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(11/06/13 8:04pm)
With millions of users logging on everyday, Facebook is influential in the way people communicate in the Internet age. At an event on Saturday hosted by new club Debatable, two sides were prepared to give arguments about the social networking site’s benefits and drawbacks.
The moderator took to the stage and announced the debate topic: “Is Facebook Good for Individuals and Society?” Audience members voted on the question before and after the debate and the victors would be the side with the biggest increase in percentage of support.
Carolina McGarity ’16.5 and Toby Aicher ’16.5 argued in favor of this resolution, while August Hutchinson ’16.5 and Oakley Haight ’16.5 took a stand against the motion.
McGarity kicked off the opening speeches by stating that Facebook is a means to promote volunteer and political action. She also described the social networking site as a modern and timely solution to bring a disconnected community together in a virtual world. She argued that Facebook is also an accessible and flexible way to stay in touch with friends and family at a distance. Hutchinson rebutted by saying that the usage of Facebook creates a filter bubble that rarely shows controversial opinions on your newsfeed, which has a negative effect on politics.
After that, Hutchinson stated that pouring over information one is bombarded with via Facebook limits the time people can spend on more efficient means of communication in real life. Relationships happen between individuals, but Facebook makes such relationship less about “us” but more about “me.” On Facebook, people tend to tract, not to interact with others, which distracts from meaningful relationships in person; after all, there are substitutes like Skype that can connect people far away. Aicher, however, said that Facebook is merely a tool to communicate in a casual way. Instead of distracting from a meaningful relationship in real life, it is a continuation of such a relationship.
In Aicher’s opening speech he argued that Facebook, as a decentralized online method to communicate, is hard to control and censor, which contributes to democracy. Facebook showed its potential when Wael Ghonim, the organizer of the Jan. 25 protest in Egypt, said in a CNN interview that “this revolution started on Facebook.” The fact that Facebook can foster democracy is also supported by its shutdown in authoritarian regimes such as China. Haight reminded Aicher that he should not equal correlation to causation when analyzing China’s ban of Facebook.
In addition, Facebook makes it easier for people to register as an organ donor. When Facebook launched an organ donor status option, organ donor registrations went up 21 times the average rate.
Haight went on to say Facebook does not care about users’ privacy and ownership of content. The default setting makes most of the personal information open to the public.
Users can be tagged in a photo without their permission, and even when posts and messages are deleted, Facebook still keeps a copy, not to mention the accessibility of private information on Facebook to government, lobbying and advertising companies. Aicher rebutted Haight’s argument by stating that privacy controls can be changed in personal accounts, and the government has many other avenues for getting personal information than Facebook.
The moderator and audience then asked questions to both sides, mainly focusing on the privacy issue. In the closing speeches, both sides clarified their positions and revisited their points. A total of nine votes were cast, and the side in favor of Facebook as good for individuals and society won.
Nellie Pierce ’16.5 found all debaters to be well-prepared, and she agreed strongly with the point that Facebook connects friends in distance that would have otherwise lost contact.
“A point I wish they talked about is social anxiety,” said Pierce. “Facebook provides a buffer zone for those who don’t feel comfortable interacting face-to-face with others.”
Most of the audience described this debate as “well-prepared.” Both sides cited news articles and research. Hutchinson, the founder of Debatable, attributed this to their preparation ahead of time.
Hutchinson came to Middlebury College knowing that he would continue debating. He went to some practices of the Middlebury Debate Society (Debate Team) and found that the topics were not assigned with enough preparation time. He believed more preparation time would decrease the shallowness of the debate and help debaters to learn more.
“I wanted a debate that had more substance, that wasn’t just reasoning-based but was also research-based – one that wouldn’t be the same sorts of basic points rehashed over and over again without much new material or nuance,” Hutchinson said. “And I didn’t think that the framework in which they did their debate facilitated any of those.”
In order to create a positive debate experience for both debaters and the audience, Hutchinson founded Debatable, which held its first debate about big oil companies last month, and will continue to host debates approximately once a month in Crossroads.
Hutchison said debaters are mostly drawn from within the club but anyone is welcome to step up.
“As I was starting Debatable,” said Hutchinson, “I went up to people who, I believed, would be committed to debating, because I didn't want the organization to be full of individuals who didn't really care about it. I welcome anyone who wants to do their best to debate well and to learn from the experience.”
The next round, happening on Nov. 23, is on whether the environmentalist movement is overzealous.
(05/09/13 3:42pm)
This past Thursday through Saturday, May 2 through 4, the College’d theatre program presented the play “The Castle: A Triumph” by contemporary British playwright Howard Barker in the Seeler Studio at Mahaney Center for the Arts. The college website says the play is “blasting with humor, bawdiness, violence, and the limits of desire, pain and sexuality.”
In “The Castle,” a group of 12th-century English Crusaders return to their homeland after a long period of time, but find that the civic, agricultural and religious practices they were familiar with have been turned upside down while they were away. The women who were left behind in the village had radically changed the government and religion into an egalitarian culture. With the return of these reigning crusaders, they brought back an engineer who plan the largest castle in the region in order to regain control over the women. As the construction of the castle went on, they not only transformed the landscape of the village, but also the power dynamics manifesting in gender, sexuality, race and age. The play is serious, mature but yet comical in its exploration of gender and love.
Director Richard Romagnoli, the Isabel Riexinger Mettler professor of theatre at the College, is an authority on the work of Howard Barker. He has directed six of Barker’s plays and a few poems for the theatre department, PTP and companies in Boston and New York City since his first year at the College.
In Director’s Notes, Romagnoli viewed “The Castle” as “a story about love – love rejected – love betrayed – love pursued – the inability to love.”
With inciting action, a series of compelling conflicts and a resolution followed by an ironic denouement, the play formed the theatrical polarities of humor and sadness, a beautifully structured story.
Telling Barker’s story, conventional exchanges between characters were interrupted by direct addresses to the audience, inviting the audience to participate in the dramatic dynamic. The direct connection between the audience and the performer was not only engaging, but also challenged the imaginative boundaries of the audience.
Limited by the space and the budget, set designer Jon Crain and the director decided to have curtains dyed and painted shades of green, furnishing the landscape at the beginning of the play. The castle was revealed through the abrupt, violent tearing down of the curtains. The walls of the Seeler Studio became a part of the castle as the plot unfolded. In addition to that, the set provided the literal embodiment of a forbidding and dehumanizing structure in the space where the show finally took place with concrete columns and cinder block walls.
Instead of using traditional music scores as a melodramatic device to intensify the emotional scenes, the sound designer Cormac Bluestone used construction sounds to underscore some of the emotional moments. “The Castle” starred Christina Fox ’13.5 as Skinner, a witch, Meghan Leathers ’13.5 as Ann, a changed woman, and Noah Berman ’13 as her husband Stucley, a knight, embattled lord of the land.
Tickets sold out for all three performances. Students, professors, parents of the cast and friends of the production crew came and watched the two-and-a-half hour play.
“This play is not likely to leave the audience unaffected and indifferent and that makes for a potentially productive evening in the theater,” said Stephen Donadio, Fulton professor of humanities, sharing his experience in an email after the performance on Saturday night. “For what it is be worth, my own sense is that “The Castle” reveals the nature and scale of Barker’s dramatic ambition, which is Shakespearean, and that the changeable, conflicted texture of the play reflects Barker’s uneasiness with such an ambition, which he cannot help but find suspect, because it may be associated with pretentiousness and a will to power and domination.”
“As Romagnoli’s production makes clear,” he continued, “the playwright’s handling of this bleak assessment involves a lot of humor — subtly ironic humor and humor of the broad, loud, vulgar music hall variety. So, in the end, ‘The Castle’ seems to me unstoppably exploratory and genuinely unsettling.”
Unsettling seems to be a frequently mentioned adjective after the performance. Some of the students refused to leave any comment on “The Castle” because they do not know how to respond to this dramatic theatre work and were not sure if they got the underlying meanings of the work right.
Jack DesBois ’15 said that it was helpful for him to understand “The Castle” better with the experience of learning about Howard Barker in class. He said the abstract concepts of conflicts, domination and power might be hard to get out of the play if the audience came without knowing what to expect.
Precise construction of the castle, demolition of nature, betrayal in love, doubts in religious belief and conflicts in power; there are so many themes discussed and explored in “The Castle” that the general audience had a hard time grasping them all.
From a techniqual perspective, Sumire Doi ’13, who did her senior acting thesis “17 ½,” one month ago, thought “The Castle” was a brilliant project.
“The wall of the Seeler Studio was always standing there,” Doi said. “It’s nice to see the crew use it as a part of the castle, so the studio itself represents the castle. Besides, I really appreciated the poetic dialogues in the play.”
This summer, “The Castle” will be a part of summer shows in Season 27 of the PTP/NYC project off-Broadway.
(05/08/13 8:57pm)
The weather is so nice these days. After a long lasting winter, no one on campus can wait to put on spring apparel! Battell Beach takes over the role of the gym, and tables outside of Proctor become the new place to sit, replacing Proctor lounge.
It is interesting to see how people love to expose themselves under the sun around the campus. Frisbee suddenly becomes the most popular sport on campus, and Battell Beach is packed with students running around, a scene distinctly different from the snow-covered isolated atmosphere in the winter.
In the late afternoon, it is quite a scene for me to see people dressed in shorts and bikini, with their sunglasses on, lying in the sun, face down in the lawn or the picnic cloth they brought.
I wrote a tweet in Chinese saying that “spring is coming and the sun is shining. People surrounding me are obsessed with [it]: slackline in the sun, get tanned; play Frisbee in the sun, get tanned; chat on the lawn in the sun, get tanned; read books in the sun, get tanned; wear as [little] as possible, get tanned.” I got a fair amount of retweets and my Chinese friends who are studying abroad seem to resonate with this.
I don’t understand why tanning one’s self is the social norm here. I enjoy the sun, and I don’t mind gaining some vitamin D by walking between the buildings on campus. But when I was having some tea with friends outside for 15 minutes, the sun got too shiny and hot for me to stay longer.
It must be the same awkwardness for American students to see how most of the Chinese girls escape from the sun in the summer. Instead of getting tanned, most of us are obsessed with getting as pale as possible.
The most recent instance I realized this difference was when comparing the skin care lines of the same brand in the U.S. and in China. Whitening line, as the most popular line which appears on the home page of the Chinese website of that brand, does not exist in the U.S. The most equivalent line I can find on its U.S. website is the uneven skin tone line. Not surprisingly, it is also hard to find tanning lotion in China.
You may ask then what do most Chinese girls do in this nice and warm weather. I cannot represent all of them, but I can tell you what I am planning to do this summer. I will try to stay in the shade – if not the air conditioned rooms – as long as possible. I will get myself a cute sun-protective umbrella and stock up on sunscreen. It is not the sunlight that I don’t enjoy, but more of the heat and humidity the sun brings with it in the summer. Thus my favorite activities in the summer include hanging out with my friends in air-conditioned shopping malls, karaoke, restaurants and cafes. There is a joke in Hong Kong that the only time of year when girls wear sweaters is in the summer due to the low preset temperature of the air conditioners.
I am ready for my adventure of meeting the sun as little as possible this summer, and wish you all the best hanging out in the sun even without my company!
(04/24/13 1:13pm)
It is almost the end of a school year again, which at the same time means a new cycle begins soon. A lot of organizations on campus are having executive board elections. Rachel Liddell ’15, an SGA presidential candidate, came to our ISO (International Student Organization) weekly meeting last Sunday. ISO just had our presidential election one week ago, which makes an interesting contrast.
It is hard to compare the ISO election and the SGA election in the first place. Generally speaking, the SGA president holds more responsibility and power than the ISO president, so it makes sense that the SGA presidential candidates have more platforms to campaign with. It is nice to see those detailed platforms, but I can’t help but wonder how much will be accomplished if any candidate is elected.
I’m sure that issues like having more local food in the dining halls and giving credits for summer internships do not usually come up first in the platforms of most SGA presidential candidates. Although it’s nice to hear about what candidates plan to do if they are elected, I’m more interested in learning how familiar they are with this system – how realistic are their goals. It will be more effective to learn from previous experience, but instead of having continuity, the SGA, from my perspective, functions only on a yearly basis.
Maybe due to the smaller scale or the culture, the ISO presidential candidate seemed to understand specific aspects in the organization better. Some of the candidates for the ISO presidential election ran as current board members of the organization and offered achievable suggestions and solutions that they wanted to pursue next year. There might not be that many exciting changes they wanted to make, but at least the voters knew they could expect those changes to be accomplished over the next year.
Rachel Liddell was the only SGA presidential candidate who came to the ISO meeting without asking explicitly for an endorsement in the past three years. She has the best intention to hear what international students would like to see out of the next SGA president, and the ISO meeting turned into a Q&A session last Sunday.
One thing we talked about after the meeting was how political the SGA election is. Rachel talked a lot about her “platforms” next year “in her office” if she gets elected. Being an American, she brought her friend Danny Zhang ’15, an international student from Canada, to the meeting as well, to create a connection with the ISO.
That being said, the ISO election seemed to be less formal. The smaller size of the organization definitely contributed to it, but are there any other factors that caused it to be less formal? Is it that type of election process unfamiliar for some of the international students? Or is it the lack of interest of ISO members to participate in politics in general?
Personally speaking, I appreciate the good intention of Rachel to reach out to ISO and her concerns of the international student body on campus. I look forward to comparing how much of their platforms the next SGA president and the next ISO president accomplish by the end of next year.
(04/21/13 8:09pm)
On Friday, April 12, the dance department presented their rehearsal of “Dance, Music, Light: Performance Improvisation,” which will take place on May 3 and 4. Penny Campbell, senior lecturer in dance, discussed how dancers, musicians and a stage lighting designer study improvisation. During the lecture, the ensemble demonstrated how exploring improvisation is a daily routine.
The training started with a “warm-up score.” Everyday when the ensemble arrives at the studio from different parts of the campus, they bring themselves from the outer world into the space by merging with each other and investigating deep down into themselves. Each individual artist is autonomous but at the same time collaborative. No theme ran through the movements the dancers did, so collaboration came from listening and listening happens through the eyes, ears and contact.
Towards the end of the warm-up score, however, and a piece emerged as the performers found a sense of coherence. According to Campbell, it is not always easy to find an end. Sometimes musicians will cue the ensemble from sound, sometimes dancers cue from movements or sometimes a safe end comes from a blackout of the lighting.
For the second part of the practice, the ensemble investigated some elements Campbell came up with, such as “a little work with proximity and distance and indicates where you are in the space” and “building chargers with more intensity and energy.”
Dancers call into questions these elements to explore them further and take risks of blowing them. Only several weeks from the actual performance, dancers are less restricted by technique rules as long as they can produce gorgeous work.
All artists are considered equal in the ensemble — dancers, musicians or the lighting designer. The form of practicing improvisation is applicable to any level of artists.
In this open class, intermediate dancers integrate their thinking with their body: they are encouraged to explore movements, shapes and different parts of the body, recognizing that these explorations change habits.
For a while in the class, Campbell introduced the dancers by sticking their arms up. The dancers later abandoned these erect habits, as Campbell encouraged them to evade static work. Artists work to constantly push the envelope, building on each other’s movements and making it into their own.
As a result, the trust between the ensemble strengthened. Everyone in the audience stayed focus even though they are not the ones slated to perform on stage. They internalize their exercises all the while mimicking the movements of the dancers.
Dancers become self-aware at the process and all pieces are completely new for them: the processes become their product.
On performance night, without a theme, the ensemble will have the liberty to compose new pieces based on their experiences of negotiating and interacting. Dancers, musicians and stage lighting designers will be prepared to present the audience their understanding of performance improvisation.
(03/21/13 4:00am)
“17 ½”, the senior acting thesis of Sumire Doi ’13 and Rachel Goodgal ’13, opened last Thursday in the Hepburn Zoo. It featured nine scenes from eight writers, among which Doi wrote a monologue.
“17 ½ is a breaking stage,” Doi said, “half is the state of in between, and the play is about the whole process of restarting.”
"We started last summer to look into plays,” Goodgal explained, “but it is hard to find a full play that has two equal-sized female leads. Besides, there are not a lot of directing-focused theatre seniors or juniors, and no one is available to direct a whole play.”
Because of this, Doi and Goodgal ended up putting the best scenes of the best plays together. According to the directors, 17 ½ became their own creation.
“We spent several months putting the play and the team together,” Goodgal said. “It wasn’t until last December that we decided to do scenes. It took more time to put material together than to rehearse it”. Doi liked the format of the performance because in this way “order can be switched around and we have more freedom.”
Doi and Goodgal started with “Supreme Beings Create the World” by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy, in which both of them were giving orders and arranging details as the supreme beings of the world — in this case, their project. After that, they explored the theme of restarting and regenerating under different situations and distinct relationships throughout their production.
“I really liked the postmodernism of the collage and how multiple plays were incorporated seemingly seamlessly,” said Anis Mebarki ’15 who attended the Friday 8 p.m. show. “Especially whenever the characters undressed.”
“We change the costume on stage mainly because we don’t want to interrupt the flow,” Goodgal explained. “Besides that,” Doi added, “transition is such a good opportunity to play with: that’s one moment you can create your own thing. There’s no lines, no playwright and technically, we have no director either, so we got to do whatever we want to. We put a lot into transition, like getting musicians and spotlight.” There was no doubt that the audience enjoyed the final product.
“On Thursday night when we opened,” Goodgal recalled, “I was overwhelmed by the positive receptions that we got from people that I didn’t know. I was really touched.”
“It’s so different with each audience,” Doi added. “It’s interesting to see how people respond to different things. Friday night’s audience really liked the monologue and that’s what they talked about.”
Doi and Goodgal changed Dusty and the Big Bad World into Goodgal’s monologue in order to fit in the context of the whole show, so they decided to have another monologue for Doi. After careful research, Doi wrote her own monologue to represent a Sumi she created in her head.
“I didn’t know which Sumi to portray,” Doi said, “since I’m such a fragmented person, I find it hard to find the one image that I want to show to the audience. And I’m very self-couscious when acting myself because people will judge me from what I say in that scene. It’s still another role for me.”
Interestingly, as the director of Doi’s monologue, the first comment Goodgal gave was “stop acting”. “I didn’t know how to direct her to be herself,” Goodgal said, “I try let her to let herself live on stage, because it’s her, but it’s hard.”
In the Thursday show, the audience seemed to be more engaged in the last scene, “In Paris You Will Find Many Baguettes but Only One True Love” by Michael Lew.
“Audience was already warmed up by that time,” Doi said, “it’s just so much fun to play with the audience. Even when you are acting a comedy, you forget it’s funny because you have done it so many times. It makes such a difference to have the laugh there. ”
Another meaning of the title “17 ½”came from the fact that there were 17 students in the company. “It was an amazing cast and crew, and everyone was amazing,” said Goodgal, “we are grateful to our team and the collaboration.”
There are five directors for the nine scenes, but it is barely noticeable: efforts were made to compile the distinct scenes into a logical play and to present the breaking and restarting atmosphere by passionate yet detailed acting.
(03/20/13 4:10pm)
The theatre department production this year is called Undressing Cinderella, which will take place in Wright Theater in April. Two weeks ago, the theater department, collaborating with the comparative literature program, presented Cinderella Symposium. At the symposium, Professor of Chinese Carrie Reed and Visiting Assistant Professor of German Roger Russi introduced the crowd to several unconventional versions of a familiar fairytale, Cinderella.
Reed started the symposium with an ancient Chinese story, Ye Xian. The story was recorded in the ninth-century compilation Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang about a millennium before the European Cinderella story. Children were not the readers of Ye Xian story, instead, only educated people who can understand ancient written Chinese were able to read the story.
I’ve never heard of Ye Xian before, but I read Cinderella when I was four. Translated storybooks from the West were an important component of my early reading. Back in early 90s, instead of watching TV, I preferred listening to story-telling tapes, because my parents were too busy to read any story. I repeatedly listened to The Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Pea, Snow White, The Frog Prince and a lot of other stories from Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, and was able to recall any subtle details of those fairytales.
Fairytales, however, are only one kind of children’s book. Besides textbooks, in college I probably spent most of my money on children’s books: Robert Sabuda’s and David Carter’s pop-up books, as well as Roald Dahl’s and Dr. Seuss’s classic collections. I could not stop myself from clicking the “Buy now with 1-Click” button on Amazon when I see those vibrant and catchy covers of the books.
There is inevitably some educational purpose embedded in children’s books, but it is more interesting to understand those moral rules and restrictions from reading imaginative stories than reciting behavioral criteria.
What was the reading life of children in ancient China like before the translated versions of western storybooks came out? They were probably reciting Confucian classics. They needed to recite those classics in order to stand out for the imperial examination. My 90-year-old great grandpa once told me that childhood is the best time of our life to recite those classics because then we will remember every single line of them forever afterwards. He iterated a long Tang dynasty poem to convince me, and I was amazed at his memorization.
But there must be something other than reciting classics to compose the childhood of ancient Chinese people. Diving deep into my childhood story list, I noticed some Chinese folktales and legends. Although it is hard to find any copy of those traditional stories in bookstore nowadays, they exist in oral tradition. I like listening to story-telling tapes, but I enjoy lying down and listening to my grandma’s stories even better. I asked ridiculous questions and she made up the answers. Comparing to the love of a prince and a princess, the love being portrayed in Chinese legends is less predictable, such as the love between an ordinary man and a white snake spirit who transformed into human beings in Legend of the White Snake.
Love between different classes and different creatures is acceptable and even admirable. In that sense, ancient China is more modern and unorthodox than Europe at the same era.
(03/07/13 4:45am)
Nature Transformed, which is on display in the Museum of Art through April 21, presents a selection of Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of the Vermont quarry industry in the 90s. Burtynsky, a Canadian 2005 TED prize-winner, is a photographer who has achieved international recognition for his large-format photographs of the industrial landscape.
“Being almost the most visible environmental photographer in our time, Burtynsky’s project of quarr[ies] in Vermont turned out to be important and formative in his career,” said Professor of History of Art and Architecture Pieter Broucke, co-planner of this exhibit.
After conducting the bank architecture project and noting that the stones “had to have been taken out of the quarry one block at a time,” Burtynsky recorded in his artist statement that, “I envisioned an inverted cubed architecture on the side of a hill.” This inverted skyscraper concept led Burtynsky to Vermont. Once here, Burtynsky started his renowned exploration of nature and industry, working with and photographing the quarry stoneworkers. These stoneworkers, who immigrated to Vermont from Europe, introduced to Burtynsky the ancient quarrying town of Carrara, Italy; it was there that he finished his first overseas project.
Burtynsky first came to Vermont from Toronto in 1991. After that, he visited quarries in Vermont five more times. The photographs of his first visit, such as Rock of Ages #26, Abandoned Section, E.L., show the formal quality of quarries.
“Burtynsky was more interested in the surface of the quarry during his first visit,” Broucke said. “... there is just a little bit of sky and Vermont landscape on the top of the photograph. The pattern of Smith Quarry in this photograph almost looks like a quilt.”
The development of the past century of quarry industry in Vermont is clearly shown in this photograph. Like an inverted skyscraper, blocks at this abandoned quarry site get larger and larger from top to bottom with the changes of technology from vertical parallel drilling to cable cutting marked on them.
As a teaching museum, the Museum of Art, collaborating with Hood Museum of Dartmouth College, aims to convey the stories behind the photographs through Nature Transformed. In a catalog called Nature Transformed: Edward Burtynsky’s Vermont Quarry Photographs in Context, specialists in a variety of disciplines from both colleges interpret these photographs through a variety of lenses, including the history of photography, social history of the migration of stone workers from Italy to Vermont and the geology of the quarry in Vermont. These interpretations provide a backdrop against which to view the photographs and give visitors a better understanding of the scholarly context of the exhibition.
The introduction section of Nature Transformed includes the geological map of New Hampshire and Vermont, a photograph of Burtynsky, a Middlebury owned Rock of Ages #19 and title wall. There are two main sections — marble quarry photographs and granite quarry photographs — marked by a marble bench and a granite bench in the hall. Abandoned Marble Quarry #18, OMYA #51 and Vermont Marble Company #52, are arranged on the same wall, forming a lyrical and harmonious atmosphere. A series of photographs of the Carrara Marble Quarry follows Danby Marble Quarry #2, Underground Quarry to show how ancient quarries have formed the landscape of Carrara, Italy differently from Vermont.
The other side of the exhibition features photographs of a granite quarry from the other side of the Green Mountain. Rock of Ages #12, Rock of Ages #4 and Rock of Ages #25 depict the abandoned section of Adam-Pirie Quarry and are arranged in such a way that the water at the bottom part of these photographs seems to link and flow. The color of the water, turned green by the growing algae, and consuming the granite in the quarry, gives the photos an eerie glow. Within the granite quarry section, the Museum also compiled a display shelf of historical photographs of stone workers in Vermont from a century ago that tell the story of how the quarry came into being.
Measuring as much as 60-meters down into the Earth, quarry sites are considered to be scars on the landscape. In Burtynsky’s work, however, these scars become compelling and beautiful rather than visually disturbing.
“A variety of sites were chosen to present this sublime-scale modern industrial extraction activity, approximating their natural state,” Professor of History of Art and Architecture Kirsten Hoving explained in her March 5 lecture, “Digging Deep: Edward Burtynsky’s Vermont Quarry Photographs.”
“These abstracted objects convey implicit subtext of technology and consumption, which make these amazing visual images more than just pictures,” said Hoving.
Hoving believes that Burtynsky highly aestheticizes Vermont quarries by looking up-down, providing a complex and even confusing view that eliminates the horizon and thus avoids easy grasp of his photographs. Burtynsky’s elevated viewpoint is similar to Robert Adams’s quest to uncover human presence in the landscape in an exhibition called “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” in 1975. Humans inhabiting the landscape continues to be an on-going concern of Burtynsky, and his large scale photographs continue to serve as a metaphor for industrial consumption on nature.
Burtynsky is coming to the College to speak about his photographic career as well as his exhibition on March 14. In addition, a series of lectures focusing on different aspects including social history and photography relating to the exhibition will take place in March and April on campus.
(03/06/13 5:00am)
I have been focusing too much on distinctions. Coming to a new culture, it is natural to encounter little differences to huge cultural shocks that remind me of all the distinctions between home and the place I am living now.
I wrote about how Americans and Chinese have different perceptions towards the moon, how the characteristic of independence in America has its equivalence of cute in China, how Western and Eastern culture prioritize filial piety differently … These are all the reasons we are different, but we tend to forget there are more characteristics that make us similar.
I was at the spring activities fair two weeks ago. When I went to recruit new members for International Student Organization (ISO) with another board member, the most frequent question I got from students was “Can I sign up if I’m an American?”
I was frustrated to get responses like that, especially when I knew how hard ISO tried to promote us as an organization that is open to everyone and anyone.
There are a lot of cultural organizations on campus, such as Chinese Society, German Club and Islamic Society, and they are not only for students who identified with that certain culture. It is we who distinguish and limit ourselves by cultural background.
The notion of seeking similarity rather than distinction came to me stronger several days later when I was having dinner with a friend. She asked me how welcoming Americans are comparing to Chinese to foreign visitors.
I was about to differentiate again. But after comparing them, I realized there is not that much of a difference. Chinese people may seem more excited than Americans when seeing foreign faces, but it is reasonable since most of them never encounter any foreigners in their lifetime.
Chinese like to invite friends to go out for dinner, while more often Americans bring friends over to their house. Although the format of welcoming friends is different, both cultures, and I believe all other cultures, want to be amicable to friends.
Once I realized this, the theme of similarity started to reappear in my life. During the talk The Commonwealth of Breath last Thursday, David Abram at one point addressed the human perception of air through the lens of Hebrew Bible.
He pointed out that the sacred YHWH resembles the sound of our breath. Although he is focusing on the indigenous cosmologies and the intellectual history of the west, there is something similar to the religion and philosophy of the east.
When he mentioned the sound of our breath, I instantly related it to a common practice in Buddhism: one way to practice Zen is to count the breath. And the same linkage between the mind and the atmosphere will be noticed.
Realizing the differences definitely helps one to learn and adapt to a new culture. But digging too deep and reinforcing those differences may lead to intense partition. Conflicts are usually not caused by fundamental differences of culture but by miscommunication and misunderstanding.
(02/20/13 9:34pm)
I interned at a Hong Kong-based weekly news magazine in winter term, and I made some observations on fragmentation of information by reading news everyday from news outlets in China and in the U.S.
If I only have 10 minutes before I go to work and need to skim some news, I’ll choose the New York Times over the People’s Daily, Nanfang Daily or any other Chinese media website.
The homepage of Chinese media tends to be the front-page layout of their paper. There is no selected news under different sections, and no active links that directs readers to the text of any article; only the PDF version of the paper is available.
I always find interesting reports on China, the Middle East and all parts of the world on the New York Times homepage, but world news rarely becomes the headline of any Chinese newspaper.
The narrow view is not the most unbearable part – the fragmented information is. Chinese news media only provide the least information you need to know about any pieces — most of the articles online are under 400 words, while western media offers in-depth stories. Most of the news on the New York Times is over two pages, and some fascinating feature reports can be over seven pages.
It is not hard to see how different styles of reporting in the West and in China affects the ways of speaking out in public.
I read comments before purchasing an item on Amazon, both in the U.S. and in China. The average quantity and quality of comments on amazon.cn are lower than those on amazon.com. Take One Hundred Years of Solitude as an example: most of the comments on amazon.cn focus on the quality of packing and mention nothing about the book itself. On amazon.com, however, all the comments sound like book critiques, and a lot of them are over 800 words. For a kettle, the comments on amazon.cn tend to be under two sentences; even when people are complaining about a kettle, they give no detail. But on amazon.com, users tend to be more responsible and will come back and edit their comments after using the kettle for several months, and the information can be very useful for potential buyers.
Similar things also happen on social media. In college, most of my friends don’t have Twitter accounts, and they barely post anything on Facebook. They value face-to-face communication. But in China, when I meet with my high school friends, the scene is totally different: everyone is on Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter) or Renren (Chinese version of Facebook) at the get together. My college friends share links of news reports and long critiques of events on Facebook, while my high school friends in China spend tons of time lingering on Weibo but only repost other’s short comments without creating any original post. One hundred and forty characters can be an efficient way to communicate, but it should not be the only way.
Fragmentation also limits our judgments. A 400-word news report can only include the basic who, where, when, what and how, and leaves no room for analysis. Even when analysis is present in those short reports, it will not be comprehensive and becomes biased.
I guess it is hard to avoid being fragmented in this era. News reporting is competing with short judgment, persuasive photos and self-explaining graphics. We, however, need to consciously avoid becoming impatient and shallow.
(12/05/12 9:28pm)
I’m not the first one to taste cheese with chopsticks. There are numerous talented people who have come to a new place with their unique cultural backgrounds and produced masterpieces by connecting different cultures.
Ang Lee is definitely one of them. He is a famous director who has produced well-known movies including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. He was born in Taiwan and he received his bachelor’s and master’s degree in the United States.
He has the talent to dive from one culture to another. In his recent film Life of Pi, he narrates a story of an Indian boy drifting in a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker. It is not merely an adventure movie — it talks about nature, religion and our position in this world.
In almost all of the interviews Lee has done recently, the interviewees asked him how different cultural backgrounds have influenced his work. His answer solved a question of mine I have held for a long time.
“Growing up in traditional Chinese culture,” Lee said, “I’m used to tolerance and moderation. But getting to know the western, I find myself longing for conflicts, struggles and dreams. It is in this unstable inner state that I am able to continue the creation process.”
We will not question our philosophy of life until it has been challenged. It is all so common for us to repeat the same routine we have been practicing all our life. Repeating is safe, while changing is risky. But nothing will sparkle without friction. We cannot see the other facets of an object if we keep staring at it from one angle.
Cheese and tofu are different, but they share similar status in western and eastern diet respectively. Cheese comes from cows or goats, while tofu comes from soybeans. Cheese is an important and valuable source of protein in west, while tofu provides the same nutrition in east. They are both in milky white color and often appear in cube shape.
I ate more cheese than I had tasted in my past 18 years in my first week of living in Vermont. At the beginning, the strong flavor of goat cheese was disgusting for me. But soon, I came to appreciate the rich flavor of it, which at the same time made me more grateful for the light flavor of tofu.
It is a similar case for the tableware we use. Fork and chopsticks may seem not relevant at all if we merely look at their appearance. But they both function well on picking up the food from our plates.
I was frustrated when first learning about western table manners, and I believed I would never be able to use the right fork for different dishes. I have seen foreigners get upset at a Chinese restaurant when they were not able to get a bite of rice from the bowl right in front of them using chopsticks. The discomfort to expose myself under a new culture for me is never the fault of that specific culture, but rather how hard I try to accept and appreciate it.
It will be interesting to taste little-basket buns with fork next time, and I will remember not to burn myself.
(12/01/12 2:17pm)
In the fall of 1994, Middlebury’s President Emeritus John McCardell Jr. and the College’s Board of Trustees instituted the “One Percent for Art” policy. This policy sets aside one percent of the cost of any capital project — including the construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing campus infrastrcture — that exceeds $1 million in cost. These funds are used for the purchase, installation and maintenance of works of art publicly displayed on campus.
Familiar works of arts including “Frisbee Dog” in front of Munroe, “Smog” in front of McCardell Bicentennial Hall and “Solid State Change” next to the Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest were all purchased using funds set aside as a result of this policy. The policy’s aims include developing and completing the identity of the institution as well as enhancing the aesthetic and educational mission of the public arts on campus.
The One Percent funds are managed by the Committee on Art in Public Places (CAPP). The committee is comprised of faculty members, students, administrators and trustees of the College.
The CAPP is responsible for both evaluating and approving gifts of art that are intended for public display at the college, as well as purchasing new works art. In all instances, a majority vote of CAPP members is required for any work to be accepted as a gift or purchased using One Percent funds.
Since the economic downturn, the College administration has suspended the One Percent for Art policy. Currently, the maintenance of public art pieces already on campus is still supported by the One Percent funds. No new purchases, however, have been made in the past three years.
Richard Saunders, director of the Museum of Art, serves as chair of CAPP. He said that as College finances improve, he hopes the One Percent suspension will soon be overturned.
“Even though the One Percent purchase policy is presently suspended, we do hope that this prohibition on purchases will be rescinded soon. But I do not know when this might happen,” Saunders said.
“I believe the [One Percent for Art Policy] is one of the best initiatives the administration has ever put in place,” said Audrey Tolbert ’13, one of the student representatives serving on the CAPP. “Even under the current suspension of these funds for the purchase of new works, the policy still forces us to take into consideration the visual environment we are curating on our campus.”
“So Inclined,” a public sculpture constructed by Patrick
Dougherty in 2007, was removed last year. The nine towering interconnected cones made of red maple saplings and grey dogwood branches sat at the entrance to the Kevin P. Maaney ’84 Center for the Arts. So Inclined was conceived as a temporary installation, and was intended to be removed once the structure became unstable.
The discussion regarding whether the CAPP’s madate to maintain campus art includes ensuring the presence of tem- porary art has been raised in recent CAPP meetings, following the removal of So Inclined.
If the replacement of now-removed temporary art counts as maintenance, then the CAPP might consider acquiring other temporary art to replace So Inclined regardless of the suspension of the One Percent policy, according to Saunders.
“Since art in public places is a part of the identity of the institution, they should represent different programs of the college,” said Pieter Broucke, professor of the history of art and architecture. “It will be nice if we have more arts that are internationally focused.”
Broucke mentioned that he incorporates a walking tour of campus art in public places for teaching purposes in some of his classes. “These are fabulous pieces that we can learn a lot from,” he said.
Eliza Garrison, professor of the history of art and architecture, said that while most students are aware of some of the art on campus, some pieces are more prominent than others.
“For example, ‘Smog’ near Bi Hall is probably being seen a lot by the science students, while the Joseph Beuys’ ‘7,000 Oaks’ right next to the [Axinn Center at Starr Library] isn’t even really easy to see,” Garrison said.
Due to the freezing of One Percent funds, studio art major Dylan Redford ’14 is looking for an alternative way to promote public arts on campus.
“The public art on campus is stuck in this stagnant state where students don’t recognize Middlebury’s public art as meaningful or intentional,” said Redford, who is also a member of the CAPP. “Most of us have learned to just ignore these public works. I would like to start placing more tempo- rary public art around campus that changes year after year, which would force students to recognize the works and be asked to evaluate its placement and meaning on campus.” Redford said he thinks the administration will reverse the suspension once the student body shows enough interest in public art.
Additional reporting by GABBY GUTMAN; design by OLIVIA ALLEN and MAREA HATHEWAY
(11/14/12 11:06pm)
It’s that time of year again: ISO (International Student Organization) show time! From McCullough to the Gifford annex, international students perform using traditional props and costumes from their home countries.
The theme this year is “Mosaic”, which will bring spectacular acts around the world into a great show. This is a little promotion for the ISO show, and it will be great to see all of your faces this Saturday.
The ISO show reminds me a lot of my high school festival. In China we don’t choose our classes during high school, so we always have the same 50 classmates. The time around the school festival was the most interesting part of the year since there is so little happening besides academic work on campus every year. Every class comes up with a performance and the teacher picks the best ones.
The performance night is the highlight of the festival. It is mandatory for every student to go and watch. We have that day off from school, which means that we can spend some fun time with friends without worrying about homework.
You cannot imagine how badly I wanted to perform on stage. But I never had a chance to perform during high school because it was too competitive. This is why I was thrilled to hear about the ISO show — it sounded exactly the same as my high school festival!
But it is not. For sure there are performances from all over the world and the seats are always full, but it is not a campus-wide celebration. It is more like a carnival of international students. Most of my international friends will perform that day while some of my U.S. friends won’t even know the ISO show is happening this Saturday.
In the audience last year, there were more host families, Middlebury town residents and professors watching the show than college students from the U.S. The reason may be that there are too many shows happening every week: dances from RIDDIM, plays in the Hepburn Zoo, and concerts at the CFA, just to name a few. Since we have so many choices, the importance of the ISO show here is nothing compared to my high school festival.
The ISO show, unique and different from other shows, is a great opportunity for us to learn about the culture of other countries. Believe me, the performance represents the culture in a detailed and concrete way.
From my own experience, I learned to be a positive and energetic Japanese girl when I was practicing in Shodo (Japanese calligraphy and dance); I got to know the typical Bollywood dance, which made me looked like a Bollywood movie star; I tried to avoid being smashed during the bamboo dance, but failed to stop thinking about the coconut juice from the Philippines when the music starts. We may sometimes feel uncomfortable in breaking the boundaries between different cultures, but the ISO show provides a risk-free way for us to step out and look around.
Although it’s too late to perform now, you can still watch the show and experience amazing cultures from all over the world.
You will be amazed by how talented every one around us and how diverse the campus is.
(10/31/12 8:29pm)
Everyone is talking about the upcoming election. It is the first time for a lot of my friends to vote. Although I’m the same age as them, and the change of Chinese government is happening later this year, I cannot vote.
We have to learn Chinese politics from the 7th grade to the 12th grade, but none of us ever knows how exactly the government works in China. It is true that we have tons of material to recite and remember for our midterms and finals, but I never understand what those lines are talking about.
If we ask our teachers about the abstract concepts, they will never answer our questions directly; instead, they will only emphasize the importance of reciting paragraphs in our textbooks. Chinese politics for me is never about analyzing material, but about memorizing the boring doctrine.
Besides, unlike my friends in the U.S. that may have listened to the political discussion in their family a lot when they grew up, debates on politics is never a part of the family life of my friends in China.
In my family, when my skeptical grandpa and dad discuss current issues, they will point out the fault the government and the improvement it should take. But even in my family, from time to time, my grandma will stop my grandpa from criticizing the government too much because she is afraid of the return of Cultural Revolution.
Politics is never a part of ordinary people’s lives, and neither are elections.
The only existing memory about election for me is a flyer of two representatives candidates of our city on the wall of my middle school.
There was a huge title saying “Representative Election 2005” followed by a brief introduction of them; but there was no information about who should vote and how to vote.
That was my first time to see such flyers and later on proved to be the only time. My friend and I were so excited to know that the election part in our politics textbook existed! We went to the office of our politics teacher at once.
We asked our politics teacher who were the two candidates, and she said she did not know. We asked her if there was anyway for us to meet the candidates, and she said she did not know either.
I was confused. How come a politics expert did not know about the local politics affairs? Later that day I asked my parents if they were going to vote for the local representatives, they replied that since the result was set already, there was no point for them to take this action.
Most of the time I find pros and cons in both cultures when I’m comparing the U.S. to China. But this time, on the election issue, I’m jealous of my friends in the U.S. Not all of my friends are keen to vote, and a good number of them don’t know local government well. But if they want to learn more about the candidates, there is transparent information out there posted online. Most importantly, their choice matters.
Value your right to vote, because there are people who do not have a say in choosing their leaders.
(10/10/12 10:17pm)
I was having lunch with friends from my environmental class the other day at Ross. We were all starving after the long lecture, and the long line in Ross made us even more hungry. One of them took half a plate of turkey and two slices of cheese pizza.
We had great conversation about the issue of food waste on campus, and everyone agreed that something needs to be done to reduce food waste.
After lunch when we were taking our plates to the dish rack, I snuck a glance of my friend’s plate. I doubted that he ate any of the turkey.
I asked him why he didn’t finish the food, and he said he was so hungry that he took more than his stomach could handle.
Things like wasting food while talking about food waste happen a lot among students.
How can we throw away paper that is only printed on one-side while criticizing the logging industry in Brazil? How can we leave refrigerators, laptops and other devices in our dorms plugged in 24 hours a day while encouraging others to save energy? How can we drive to the gym to work out while fretting about climate change? How can we act one way, while advocating something completely different?
My parents never complain about the logging industry or climate change with me, but they also never waste food. Sometimes when we’re very hungry, we cook too much as well. But we always save it for another meal. Or we just finish it and get really full.
Next time when we are hungry again, we can remind ourselves of the consequences of preparing too much food and learn to cook the right portions.
For my grandparents’ generation, they never wasted food because food was so valuable at that time in China.
For my parents’ generation, they don’t waste food because their parents taught them not to.
I remember my grandparents convincing me at age four to finish the last bit of my rice because “if you don’t do so, your boyfriend in the future will have as many pocks as the number of rice that got left in your bowl.”
Since I really didn’t want my boyfriend to look like that, I always finished all my rice.
When I grew older, my parents told me that we should be grateful for the food we eat because there is always someone else in this world starving and suffering. I accepted their reasons to not waste food not because those reasons are moving and touching, but because I know they treasure every single bit of food themselves.
On weekend mornings when my family enjoys breakfast together, we always have a competition to compare whose bowl is the cleanest. After eating our porridge, we always lick the bowl, careful to not let the last drop of porridge be wasted.
It is not convincing if I encourage my friend to finish the vegetables on her plate with my plate full of leftovers.
It is not convincing at all for us to talk about environmental awareness without meeting the standards ourselves.
(09/26/12 11:17pm)
I guess there are stages in most of the things happening around us. Two weeks ago I was complaining about the dining hall food, mainly because I just spent more than three months at home with my favorite dishes every day. Now that I have accepted that I will have to live with our lovely dining hall food for the following three months, things have changed into a second stage—instead of plainly complaining about it, I need to do something to improve my quality of life!
I discovered yesterday that I could make tuna sushi at Ross. Bring some seaweed to the dining hall, roll some jasmine rice into the seaweed, and top with mixed canned tuna at the salad bar and mayonnaise. Yum!
Since many of the dishes in the dining halls are lacking some flavor for me, I decided to consider those as half-processed and use my creativity, like students in Proctor do. Pour some corn and beans into the green color wrap, add curry and cumin powder, and it becomes one of my favorite panini recipes.
My international friends are masters at creating their home flavors using ingredients at hand. The Middlebury Co-Op is a fair place to find some authentic Asian seasonings. Last semester, a friend from Thailand taught me how to make a Thai dessert called tabtim. First he chopped water chestnuts into little squares, colored them with pink syrup, and covered the pink squares with cornstarch. Then he boiled the covered squares in hot water, they turned into beautiful shapes that looked like a ruby embedded in transparent crystal. At last he put the lovely crystals in iced sweetened coconut milk. The dessert is so beautiful that I showed if off to my friends several times after learning it.
But there are still some crucial ingredients that cannot be found in Middlebury. For example my favorite snow fungus sweet soup with lotus seeds in it. I brought the snow fungus and lotus seeds back. Last weekend I missed the taste of it a lot so I made a pot of it. My friend had never tasted it before and I was glad she liked it. When I was cleaning the pot, I realized that it was not the taste that I missed the most, but the experience of sharing a whole pot of the sweet soup with others.
Sometimes my friends and I will go to Sabai Sabai to have some Asian food to cure our nostalgic stomachs, but it would be more similar to home if the serving size could be larger. In China, the dish rarely comes in an individual portion. Instead, family and friends on the same table order a variety of dishes that everyone could share. Dishes will be put down in the middle of the table, and chopsticks are long enough for us to pick out whatever we want, and if the table is too large, there’ll be a round table in the middle to rotate any dish right in front of us. A lot of interactions happen since people literally have to reach out for food.
Sharing food with people on the same table makes me feel connected and closer to the ones around me. Maybe it’s another reason why language tables are so popular on campus.