When The Sun Comes Out

The last show of the 2013 Vancouver Queer Arts Festival is a lesbian opera—apparently, the first lesbian opera in all of Canada! I hadn’t been planning to go until a friend invited me, and I’m very glad I accepted that invitation.

The last show of the 2013 Vancouver Queer Arts Festival is a lesbian opera—apparently, the first lesbian opera in all of Canada! I hadn’t been planning to go until a friend invited me, and I’m very glad I accepted that invitation.

First, the negative: I admit I’ve never seen opera, lesbian or otherwise (unless you count What’s Opera Doc?, in which case I’m totally an expert on Wagner’s Ring Cycle), and so far I’m not crazy about the genre. Yes, the vocal gymnastics were damn impressive, but all they did for me was to make the dialog hard to understand. If not for the lyrics projected on the back of the stage, I wouldn’t have been able to follow the story except in the most general sense. And it meant that most of the time, I was looking either at the written lyrics or the performers.

Now that that’s out of the way…

The story takes place in an unnamed country with an unnamed but deeply misogynistic religion, where women and men are largely segregated and any hint of homosexuality is punishable by death. (The show notes call the country “Fundamentalia” but that name was never mentioned in the play itself; for what it’s worth, to my ears the characters’ names sound kind of Persian / Central Asian.)

We’re first introduced to Solana, a tough, confident butch lesbian. Originally Canadian, she’s traveled the world, seduced lots of women, but always left before things got serious. This is how she’s always wanted it, but now the unexpected has happened: she’s fallen in love! Before leaving forever, she decides to visit her love’s home for one more night of passion, and perhaps take a memento for the road. Staying is definitely not an option, since Fundamentalia is not friendly to women like her.

Lilah is married, with a daughter, but before meeting Solana she had never known passion or love. When she comes to visit in the night, Lilah tries to send her away, but finds herself unable to resist her feelings. They kiss and settle on the bed, but then Lilah’s husband Javan comes home. He catches the two of them together, and immediately decides to kill both. Lilah manages to calm him down (Solana, more pragmatic, just takes his knife away) and all the secrets come out.

It turns out Javan has had lots of male lovers, about whom Lilah has been keeping quiet for both their sakes. He did find love, many years ago, but his lover was found out and beaten to death; ever since then, Javan has been wracked with grief and survivor guilt, unable to find joy in anything, even his fleeting trysts.

Gradually, the three come to an understanding. Lilah and Javan will keep each other’s secrets, supporting each other as needed (though it looks like the support will be mostly one-way; he’s far more damaged than she is). And Solana? She begs Lilah to come with her, away from this country that will kill her if she steps out of line. She can bring her daughter, raise her in a country where women and queers are free. Javan categorically refuses to give up his daughter, threatening again to kill Solana if she tries it, and Lilah is on his side this time. Because how free can she actually expect to be? Lilah argues that Solana is likely to get tired of her soon, leaving her alone in an unfamiliar country, far from her roots and her family. True, this country is difficult, but it’s not without its joys. Besides, if she stays she can work for real change.

Solana has a difficult choice. Should she stay safe and go home, leaving Lilah with her heart torn in two? Or should she stay, prove to Lilah and herself that she can be more than a love-’em-and-leave-’em woman, put down roots somewhere and make a positive difference in someone else’s world?

In the end, Solana chooses to stay. Not forever, but as long as she can bear life in an oppressive woman-hating country. She also invites Lilah to come to Canada at some point in the future, so she can see other ways of life and make a choice herself. And so the opera ends on a cautiously optimistic note: it’s not clear what the future will bring, but whatever happens we can be sure that Solana, Lilah and Javan will face it together.

When The Sun Comes Out is a love story, but there’s much more to it than that. The love that it portrays is not so much about passion, but about loyalty, openness and mutual support. It is a love that conquers fear, despair and, perhaps someday, an oppressive culture. And there’s no trite Happily Ever After, which I do appreciate. It’s better to bravely face an uncertain future than to relax in an unrealistic cliché.

Speaking of clichés, I also liked how the story steered away from Solana blithely sweeping Lilah off her feet, out of her marriage, her miserable oppressed life and into a bright future in the liberated West. There are no black and white answers; though she doesn’t love him in the same way she loves Solana, Lilah is committed to her husband and their daughter. The same religion that justifies killing queers and uppity women, is the religion that gives her strength. All the things that Solana sees as chains, that she’s been running from her whole adult life, Lilah knows are her roots. Solana’s freedom would be Lilah’s loneliness. Besides, no country is perfect; after all, wasn’t Solana herself kicked out of her parents’ house at a young age?

When The Sun Comes Out is a great milestone, and an amazing experience in its own right, moving and thoughtful, full of nuanced points and surprisingly complex themes. It is a true masterpiece, and I applaud Leslie Uyeda and Rachel Rose for having created it!

#GlobalKissInProtest

Last Friday was a first for me: I participated in a kiss-in, in front of the Russian Consulate in downtown Vancouver protesting the homophobic neanderthal shit-show developing in Russia.

Last Friday was a first for me: I participated in a kiss-in, in front of the Russian Consulate in downtown Vancouver protesting the homophobic neanderthal shit-show developing in Russia. I’d considered going even though I didn’t have a kissing buddy (::sadface::), but what really clinched it was a Facebook conversation the day before, with the protest’s organiser. My contribution was—in response to people shocked that a gay person in Russia would support Putin’s new laws and be generally right-wing and paranoid about Western culture—that the rising paranoia and fascism in Eastern Europe wasn’t too surprising to me, given that I’d already seen something of it in Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride. In hindsight, it felt both (a) overly didactic and (b) kind of negative. Which, fair enough, there’s a lot to be negative about. And also fair enough, it was informative. But I do have this tendency to spout off interesting fact(oid)s at the drop of a hat, and sometimes I need to tone it down. This, I think, was one of those times. And I could and should do more than sit on the sidelines of this particular conflict and be like the Kids in the Hall’s It’s a fact girl.

So I went to the kiss-in. And kissed a few guys, which was fun. There were quite a few news cameras present, which made me very self-conscious. Seriously, I hadn’t felt like that since my very first Pride parade, waaay back in ’93. Man, those were the days, when gays and lesbians were still kind of exotic and mainstream media weren’t even talking about bi or trans folks.

But I stayed. And though I didn’t think I’d end up on camera, seeing as I wasn’t in the front row and didn’t do that much kissing, a couple friends mentioned seeing me on the news the next day. It was a bit of a shock, but only a bit. It really was not a big deal. My fears had made mountains out of molehills.

What did this protest accomplish? Maybe nothing tangible, in the short run. But then protests rarely do. And in this era of global politics and social media, who can say where things will go in the next six months? Whatever happens, I want to be a part of it.

Rainbow Racing Stripes

Today was a first for me: I got my hair dyed. And then I thought, what the hell, let’s dye it ALL THE COLOURS. So, in honour of Pride and especially our lovely rainbow crosswalks, I got myself all 8 colours of the Pride rainbow.

Incidentally, this is the first time in a long while I’ve felt really happy with how pictures of myself looked. I guess all I needed was different hair colour?

Reflection / Refraction

The first Reflection / Refraction took place two years ago as part of the 2011 Queer Film Festival. It was an interesting experiment, and I’m glad they’re continuing it in the Queer Arts Festival.

The format is simple: five short films, curated by Jen Crothers and Kristina Lemieux, were each assigned to one performing artist that then have several months to create a response. The variety of those responses was amazing! Every artist picked up on something different and pulled the orginal film in a new direction.

The first Reflection / Refraction took place two years ago as part of the 2011 Queer Film Festival. It was an interesting experiment, and I’m glad they’re continuing it in the Queer Arts Festival.

The format is simple: five short films, curated by Jen Crothers and Kristina Lemieux, were each assigned to one performing artist that then have several months to create a response. The variety of those responses was amazing! Every artist picked up on something different and pulled the orginal film in a new direction; it all made me think about art, and how it’s born.

Galactic Docking Company by Clark Nikolai / response by Ralph Escamillan

You all know Clark Nikolai, right? This short film is a classic, mixing old footage of the NASA control room with footage of model rockets docking, and men docking. Ralph Escamillan’s response is a dance that at first left me cold. He’s a great dancer, and the reverse strip tease—ie: starting out naked then putting on multiple layers of clothing—was a neat twist, but aside from briefly being able to see his penis, I didn’t get what it had to do with docking or rockets.

But as he explained later in the Q&A, his inspiration wasn’t the dicks, but the offbeat humour. His piece was meant to be a subtle satire of his generation: since other youth tend to take their clothes off as much as possible, he decided to do the reverse. Which makes sense, and maybe I was being overly literal in how the performances should go. I guess this is why I’m a Web developer and not a performance artist.

Dance to Miss Chief by Kent Monkman / response by Mette Bach

Kent Monkman’s ultra-catchy film remixes clips from old German Western films with an eye to deconstructing them. Mette Bach’s response is a very moving spoken work piece about her father’s sudden death and learning to dance the Argentine Tango. Apart from the “dance” theme the connection is extremely tenuous—and (I may be paraphrasing a bit) Mette herself admitted that she already had her story to tell even before seeing Miss Chief.

Which makes her piece not really a response to the movie. But you know what? Inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes and if this show gave Mette the impetus to tell her story, I won’t complain.

Herr by John Greyson / response by Tran ÀPus Rex

You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen drag kings performing, either in movies or IRL. It’s quite an eye-opener: the jerky and overly controlled motions, the stylised swaggering, it all adds up to something weird and crazily over-the-top. I wonder, do women see something similar when they look at drag queens? Huh.

Anyhoo, Herr is a hilarious little film about a group of four drag kings that start out peeing in the snow and comparing how far it goes, walk and sit in sync when they’re not dancing, and bully their youngest member (while dancing). I thought Tran ÀPus Rex’s dance / strip piece (to Davie Bowie’s Fame), appearing as he did in a buttoned-up suit and tie, was just a continuation of that… but then it went in unexpected directions. Because underneath the suit? bright spandex tights and funky jewelry. And inside the plain leather briefcase? a gold lamé purse. I’m not sure what kind of symbolism I should read into that, but it was startling and awesome fun.

The Bus Pass by Narissa Lee / response by Cris Derksen

The Bus Pass is a cute and sweet movie of a woman silently pining for another woman on the bus, almost working up the courage to get her number… and then the other woman makes the first move, writing her number on her bus pass. Cris Derksen’s response is basically to remix and loop bits of the film (audio and video) while playing an electric cello. Catchy and simple. No extra story, no extra meaning. Sometimes that’s all you need.

The Hawker by Elisha Lim and Coco Riot / response by David C. Jones

A very short heartwarming film about trans visibility and community is refracted by David C. Jones into a wordless piece that’s mostly (I think) about hiding and then choosing not to hide. I missed some of the details of the story because, well, I do better with words and a clear narrative. But David pulled off a great performance, especially since apparently this was the first time he tried something without spoken words. Kudos.

Celebration of Light 2013: United Kingdom and Canada

The first show of the season, by the United Kingdom on Saturday the 27th, was quite good. Not great, though: I’ve got the same complaint as with Team Mexico’s show a couple years ago, and that’s the fireworks display seemed too tied to the music. I’m not 100% sure, mind you, but there were a number of repetitive parts that weren’t very exciting visually, and I assume that’s what was going on. Music-wise, from what I could see, it seemed to be a tribute to James Bond. There was the theme from Goldfinger, plus another Bond flick which I can’t recall right now. Still, it had lots of good moments.

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(More photos here)

I wasn’t really planning to go to Canada’s show on Wednesday the 31st because it was after volleyball, and I’d be tired and I’d have to face not only the crowds, but also driving home around 9. To my place in the West End. In the West End that was 80% closed to cars because of the fireworks, and only had a few points of entries for gas-powered vehicles. But I got invited by a couple of friends, and after vball I found I had more energy than I thought, so off I went.

(And then I couldn’t find them and for some reason my phone didn’t have coverage so I could neither call nor message. Maybe it’s my carrier, maybe it’s the massive crowds, or both.)

So that was annoying, but I had a good view so I decided to stay. I’m glad I did, because it was phenomenal! No repetitive parts, clever visual effects that I’d never seen before, gorgeous use of colours, I loved every bit of it!

My 2013 Queer Film Fest schedule

Eleven days of queer culture, oh yeah!

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Eleven days of queer culture, oh yeah!

Thursday, August 15

Not a lot of choice, right? There’s only the Opening Gala to go to.

Final choice: Magnificent Presence / Magnifica Presenza

Friday, August 16

Reaching for the Moon looks really good, but so does Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?. Seeing Moon means I’ll have to see Margarita for the early show, which I’m not really feeling, because there’s no way I can get to SFU from International Village in time. Or… can I? No, probably not. I want to see Beyond the Walls, and though it’s also playing on Thursday, I’d have to miss the Centrepiece Gala which I really, really don’t want to do. Hmmm… Lesbian artistic drama, or comedy and karaoke? Decisions, decisions.

Final choice: Beyond the Walls / Hors les murs & Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Saturday, August 17

Sadly I’ll only have time to see the early-early show, since I’ve got a barbecue to go to. On the bright side, from the trailer it looks like a great one!
NOPE I’ll be at WordCamp Vancouver all day and then the BBQ. No movies for me!

Final choice: R/EVOLVE none

Sunday, August 18

A retrospective on Vancouver’s queer cinema scene vs. a hard-hitting documentary on queer refugees coming to Canada? That’s a tough one… For now I’m in a history kind of mood, though I reserve the right to change my mind later. I have no particular preference re: the late shows.

Final choice: Who Are We, Cinema? & In-between Days / Dui Dhuranir Golpo

Monday, August 19

To be honest, all this day’s movies look quite good. I could just flip a coin and I think I’d be happy. One the one hand, I could watch The Outs anytime… on the other hand, the creator will be present for discussion. On the gripping hand, I’d kind of rather see over-the-top Bollywood than sad Korean movies. Okay… for now, it’s heartwarming family stuff and Bollywood. Plus, those movies will end earlier, which is an important consideration.

Final choice: Mama Rainbow & Queens! A Destiny of Dance

Tuesday, August 20

Dammit, I really want to see Head of the Class, but I also really want to see some vintage silent porn with live musical accompaniment! Let’s see, what are the late shows? Hmmm… it’s either cosplay or sexy shorts… All right, I guess it’s a sexy evening for me!

Final choice: Lot in Sodom + Vintage Queer Porn & Bawdy Body Shorts

Wednesday, August 21

The VGVA is sponsoring Meet the Glamcocks, so I really should go. The other choice is the story of Bishop Gene Robinson, which to be honest doesn’t grab me all that much. Glamcocks it is, then! Since I’m at International Village, that leaves just one option for the early show. Fortunately it looks like a good one!

Final choice: Camp Beaverton & Meet the Glamcocks

Thursday, August 22

Centrepiece Gala! Bollywood! Oh yeah. And for the late show, the story of an all-female 80’s punk band? Sure, works for me.

Final choice: Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish & She Said Boom

Friday, August 23

I’m seeing The Coast is Queer, no question. So if I’m at the Rio, that means the early show is G.B.F. which looks like a lot of fun and hey, works out pretty well, since I’ll miss it on Wednesday!

Final choice: G.B.F. & The Coast is Queer

Saturday, August 24

I’ll miss In the Name of‘s first showing on the 17th (that darn BBQ), so here’s my second chance. Will I be able to make it down to the Rio in time for Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf? I hope so, I’m not really feeling Bwakaw. But I also have a slight preference for I Do over Valencia. Or I could pace myself and not see a third movie. But where’s the fun in that?

EDIT: the more I think about it, the more I’m leaning towards Bwakaw instead of Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf?. Plus I won’t need to schlep my ass across town, and I’ll get to see I Do. So here’s my updated schedule:

Final choice: In the Name of / W Imie & Bwakaw & I Do

Sunday, August 25

Again, only one movie to see!

Final choice: Frauensee

How to display post content via jQuery and the_content()

I solved an interesting little problem I ran across recently; investigating it led me to a fuller understanding of how WordPress does some things.

I solved an interesting little problem I ran across recently; investigating it led me to a fuller understanding of how WordPress does some things.

Here’s the setup: when you click a link, a particular div will have its inner HTML set to a particular post content via jQuery. The code would look something like this:

while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post();
  $content = get_the_content();
?>
  Link to click
  

Could that be made more efficient? Maybe. I guess you could do it through AJAX, passing in the post ID and returning the content, if only to avoid having a potentially long string in the page source—which in this instance is not an issue. The bottom line is, though, we’re passing in the_content() in .html().

And JavaScript won’t take it. When I try, I get the following error:

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL

It seems that the_content() adds an extra character (a newline) at the end, and it’s causing the hiccup. Note that get_the_content(), which returns the unformatted post body, does not cause this error.

My solution was to add a filter to remove that extra character. How? Like this, in my theme’s functions.php

function my_content_filter ($content) {
	return substr($content,0,-1);
}

add_filter( 'the_content', 'my_content_filter', 20);

As you know, this hooks a filter function to the ‘the_content’ action, so that my_content_filter() is applied before being rendered. As you can see all the function does is remove the last character of the content string. The last argument is he priority, and determines in what order the filter functions are applied. Naturally, I assumed that since the default priority is 10, anything greater than that meant that my filter would be applied to the formatted content, having already gone through the default filters—adding <p> tags and educated quotes and that pesky illegal unexpected token.

And it worked! However, I was still curious. I’d never delved into filters before, so it seemed like a good time. Starting with the_content(), defined in wp-includes/post-template.php:

function the_content($more_link_text = null, $stripteaser = false) {
  $content = get_the_content($more_link_text, $stripteaser);
  $content = apply_filters('the_content', $content);
  $content = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $content);
  echo $content;
}

Pretty straightfoward, right? You retrieve the content, apply any filters, and return it. I’m not sure what str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $content) is supposed to do, though…

As for the default filters, they’re set in wp-includes/default-filters.php

add_filter( 'the_content', 'wptexturize'        );
add_filter( 'the_content', 'convert_smilies'    );
add_filter( 'the_content', 'convert_chars'      );
add_filter( 'the_content', 'wpautop'            );
add_filter( 'the_content', 'shortcode_unautop'  );
add_filter( 'the_content', 'prepend_attachment' );

We can see that the filters are indeed set with the default priority. And, the formats are defined in yet a third file, wp-includes/formatting.php. It’s ‘wpautop’ that interests us. This is the filter that creates <p> and <br /> tags from single- and double-returns. And yes, it does add a “\n” at the very end. So there you go, question answered and problem solved. I know that my solution works, and I know why.

I’m wondering if I could do better, though. Would remove_filter() be useful? But then I’d still have to re-implement something like wpautop—basically, reinventing the wheel. Nah, I won’t worry about it. This is good enough for now.

The Secret Doctrine

Last night I went to see The Secret Doctrine, a play about the 19th century mystic, cult leader and huckster Madame Helena Blavatsky. It is directed by Ines Buchli and shown at the SFU Woodward’s Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre. It’s a great play, with some very impressive sound and visual effects, and though condensed and somewhat fictionalised, it’s a fascinating summary of Madame Blavatsky at her peak—the conjuring tricks, the philosophy, the intelligence and charisma.

Last night I went to see The Secret Doctrine, a play about the 19th century mystic, cult leader and huckster Madame Helena Blavatsky. It is directed by Ines Buchli and shown at the SFU Woodward’s Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre. It’s a great play, with some very impressive sound and visual effects, and though condensed and somewhat fictionalised, it’s a fascinating look at Madame Blavatsky at her peak—the conjuring tricks, the philosophy, the intelligence and charisma.

The other main character is Richard Hodgson; historically, he was an Australian-born lawyer sent by the Society for Psychical Research to do a report on Blavatsky. Though he concluded she was a fraud, he did believe in paranormal phenomena. The play made him a Canadian-born physicist working on electromagnetic theory. His first scene shows him doing work related to the Michelson-Morley experiment, trying vainly to prove the existence of the luminiferous aether. He is also a strong skeptic, pooh-poohing his colleague’s latching on to Blavatsky’s teachings. This Hodgson traveled of his own volition to India to live in Madame’s compound, mostly to keep a promise to his dead colleague to give her a fair chance. He falls under her spell a little, but eventually snaps out of it and denounces Blavatsky to the SPR.

Making Hodgson a scientist was an interesting choice, because while the story is centred on Blavatsky and Hodgson, it’s really about the 19th Century as a whole: an age struggling towards reason, trying to build an understanding of the universe based on science instead of faith. Darwin killed God, so they said, or at least made Him unnecessary, but many people were still hungry for miracles and revelation. Add to that a more connected world enabling increased contact with other cultures, and it made for a strange and potent mix. Blavatsky’s Theosophy borrowed from Hinduism and Buddhism and various mystery religions, but also the language of science, and tried to connect all of them into a sort of Grand Unified Spiritual Theory.

In the play, some of the Mahatmas’ revelations hinted very strongly at Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, both theories still a couple decades away. More poetic license, I guess, especially since they end up guiding Hodgson’s research towards brilliant new discoveries upon his return to London. But here’s a thought: yes, Theosophy was a gobbledigook mish-mash of conflicting philosophies and faiths, claiming to deep and ancient truth but not delivering. However: it inspired scientists. It apparently inspired Einstein, who was said to own a copy of Blavatsky’s book The Secret Doctrine. That may or may not be true but if it is, it’s not really that surprising; isn’t one of his most famous quotes that “Imagination is more important than knowledge”? Atheist though he was, I always found Einstein to have a little bit of the mystical about him.

So you could look at Theosophy and similar cults as a kind of Victorian proto-science-fiction, collections of narratives, tropes and memes centered (to varying degrees) around science and scientific knowledge, guiding practitioners to build on them and take them to the next level. We take it for granted now, but science as a institution and a culture was still very new. The scientists and engineers who got men on the Moon were inspired by old-time sci-fi pulps—Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and Captain Future; those writers and the scientists of their time owe much to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells; but where did Victorian scientists find their inspiration? From what was there: esoteric ecumenical philosophies, outdated (to us) and rather mystical beliefs about energy and life and electricity/magnetism, and Enlightenment-friendly organised religions. I guess inspiration is where you find it. And beliefs don’t have to be true to be inspirational.

It’s possible I’m overanalysing this. That’s okay, though. I expected The Secret Doctrine to just be a critique of a fraud and/or the weird pseudo-scientific philosophies she preached, but it gave me a lot of food for thought. I love when that happens!

Northern Voice 2013, epilogue: You Are Very Star

Friday June 14th was the premiere of the experimental play You Are Very Star. It took place at the HR MacMillan Space Centre, and they offered Northern Voice Attendees half off on their tickets. Deal!

It’s an odd mindfuck of a play, with themes of change and progress, religion, faith and the desire for transcendance. It wasn’t perfect (the interactive elements needed some work) but made for an enjoyable and mind-expanding evening.

Friday June 14th was the premiere of the experimental play You Are Very Star, created by Kevin Kerr and Craig Erickson, and directed by David Hudgins. It took place at the HR MacMillan Space Centre, and they offered Northern Voice Attendees half off on their tickets. Deal!

It’s an odd mindfuck of a play, with themes of change, progress, faith and transcendance. It wasn’t perfect (the interactive elements needed some work) but made for an enjoyable and mind-expanding evening. This review is going to be a little incomplete because it’s been two weeks and I can’t find the program anymore, so I can’t actually name the characters. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some other details.

The play is divided in 3 loosely connected acts, taking place in 1968, 2013 and 2048.

The first act, “Orbiting the Cusp of Greatness,” begins/ends in the Space Centre (yes, where we physically are) on December 21st, 1968, the night Apollo 8 went up. It was a time of turmoil and change, a time when people questioned everything. It follows backwards (interesting choice there!) a UBC Literature professor as he loses his mind, reinvents himself as a cult leader and attempts to achieve apotheosis with his small group of ex-student followers. And fails, because an ex-colleague pulls the plug on the TV so they miss the Apollo launch.

The second act does not take place on stage with actors; the audience are the actors. To prime us for the future and transcendence, we have to go through ten stations scattered around the Space Centre and participate in specific activities. One of the stations is a laptop running a Skype conversation with a sweet older lady. You sit down in front of it, tell her your age, and she gives you a brief story about what her life was like at that age. It invited us to look back and look forward: what kind of changes will we see when we’re her age?

Unfortunately, with a couple of exceptions this second act didn’t work so well. There were just too many people and even though everybody got a map with a different order for the stations, in practice there were usually long lines at every one. Too bad: it was a bold experiment in immersive theatre.

In the third act, “Transcendance,” a small group of Augmented humans—mentally connected through an advanced network, able to multitask like you wouldn’t believe and interface directly with technology—are anxiously waiting for “Neil”, their creator (played by Michael Rinaldi, who played the cult leader professor in the first act) to wake up and take them all to the next level, a perfect transcendental machine state that will usher in a brand new age for them. Too bad for the rest of the Earth, which is suffering from terrible climate change and widespread extinction. The story is partly narrated through one Augment, a young woman who’s decided to dictate a journal the old-fashioned way, with words one after the other.

Things heat up when Neil’s ex-lover (a baseline human) decides to visit him after many, many years. Wacky intercultural hijinks ensue with the young woman narrator—though they both speak in English words, they live in totally different worlds and can’t really relate to each other. She meets Neil, speaks to him briefly, and leaves. He wakes up, and in doing so disconnects himself from the worldwide Augment network, crashing it and bringing all his creatures down to normal.

The action eventually moves to the Space Centre again where… things happen. Sorry, I can’t be any more specific than that. My memories are a too hazy, and I don’t think I could do the scenes justice. Suffice to say, I think the Augments achieve transcendance, though not quite in the way they expect. And the audience gets to leave with their minds nicely scrambled.

So… my first thought was, this is the first time I’ve ever seen the Singularity and transhumanism explored on the stage! These are big sci-fi topics about the future of humankind and what it means to be human, and boy was it a trip!

The neatest twist about these Augments is that they’re not really that evolved. They’re mostly portrayed as scattered time-wasters, using their vast fractured minds to play games and live in mental simulations. For all their powers, they’re still immature and weird and creepy and idolise their creator, desiring transcendance though they don’t even understand what it means. They’re still human, and I don’t know if that’s depressing or hilarious. I guess it all depends on how you look at it. The Augments’ lives are determined by their choices, as ours are, after all.

The choice to have the 1968 segment unroll backwards is an intriguing one. Here’s how I read it: the past and future are symmetrical, both centered on the present, which just moves forward moment by moment. It’s in the present that we remember the past and create the future. And it’s up to us to be present, to learn the right lessons and create the right things.

Lastly, it’s a given that transcendental events are by definition impossible to explain or even show. I’ve complained about that before but this time it didn’t feel like a copout. I feel like I’ve been touched by something weird and wonderful. Kudos to The Electric Company for putting together a unique and brilliant experience!

Northern Voice 2013, Part 3: Tools of the Trade

A couple of talks about social media used not to change your life or tell stories, but for more specific purposes.

A couple of talks about social media used not to change your life or tell stories, but for more specific purposes.

Darren Barefoot: Living the Quantified Life

Darren started out with a personal anecdote, about having a box of his old comics stolen from his storage locker. Fortunately he’d made an obsessively detailed spreadsheet of every comic he had, so insurance was not a problem. Came out really well! That was one early reward the quantified life.

Using technology to monitor and share your input, life and performance has become possible thanks to smaller sensors, computers you can carry with you, omnipresent social media, and the cloud for aggregating and storing. Darren made the distinction between self-documentation such as blogging, and self-quantification, which is more about numbers and the aggregates thereof. There’s also passive vs. active. For example, the Nike Fuel Band (should I add a ™?) monitors your heart rate and steps taken without any input from you. Just wear it and away you go.

Why would you do this? Well, there’s the old saying: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Measuring your current status and your progress can be a powerful motivator to change some things about your life, and focus on what’s needed. On the other hand, you could be missing the forest for the trees, either looking at the wrong things, or spending so much time measuring and aggregating that you never get around to doing.

It all comes down to what’s best for you. Personally, I use two tools: a fitness app that conveniently lets me record my weight, workouts and food intake (including calories and protein); and Toggl, which lets me record my time.

Brad Ovenell-Carter: Twitter As A Note Taking Tool

Brad Ovenell-Carter spoke about his project to use Twitter as a note-taking and collaborative communication tool in his Grade 11 Philosophy class. Students get to communicate with each other and the teacher during or outside of class (using a particular hashtag to define the class’s online space), but unlike e.g. Facebook, all their conversations are 100% public. Since other adults are part of the digital space, they get to model good online behaviour.

In addition to Twitter, Ovenell-Carter’s class is divided into small discussion groups where students rotate through specific roles: note-takers take notes (obviously), researchers find answers to specific questions (if I remember right, they are the only ones who get to use the wider WWW during class), and so on. Students help each other out, which leaves the teacher free to do more one-on-one coaching. A win all around, it seems.

An important point is that students tweet under their own names: not only is this to keep them accountable, but they’re already building their online brands!

Now, this is a Philosophy class in a private school. Not all subjects are so discussion-heavy vs. information-heavy, so Twitter might not be so useful. Furthermore, the question of access to technology is an important one: not all public school students have a computer that’s all their own and that they can use for Twitter. All important questions, to be sure. Still, it’s a fascinating look at how education will change in the coming years and decades.