths that give the University a unique ability to engage in AI in a holistic manner, to provide a broader perspective including its impacts on humanity and society

On the federal side, Ottawa has invested $120 million of direct support and $36 million has been allocated for Vector AI chairs for existing and newly recruited individuals. There is also the AI supercluster, in which the federal government is determined to utilize the country’s top research resources.

VRPI starts ongoing discussion on development and application of AI

Recognizing the many Faculties that are currently doing research and pedagogy in AI, Vice-President Research & Innovation Robert Haché invited a highly interdisciplinary team of York University researchers and academics to begin an ongoing conversation about AI late last year. He emphasized that the provincial and federal investments represent a stellar opportunity for the University to engage in the development and application of AI – a sentiment that was also enthusiastically shared by faculty members at the meeting.

Robert Haché

“Given York’s interdisciplinary strengths, we have a unique ability to engage in AI in a holistic manner, to provide a broader perspective including impacts on humanity and society, in addition to the core technology and questions around technology adoption. This unique expertise of York is reflected in the disciplines of participants at the table today,” Haché said at the meeting.

A vast array of expertise and interest was discussed included engineering, computer vision, robotics, mathematics, community and global health, healthcare technology, IT, philosophy, digital arts, gaming in education, finance and investment.

It was clear that participants in the discussion agreed that York has great potential to be a leading member in provincial and federal investments, noting our diverse expertise, ranging from philosophical theories, ethical implications, societal/social context to AI, and biological, computing, engineering and health applications.

Key discussion topics going forward include:

  • AI represents the convergence of AI biologics, genetic manipulation and robotics; and its implications on individual health and human systems (social organization, ethical, moral and legal framework).
  • Machine learning is a broad enough term that will allow opportunities to engage with diverse forms of engineering and science.
  • AI ask big questions, such as What constitutes intelligence? and Do we want machines to be more optimal or to have more human intelligence?
  • Humanists and social scientists, computer scientists, neuroscientists and psychologists need to be involved in this discussion.
  • The ethical and philosophical aspects and social implications of AI are very important, as well as legalities.
  • Global health and AI are very important. Experts in this area need to be part of the discussion.
  • Economics needs to be a large part of future discussions because the labour market is where the most immediate impact of AI will be.
  • Who else needs to be at this table? Building an inventory of all research labs involved in AI research is desirable.

Towards an AI strategy

At York University, there is great enthusiasm to develop a formal strategy around AI, in the Strategic Research Plan and beyond. The momentum around AI is building.

Haché suggested that the strategy would need to be built from the ground up. “This has the potential to become a high-profile institutional priority, but we need to build enthusiasm amongst colleagues, with collegial contributions being key,” he said.

What’s next? A working group that is broadly constituted has been created to define positioning of the AI opportunity in a manner that builds on York University’s core values. This group will be looking for input and volunteers.

Those wanting to learn more about AI are encouraged to attend an upcoming event: Osgoode Hall Law School is hosting Bracing for Impact: The Artificial Intelligence Challenge on Feb. 2. Register today!

Additional resources at York include the Lassonde School of Engineering’s Artificial Intelligence page and Osgoode Hall Law School’s page on legal values in AI. YFile has also covered the topic of AI (example: Lassonde researchers win artificial intelligence challenge). Schulich School of Business Professor Moshe Milevsky was quoted in The Globe & Mail (Nov. 16) on the topic of AI: Artificial Intelligence – coming to an advisor near you. Schulich School of Business Professor Henry Kim was quoted in The Globe & Mail (June 5) in the article Artificial intelligence takes on white-collar duties.

Theatre prof contributes to constructed language in hit sci-fi TV show

The Expanse, features the work of Eric Armstrong
Eric Armstrong
Eric Armstrong

Theatre professors are no strangers to the limelight, but for one York University academic, Eric Armstrong, the cool factor is off the charts. He created the accent for a constructed language called Belter, used in the white-hot sci-fi television series “The Expanse,” set 200 years in the future. This new language, developed by linguist Nick Farmer with the assistance of Armstrong as dialect/accent coach, mashes up six existing languages.

The American series, the third season of which airs 2018, has a captivating premise: Humans have colonized the solar system and Mars has become a military power. One social class has not fared well in this world. The new language belongs to this group of people, called Belters, who survive by scavenging materials in a particular Asteroid Belt.

In this Q&A with Brainstorm, Armstrong  ̶  who teaches voice, speech, dialects and Shakespearean text at York  ̶  talks about the new language and the television show that are taking centre stage in his career.

“The Expanse.” Image reproduced with permission.
“The Expanse.” Image reproduced with permission

Q: How did this gig on “The Expanse” transpire?

A: One day, I got a call from my agent, asking if I knew anything about made-up languages in science fiction shows. I have to admit, I’m a bit of a nerd. I had read a lot about what are called ‘con langs’ or constructed languages in the press, most notably due to “Game of Thrones.” Dothraki and Valyrian are two made-up languages in that show.

When I was brought in to speak with the show creators, they could see that I knew what I was talking about, even though it was a ‘first’ for me.

“One day, I got a call from my agent, asking if I knew anything about made-up languages in science fiction shows. I have to admit, I’m a bit of a nerd. I had read a lot about constructed languages.” – Eric Armstrong

Q: How did your career lead up to this position as dialect/accent coach on a hit television series?

A: I trained to be an actor and worked professionally in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal for about five years. I always felt an attraction to teaching voice. York had an MFA program in this field. One of my mentors was David Smukler, Canada’s foremost voice teacher at the time, who started the voice teacher diploma program here at York. I completed this program, then worked freelance for a year. And from then on, I’ve had full-time voice teaching jobs in Canada and the United States. I returned to York [as a faculty member] in 2003.

York University’s Theatre Program
The Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre at the Keele campus is one of the venues used by York University’s Theatre Program

“Our acting classes at York are diverse; and that diversity motivates me to teach in a way that is inclusive… That’s very rewarding.” – Eric Armstrong

One of the jobs that I took early on teaching was at Brandeis University [Massachusetts] where I was the speech and accents teacher – a narrower niche in the voice teaching field. I felt a little underqualified, so I took the time to do further research. I started to coach professionally in the theatre in Boston. That got me on the path. After that, I went to Chicago, where I started to work on film and television on a much bigger scale. My first film coaching job was with the [British actor] Tom Wilkinson, who had just been nominated for an Academy Award.

Q: Belter is comprised of Chinese, Japanese, Slavic, Germanic and other languages. What was it like developing the accent for this fabricated language?

A: Belter is a creole, a combination of languages. Nick Farmer, creator of the Belter language, studied creoles and used the structure of many creoles to create a new creole. English is at the core of Belter. But he took many of these other languages that you referenced as ingredients.

Diogo, a Belter (played by Andrew Rotilio). Image reproduced with permission.
Diogo, a Belter (played by Andrew Rotilio). Image reproduced with permission

Special feature: Listen to audio of Eric Armstrong reciting Shakespeare with a Belter accent.

To begin with, he created a basic dictionary. For this, he turned to different languages for the source words, then undertook a transformational process to create phonological rules. [Phonology is the study of how sounds are used in language. This includes how sounds interact with each other.]

So, Nick handed me the phonological rules [for Belter] and gave me some samples of what Belter sounded like. As I ‘auditioned’ for the show – really, it was more like an extended interview –  I took those sounds and developed an overall feeling of the language.

At first, Belter felt like Jamaican, also a creole. But we didn’t want it to be exclusively one thing; we wanted it to feel global. So, I took elements from Chinese, European and English accents, and salted them in to the recipe as a means of counterbalancing the Jamaican accent. As a result, Belter seems familiar… but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Later, I was surprised to find out that a Singaporean accent sounds quite a lot like Belter.

Two Belters: Drummer (played by Cara Gee) and Anderson Dawes (played by Jared Harris). Image reproduced with permission
Two Belters: Drummer (played by Cara Gee) and Anderson Dawes (played by Jared Harris). Image reproduced with permission

Q: What’s next for you at York?

A: I’m currently working on a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded project on developing accent resources for the Indigenous performance community, which is underserved. This is a mandate I created for myself. For far too long, accent resources have primarily targeted mainstream actors. The industry is dominated by people who look like me, and I would like that to change.

Our acting classes at York are diverse; and that diversity motivates me to teach in a way that is inclusive… That’s very rewarding.

To learn more about the television show, visit the space.ca website. To read an interview with Armstrong in Wired magazine, visit the site. Armstong’s credits are listed in the Internet Movie Database, IMDb. For more information about Armstrong, visit his faculty profile.

To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch, watch the York Research Impact Story and see the snapshot infographic.

By Megan Mueller, manager, research communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, muellerm@yorku.ca