| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 1
Unmasked
Design graduate Annabel Goslin All the food
that’s fit to print
Nutrition goes high-tech
Massey’s festival of creative arts returns to the Capital
programme inside
Massey
EVOLUTION WHILE YOU WAIT
What bacteria can teach us THE NEW BLACK
The promise of biochar, part II
News from Massey University
I
Issue 16I
November 20102 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
CONTENTS
COVER STORY
7
WHO WAS THAT MASKED WOMAN?
Industrial designer Annabel Goslin, since you ask.
FEATURES
16 EVOLUTION AT WORK
Give Professor Paul Rainey a few millilitres of nutrient broth, a bacterium and a few days and he will show you evolution in action.
22 THE NEW BLACK, PART II
Biochar – aka charcoal when added to soil – is a way of locking away carbon and improving fertility.
In the second of two features, we meet Professor Jim Jones and learn about the practicalities of biochar production.
VIEWPOINTS
12 ENTER THE DRAGON
Not everything that is good for China is good for its trading partners, warns Professor Usha Haley.
14 THE PLAY’S THE THING
Mark Amery interviews playwright and award-winning teacher Angie Farrow.
DEPARTMENTS
2 Campus wide: A round-up of news from Massey’s three campuses.
6 Reporting in: Anthropologist Ann Appleton in not-quite-deepest Borneo.
8 On the horizon: The 2010 BLOW creative arts festival arrives in Wellington.
10 Tools of trade: The Riddet Institute’s new 3D food printer.
26 Favourite things: Pro Vice-Chancellor Sally Morgan has a fondness for Wellington’s datum point.
27 Mixed media: The 2010 Nga- Kupu Ora Ma-ori Book Awards, plus books about the
delivery of aid, teaching reading vocabulary, and jazz musician Mike Nock.
31 End notes : In the second instalment of Cherished Illusions, Associate Professor Wyatt Page continues his investigation into why you sometimes can’t believe your eyes.
definingnz is published six times a year by Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North 4442, New Zealand.
Website: news.massey.ac.nz
Editor: Malcolm Wood [email protected] Mixed Media Editor: Paul Mulrooney
Writers: Kereama Beal, Kathryn Farrow, James Gardiner, Bryan Gibson, Paul Mulrooney, Jennifer Little, Lana Simmons Donaldson, Wyatt Page Thanks to: Lynda Williamson
Photographers : Graeme Brown, Mark Coote, Geoff Dale, David Wiltshire Design : Grant Bunyan Proofreading: Foolproof
Subscription enquiries: [email protected]
Copyright: You are generally welcome to reproduce material provided you first gain permission from the editor.
A meal that combines fresh produce with pre-packaged ease won the Massey University Supreme Award at this year’s New Zealand Food Awards.
The award was presented at a gala dinner at Auckland’s Langham Hotel.
The quinoa, mushroom and roast vegetable ready meal made by the Tasty Pot Company was chosen over more than 90 entries. The awards, in association with Massey University, identify the best food products, with categories from dairy products and convenience to food business.
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 1
FROM THE VICE-CHANCELLOR
“It’s not fair!” As any father or mother will tell you, this is one of the most irritating battle cries a child can adopt. Irritating partly because the come-back, “Life’s not fair”, doesn’t really work. At base, just like our children, we believe life should be fair.
Similarly, we like to think that our society is fair in the sense of rewarding ability and endeavour, no matter where they may spring from.
So how fair is our society? Or put another way, how equal is New Zealand society? The answer, which may surprise you, is not very. In a recent book, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett look at the ratio between the income received by the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent of 23 industrialised nations. New Zealand came in at number six – only Australia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, the United States and, at the top, Singapore, are more unequal.
The top 20 percent of Kiwis earn around 6.5 times more than the bottom 20 percent. In Japan, Finland, Norway and Sweden, which top the equality league, the ratio
is less than four times.
But why should relative incomes matter? It is when the authors start correlating their measure of inequality to other indices that things get interesting.
More unequal societies, they find, tend to have higher levels of drug use, mental illness, and
health and social problems. Their inhabitants tend to live shorter lives. They tend to be more obese. Societal inequality, it turns out, can make you fat.
All of which may sound as if I am summoning you, torch in hand, to the barricades, but I am not. What I want to do is to make the case for open access to education, specifically tertiary education, as one of the key ways of ensuring that people experience their society as fair.
My generation, the baby boomers, lived through a time when education was being expanded. Huge numbers took advantage of this and rose to positions of wealth, prominence and power from relatively straitened circumstances via a tertiary education system that was relatively open and more or less free. The sons and daughters of farm and factory workers, of clerks and shop assistants, gained their degrees and joined the moneyed white collar classes.
When I went to university in 1972, having left school after gaining my School Certificate then returning to night school
some years later to get my University Entrance, I knew that I was enjoying a privilege that had been beyond the means of most of my parents’ generation.
Since then, of course, participation in tertiary education has grown enormously, although the ‘largely free’ aspect has passed into history.
But is it fair? Can an individual get a fair go despite coming from a disadvantaged background? The question has become more pressing as New Zealand has become more stratified and unequal.
We know, for example, that Maori and Pasifika students and those from mid- and lower-decile schools are underrepresented in our tertiary education system. I am certain they are no less able than their peers.
The ever-increasing costs of education no doubt represent a barrier to many of these students. But access to loans helps keep the door open even though this means taking on debt. But now we see other barriers emerging.
It is current policy to strictly limit the places available at universities. Emphasis is being placed on under-25-year-olds (school leavers in practice) studying full-time and completing their first degrees. This seems reasonable until it is realised that more mature students who might want to take a different route toward gaining their qualifications are not the priority.
Mature students more often than not want to study part-time, take breaks from their studies, may never complete a qualification and may take a long time if they do. This pattern does not reflect a lack of ability. Rather it reflects the fact that mature students are juggling work and family responsibilities while they study. They are usually highly motivated and intelligent people – it is just that they have other things to do.
Since 1964 many of these part-time mature students have accessed tertiary education at a distance through Massey University.
Right now there are 17,000 of them. But one estimate suggests that in a 50-year period 250,000 New Zealanders have studied through Massey at a distance. The impact of this has been nothing less than a transformation. People who would have otherwise been denied tertiary education have got it. And it has been a quality education because every effort has been made to ensure their experience has been no less than that of the students studying on campus. It has given people, regardless of their circumstances, a fair go at gaining a tertiary education.
This century there will be a higher proportion of the population wanting to study at a distance. We have an aging population that will need to gain and improve qualifications. But policies that limit places while focusing on school leavers studying full-time on a campus threaten the future of a vital part of the tertiary education system. Life-long learning will not be possible. A sense of belonging to an open and fair society that makes it possible for its citizens to improve themselves through education will be undermined.
Our society will be less fair and less equal. And that will be better for no one.
Steve Maharey, Vice-Chancellor
More unequal societies, they find, tend to have higher levels of drug use, mental illness, and health and social problems. Their inhabitants tend
to live shorter lives. They tend to be more obese.
Societal inequality, it turns out, can make you fat.
2 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
Talking Points
CAMPUS WIDE
“Some of the bright kids think, ‘Shall I stick with the hard stuff and have a grotty life or shall I go and explore my creative side?’, and remember, their parents have been encouraging them, saying, ‘You’re so creative darling’.
“Then they have the quarter-life crisis. ‘The education conveyor belt has dumped me,’ they say. They find there are no silverscreen jobs.”
Professor Jacqueline Rowarth talks to Jon Morgan about the underplayed merits of studying science and maths. The Dominion Post, September 2010
“We have really good weather here and really flat roads, so we have a lot of people wanting to cycle and they are put off by glass on the roads.”
Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule explains the city’s adoption of a Glass Vac. The modified 110cc Honda was designed by fourth-year mechatronics student Kent Gearry (pictured here). Manawatu Evening Standard, September 2010
Work is to begin in early 2011 on a student amenities centre for the Albany campus.
The $15 million two-storey centre includes an enclosed plaza, a food hall, social and dining spaces, retail outlets, a health and counselling centre, and space for the students’ association and clubs. It is expected to be completed in February 2012.
Massey PhD student Emmanuelle Martinez, Anton van Helden, PhD student Sarah Gardner and Dr Karen Stockin prepare to post-mortem an hourglass dolphin in Massey’s new Albany-based Coastal-Marine Pathology Unit. The 1.7-metre, 78-kilogram male was found dead at Flea Bay near Akaroa. Dr Stockin knows of only one other case of an hourglass dolphin, a polar species, stranding in New Zealand in the past 150 years. She conjectures that the dolphin’s sense of direction may have been upset by Canterbury’s 7.1 magnitude earthquake.
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 3
Taking stock
The rollercoaster highs and lows of real-life stock market trading are all in a day’s study for Massey postgraduate students Annie Zhang, Katie Brown, Rick Du, Jeremy Jukes and Iris Li. The five are the fund managers of the College of Business Student Investment Fund, with $23,000 invested in the NZX50 and the ASX200 stock exchanges, across all sectors of the market. It is the only fund of its kind in New Zealand and one of only two in the Southern Hemisphere.
“It is fun and it gives you valuable experience of how to make money and awareness of the risks associated with it,” says Annie Zhang. “We are quite proud that lately we have outperformed the NZX50 benchmark.”
Before recommending a buy or sell, the team conducts an analysis and prepares a stock report, with former New York pension fund manager Associate Professor Russell Gregory-Allen giving the final yea or nay.
“It is one thing to teach in the classroom, but until people have to make decisions with real money they don’t really learn,” says Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Lawrence Rose, who seeded the fund 15 years ago.
Cup half full
Economics lecturer Sam Richardson talks to Kathryn Farrow about the economics of the Rugby World Cup.
Will the cup really generate $507 million for the economy?
If you are trying to raise money, particularly public money, for a big event it helps to say that it will bring in ‘$X’
million to the local economy. But these bandied-about figures rarely materialise, and even if the organisers sell all of the tickets to the matches, the cup is projected to run at a loss.
When I considered the effect on employment and GDP in local host economies of 11 major sporting events in New Zealand for my PhD, I found that only the 1997 Netball World Championship had had a significant positive impact during the event itself. In fact, big events with lots of visitors can crowd out regular tourism.
What is the true figure likely to be?
Some United States economists have suggested that generally the real figures can be gained by moving the decimal point one place to the left. In which case, instead of $507 million we would be talking $50.7 million. I do believe that $507 million is much too high.
But I guess this isn’t a purely economic decision, is it?
In New Zealand, sport is ingrained into the culture, and that matters. If New Zealanders and the rest of the world see the event as successful, the cup will be good for our long-term reputation in ways that are difficult to put a dollar value to. If the criteria for the Rugby World Cup were purely economic, the IRB wouldn’t choose New Zealand; they would choose somewhere like Japan. This isn’t a straight dollars-and-cents decision.
Could this be the last time we host a Rugby World Cup?
It might be. The costs just keep growing Joint hosting with Australia would be a possibility or hosting events such as the world championships. I don’t think we are going to be able to host big events. Hand-on-heart, I do hope that the cup succeeds, but I also believe that increasingly scarce taxpayer funds should be allocated to events where the benefits clearly exceed their costs.
Ma-ori Communications Manager Lana Simmons-Donaldson with trophies from the national Ma-ori Language Awards. Massey was the joint winner of both the Ma-ori Language Week category (with Inland Revenue) and the supreme award (with Raukawa Charitable Trust of Tokoroa). The awards recognised the success of the 2010 Nga- Kupu Ora Ma-ori Book Awards and a Ma-ori Language Week initiative encouraging café users to place their orders using te reo.
4 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
CAMPUS WIDE
Cheating your gut instincts
Mark Sainsbury’s own car, a 1963 Lincoln Continental, dates back to before talk of peak oil or anthropogenic climate change, so it was anyone’s guess what the front person for TV1’s Close Up would think of the latest addition to Massey’s vehicle fleet: a very special Toyota Prius, one of a run of just 600. What makes this Prius different? It can be charged using normal household 240-volt power, and it can then travel up to 30 kilometres at 100 kilometres per hour on the stored charge alone, after which it will revert to the normal thrifty petrol-assisted mode of any other hybrid. Massey has leased two of the Priuses from Toyota as part of a three-year global field trial. A third is based at Toyota’s National Customer Centre in Palmerston North. Sainsbury’s thoughts?
He was not at all forthcoming, but the segment closed with Sainsbury at the petrol pump, watching dials spinning towards the $100-plus it takes to fill the Continental’s tank.
An extract of a New Zealand tree fern could be the equivalent of ‘stomach stapling in a can’. Professor Roger Lentle has been investigating the qualities of a highly branched polysacharide gum derived from the trunk and fronds of the mamaku or black tree fern.
It is strange stuff: try to stir it, and the harder you stir, the more it will resist; when it flows, it does so as a stretchy, dough-like mass. These two qualities – known as sheer thickening and extensional flow – baffle the digestive system.
“We know that contractions in the gut are caused by it feeling there is something in there and needing to
push it on,” says Lentle. “This extract seems to dupe the sensory nerves in the stomach so they signal that the stuff is flowing when it isn’t and vice versa.”
The result: when the gum reaches the lower part of the stomach it leads to feelings of satiety. It is a natural appetite suppressant. And while it isn’t very digestible, once the stomach acids have had their way it passes harmlessly on through the gut.
A nourishing sweet carbohydrate porridge made from the pith of the mamaku is known to have been an occasional food for pre-European Ma-ori.
Lentle is intrigued by the gum’s possibilities, and would like to talk to anyone, particularly iwi, who may be interested in working with him or can tell him more about the traditional uses of mamaku and its products.
Shadowlands, a garment created to evoke the world of fungi, has won College of Creative Arts (CoCA) student Luka Mues the Shell-sponsored student design category of the 2010 Montana World of Wearable Art Awards. Mues, alas, could not be there. He was in San Francisco attending the Academy of Art University on a $2500 exchange scholarship funded by global telecommunications company AT&T. Another CoCA student, Loren Shields, was the category runner-up with Smouldering Energy, an entry taking its inspiration from a burning West-Coast underground coalmine. A third CoCA student, Renee Ingram, was a finalist.
Twenty-seven of the 37 Massey students who took part in the Commonwealth Games will return with medals from 14 events – a better haul than most
participating countries. Pictured is Kayla Sharland of the silver-medal-winning Black Sticks.
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 5
COMMERCIALISATION
Reduced to a computer file, the blueprints for a human being are surprisingly small. You can fit a human genome – the entirety of an individual’s hereditary information – on to one-and-a-bit computer CDs.
And while filling those CDs has been expensive, the price is falling fast. For the original human genome, completed in 2003, the sequencing enterprise took 13 years and US$2.7 billion. For the genome of James Watson (one of the co-discoverers of DNA), completed in 2007, the cost was US$2 million, and today, for US$45,000, you too can join the queue.
Gene sequencing is undergoing an industrial revolution.
Gone are the labour-intensive days in the lab. The chore of reading the more than three billion base pairs that make up a genome has been delegated to banks of automated machinery.
How do you read DNA? One fundamental requirement is the ability to copy and paste strands of DNA, operations that are carried out by molecules called enzymes.
When Dr Wayne Patrick began work on Massey’s Albany campus in 2007, the polymerase enzyme used to copy DNA had already been manipulated to improve its efficiency. Could he do something similar with the ligases, the enzymes that are used to stick chains of DNA together?
Patrick decided to pursue the commercial opportunity, as much as anything to see what would happen.
In the past three years, Patrick and his team have succeeded in grafting an assortment of DNA-binding proteins to a promising ligase,and they now have several candidate molecules that should make DNA sequencing faster and cheaper.
His success has brought plaudits. This year Patrick, who has achieved the grand old age of 33, became the NZBio Young Biotechnologist of the Year, and was a finalist in the Science and Health category of the 2010 Bayer Innovators Awards. (Massey’s Palmerston North-based Professor Simon Hall won the Research and Development category for his work on battery technologies.)
And his personal “experiment” – seeing if he could achieve a commercial winner – has succeeded too: the US-based company Enzymatics Inc, which specialises in the production of inexpensive, high purity enzymes, has signed a commercial agreement.
Part of Patrick’s success can be laid at the feet of the Manawatu Bio Commerce Centre (BCC) – one of Massey’s commercialisation partners. It was the BCC that insistently called major enzyme manufacturers in the US and elsewhere and brokered the eventual deal.
What now for Patrick? First he wants to publish his work, something he has deferred until now. Then he is interested in doing something with enzymes and bioremediation – using them to clean up polluted water or soil.
And the brave new world that awaits us? Patrick remembers seeing the movie Gattaca back in 1998 when he was an Honours student.
Gattaca depicted a society practising genetic selection and discrimination.
Back then, he thought it was ludicrous.
These days he isn’t so sure.
Abridged from material previously run in The Manawatu Evening Standard.
Build a better enzyme...
Charged up
When Italian chemist Alessandro Volta built his first battery back in 1800, it was by stacking zinc and silver plates separated by layers of cloth soaked in brine. When he made his second, he used zinc again, replacing the silver with copper. Zinc seemed destined to be a mainstay of battery technology.So why nickel-cadmium batteries, when zinc is cheaper and far less toxic than cadmium, or lead-acid batteries, when zinc offers far higher energy- and power-to- mass ratios?
The problem with zinc is that, as the battery discharges and recharges, long,
branching, destructive structures called dendrites form on the electrode.
Or that is how things used to be, until Massey’s Professor Simon Hall and PhD student Michael Liu succeeded in finding a way to create a stable, long-lasting zinc electrode. Their work became the basis of the start-up company Anzode, of which Hall is Director.
Hall’s work recently won him the 2010 Bayer Innovators Award for research and development. Hall also holds the 2008 Fonterra Prize for Industrial and Applied Chemistry and a 2005 Distinguished Patent Award from the US Energy Department.
6 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
I am one of three anthropologists working at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak’s Institute of East Asian Studies in Sarawak in Borneo. I have been here since I graduated with my PhD in 2006.
The institute is a stopping-off point for many overseas academics engaged in Borneo-related research, from PhD students through to old hands who have been coming to Sarawak for decades. It is a fascinating working environment.
Mukah, where I began my Massey doctoral research back in 2000, is barely recognisable these days. The old river ferry has been replaced by a four-lane bridge; the jungle has given way to highways and housing estates, a new secondary school and a polytechnic, shops, restaurants and department stores. A ten-storey administration building dominates the skyline.
In the Melanau villages on the outskirts, change has been slower. Even so, much of the old culture, especially the rituals associated with the old animistic religion, is fast disappearing. Three of the a-bayohs (shamans) with whom I worked closely in
2000-2001 have since passed away and I only know of one still working actively in the Mukah area.
What is it like getting around in Sarawak? Getting to some places by road can still be hazardous. These days to get to Mukah I either try for a seat on a little Twin Otter plane or take the overnight bus, borrowing a car once there. Then there are the joys of river travel: sitting at the bottom of an open boat travelling downriver in torrential rain, trying to keep your camera, voice recorder and GPS dry, and knowing there will be no shelter until you get to your destination.
Recently I‘ve been exploring the early history of Melanau settlements on the Oya and Balingian Rivers and how this has contributed to the identity of the various Melanau settlements in the present day. I’ve also just completed some in-depth research on former secondary burial practices and published a Melanau Mukah–English word list and phrase book – the sort of thing I longed for when I first arrived.
It’s going to be hard to leave here, as I will one day, but Sarawak will always be a second home.
REPORTING IN
Burial pole (kelideng) at Pelajau, about 64 kilometres upriver from the mouth of the Oya River and only accessible by boat. This burial pole, about 300 years old, marks the site of a once–significant but now abandoned Melanau settlement and longhouse. Pelajau is a place of importance in Melanau history on the Oya River and considered a sacred spot.
Ann Appleton, anthropologist, Sarawak
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 7 Weighing around 150 grams
and travelling at speeds of up to 120 kilometres per hour, a field hockey ball is a fearsome projectile.
“I was in a tournament and I was participating in a penalty corner when the girl taking the shot undercut it r ight into my face,” Annabel Goslin remembers.
The impact broke the seventh former’s nose, fractured an eye socket, and temporarily blinded her.
Little wonder then that in 2009, when Goslin came to her final year as a design student at Massey’s College of Creative Arts, her chosen project was a hockey face protector, appropriately named ‘The Guardian’.
The Guardian – featuring a detachable sweat-lining and eyeholes positioned to allow greater peripheral vision – became iconic for that year’s BLOW creative arts festival.
Its super-heroish look was deliberate, according to Goslin.
“I was just trying to push the
features of the human face, and I didn’t want the mask to be too intimidating, so I looked at accentuating features like the hard jaw, the ‘Superman jaw’.”
Goslin’s student work went on to win her two international Red Dot awards – one for The Guardian, the other for an all- purpose sports rain jacket – and a Zonta award sponsored by the eponymous global women’s organisation.
These days Goslin, now 23 and a working industrial designer, is part of the team at Palmerston North-based Unlimited Realities, designing the software and user experience for touchscreen computers and tablets.
But she hasn’t gone entirely virtual: she has a sideline doing contract work for hockey goalie equipment manufacturer OBO, which commands a remarkable 60 percent of its market worldwide.
One project is the design of a goalie’s equipment bag:
something large enough to
hold a helmet, leg guards and chest armour, able to be stood on one end, robust, and easy to manoeuvre. To go into production the bag needs to match OBO’s tagline – be ‘Good shit that really works’.
A prototype made to her specifications recently arrived from China. New Zealand Black Sticks goalie Kyle Pontifex put it through its paces, walking it up and down stairs, testing the durability and strength of the straps, and trying it out for size in the boot of his car.
Pontifex’s verdict on the bag:
somewhat awkward, more work needed.
Goslin will now start the final round of design refinement.
“I think if you do get stuck, the best method around that is going out and talking to people who use it.
“My job is to listen to and observe the users’ needs and wants, and to then create desirable and functional products for them – because [in reality]
you don’t design by yourself.”
Hallmarked
The newest members of the College of Creative Arts Hall of Fame are (from top) textile designer and artist Avis Higgs, Ma-ori clayworker and artist Manos Nathan, and Fane Flaws, who has variously been a graphic designer, painter, songwriter, director of music videos, short films and commercials, and writer, illustrator and publisher of children’s literature.
Who was that masked woman?
Paul Mulrooney talks to
industrial designer Annabel Goslin.
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 7
8 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
More events and full details listed at WWW.BLOWFESTIVAL.CO.NZ
John Walters from UK’s Eye magazine joins a selection of New Zealand design’s ‘unusual suspects’ to explore the contemporary merging of design disciplines. Blast will appeal to designers and commentators looking for fresh perspectives on cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Blast Talks
Designers share approaches to cross-disciplinary practice through a series of short presentations and audience involvement, culminating with a panel discussion chaired by John Walters.
Date: 12 Nov Time: 9am-5pm Location: Massey University, Museum Building, Theatrette, 10A02
Cost: $80, concession $20 (includes Breakfast) Bookings: [email protected]
Blast Breakfast
Share breakfast with Blast guests at an iconic Wellington location and catch an interactive wrap-up of themes and angles raised over the past 48 hours.
Date: 13 Nov Time: 10am Location: TBA
Blast Off
Blast speakers give a retrospective of their design journeys – 20 slides x 20 seconds – followed by an interactive discussion led by chair John Walters.
Date: 11 Nov Time: 6pm
Location: Massey University, Museum Building Theatrette, 10A02
Bookings: [email protected]
Surplus and Creativity:
Kinder, softer, sweeter
The Surplus and Creativity Exhibition reintroduces objects that are surplus or discarded and which have been reformed and recontextualised into objects of new value.
Dates: 15-26 Nov Times: M-F, 9am-4pm Location: DOC Conservation House, 18-32 Manners St, Wellington
Performative Practices
Leading New Zealand scholars, artists and designers explore performative practices that erode boundaries between performance, environment and event. Performances will be presented around Wellington, encouraging public participation.
Ecology in Fifths:
Development Season
Sam Trubridge
Unravelling the NZ myth of a clean green and natural landscape.
Dates: 10-21 Nov Time: 8pm Cost: $35 / $16 concession
Hidden City Maps
Sarah Burrell, Jon Coddington and Andrew Simpson Explore alternative ways of encountering the city.
Dates: 12-17 Nov Times: 1pm-4pm
Urban Devas
Phil Dadson and Carol Brown Urban Devas is a multi-site performance that transforms civic spaces into performative encounters.
Times: 12 Nov 6pm, 13 Nov 11am & 6pm Dates: 12-20 Nov
Times: 9am-7pm M-F, 10am-4pm S/S Location: Massey University, Museum Building, Spatial Design Studio, 10B12
NZPQ10: Performance Design Laboratory and Workshop for PQ11
A series of open design laboratories, performative events and workshops presented by artists, designers and students representing NZ in the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ11). NZPQ10 explores the active intersection between visual arts, theatre, architecture, film, and design practice, to expand our conception and scope of performance design. NZPQ10 is staged within Massey’s design studios and Wellington city itself.
An Engineer goes to the movies
Chris Chitty offers insights into the suspension of disbelief in movies, aided by a video of the construction and testing of CGI robots. Chris reflects on what we are really looking at on screen, and why we are so convinced by these illusions.
Date: 17 Nov Time: 6pm-8pm
Location: Massey University, Museum Building, Theatrette 10A02
Iwi Creativity
Iwi Creativity profiles and celebrates the work of Ma-ori art and design students: a great opportunity for Whanau and the wider community to share in the achievements of Ma-ori at Massey University.
Dates: 6-20 Nov
Times: M-F, 8.30am-8pm, S/S 10am-8pm Location: Massey University, Pyramid Enquiries: [email protected]
Simmer Dim and Cut Copy
The Engine Room showcases two parallel exhibitions by US artist Shona Macdonald:
Simmer Dim, and the second, featuring works on paper curated by the artist, Cut Copy.
Date: 10-20 Nov Time: Opening 5.30pm on 9 Nov, then Tue-Sat 12pm-4pm Location: Massey University, The Engine Room, Block 1
Dates: 12 Nov 8pm, 13 Nov 3pm & 8pm Location: Great Hall, Massey University, Buckle St (Entrance D), Wellington Cost: Evening $40, matinee
$21 waged, $11unwaged Bookings: www.dashtickets.co.nz Note: Booking fee applies
Enquiries: [email protected] Date: 6-20 Nov
Times: M-F, 9am-7pm, S/S, 10am-4pm Location: Massey University, Museum Building, Block 1 and Block 2 (Entrances C and D) Bookings: School groups contact:
[email protected] Enquiries: [email protected]
EXPOSURE
An exhibition of graduating students’ work
Unzipped
Massey Fashion Show 2010
Blast:
Dissolving Design Disciplines
Musicircus
Music of the Future
Created by John Cage, the anarchic proposal of Musicircus means no centre, no hierarchy, no paying. More than 100 musicians playing together but separately – can sense be made from this chaos?
Date: 20 Nov Time: 6pm-8pm
Location: Massey University, Museum Building,
Great Hall Locations and bookings at www.blowfestival.co.nz
Supported by
International Guest
International Guests
International Guest
8 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 9
More events and full details listed at WWW.BLOWFESTIVAL.CO.NZ
John Walters from UK’s Eye magazine joins a selection of New Zealand design’s ‘unusual suspects’ to explore the contemporary merging of design disciplines. Blast will appeal to designers and commentators looking for fresh perspectives on cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Blast Talks
Designers share approaches to cross-disciplinary practice through a series of short presentations and audience involvement, culminating with a panel discussion chaired by John Walters.
Date: 12 Nov Time: 9am-5pm Location: Massey University, Museum Building, Theatrette, 10A02
Cost: $80, concession $20 (includes Breakfast) Bookings: [email protected]
Blast Breakfast
Share breakfast with Blast guests at an iconic Wellington location and catch an interactive wrap-up of themes and angles raised over the past 48 hours.
Date: 13 Nov Time: 10am Location: TBA
Blast Off
Blast speakers give a retrospective of their design journeys – 20 slides x 20 seconds – followed by an interactive discussion led by chair John Walters.
Date: 11 Nov Time: 6pm
Location: Massey University, Museum Building Theatrette, 10A02
Bookings: [email protected]
Surplus and Creativity:
Kinder, softer, sweeter
The Surplus and Creativity Exhibition reintroduces objects that are surplus or discarded and which have been reformed and recontextualised into objects of new value.
Dates: 15-26 Nov Times: M-F, 9am-4pm Location: DOC Conservation House, 18-32 Manners St, Wellington
Performative Practices
Leading New Zealand scholars, artists and designers explore performative practices that erode boundaries between performance, environment and event. Performances will be presented around Wellington, encouraging public participation.
Ecology in Fifths:
Development Season
Sam Trubridge
Unravelling the NZ myth of a clean green and natural landscape.
Dates: 10-21 Nov Time: 8pm Cost: $35 / $16 concession
Hidden City Maps
Sarah Burrell, Jon Coddington and Andrew Simpson Explore alternative ways of encountering the city.
Dates: 12-17 Nov Times: 1pm-4pm
Urban Devas
Phil Dadson and Carol Brown Urban Devas is a multi-site performance that transforms civic spaces into performative encounters.
Times: 12 Nov 6pm, 13 Nov 11am & 6pm Dates: 12-20 Nov
Times: 9am-7pm M-F, 10am-4pm S/S Location: Massey University, Museum Building, Spatial Design Studio, 10B12
NZPQ10: Performance Design Laboratory and Workshop for PQ11
A series of open design laboratories, performative events and workshops presented by artists, designers and students representing NZ in the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ11). NZPQ10 explores the active intersection between visual arts, theatre, architecture, film, and design practice, to expand our conception and scope of performance design. NZPQ10 is staged within Massey’s design studios and Wellington city itself.
An Engineer goes to the movies
Chris Chitty offers insights into the suspension of disbelief in movies, aided by a video of the construction and testing of CGI robots. Chris reflects on what we are really looking at on screen, and why we are so convinced by these illusions.
Date: 17 Nov Time: 6pm-8pm
Location: Massey University, Museum Building, Theatrette 10A02
Iwi Creativity
Iwi Creativity profiles and celebrates the work of Ma-ori art and design students: a great opportunity for Whanau and the wider community to share in the achievements of Ma-ori at Massey University.
Dates: 6-20 Nov
Times: M-F, 8.30am-8pm, S/S 10am-8pm Location: Massey University, Pyramid Enquiries: [email protected]
Simmer Dim and Cut Copy
The Engine Room showcases two parallel exhibitions by US artist Shona Macdonald:
Simmer Dim, and the second, featuring works on paper curated by the artist, Cut Copy.
Date: 10-20 Nov Time: Opening 5.30pm on 9 Nov, then Tue-Sat 12pm-4pm Location: Massey University, The Engine Room, Block 1
Dates: 12 Nov 8pm, 13 Nov 3pm & 8pm Location: Great Hall, Massey University, Buckle St (Entrance D), Wellington Cost: Evening $40, matinee
$21 waged, $11unwaged Bookings: www.dashtickets.co.nz Note: Booking fee applies
Enquiries: [email protected] Date: 6-20 Nov
Times: M-F, 9am-7pm, S/S, 10am-4pm Location: Massey University, Museum Building, Block 1 and Block 2 (Entrances C and D) Bookings: School groups contact:
[email protected] Enquiries: [email protected]
EXPOSURE
An exhibition of graduating students’ work
Unzipped
Massey Fashion Show 2010
Blast:
Dissolving Design Disciplines
Musicircus
Music of the Future
Created by John Cage, the anarchic proposal of Musicircus means no centre, no hierarchy, no paying. More than 100 musicians playing together but separately – can sense be made from this chaos?
Date: 20 Nov Time: 6pm-8pm
Location: Massey University, Museum Building,
Great Hall Locations and bookings at www.blowfestival.co.nz
Supported by
International Guest
International Guests
International Guest
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 9
10 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
all the food that’s fit to print all the food that’s fit to print
TOOLS OF TRADE
Crockpots, rice cookers, ice-cream makers, espresso
machines, blenders... all are so last year. Clear your benchtops for the ultimate kitchen appliance. Housed in the Riddet Institute on Massey’s Palmerston North campus is a one-of-a-kind food printer that will eventually let you dial in the precise taste, colour, texture, nutritional makeup and three-dimensional form of the food you desire. Each ‘ink’ is a batter made up of starches, colorants, flavours and nutrients. Extruded though the printer’s jets, layer by layer, the batter is used to construct a product ready to be microwaved and eaten. What do you call the result?
Institute of Food, Nutrition and Human Health head Professor Richard Archer talks of a category he calls ‘technofoods’.
Pictured are, at top left, Professor Richard Archer; second from top, PhD student Teresa Wegrzyn, who has been working on the batter composition; and, at right, alongside the printer, engineering student Grant Ramsay, who has led the software development.
Video stills kindly supplied by Ever Wondered? TVNZ7.
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 11
all the food that’s fit to print
all the food that’s fit to print
12 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
F
or China, Marxism may have been just one of those phases you go through. Certainly it isn’t the word Professor Usha Haley uses to describe it today.“There is a continuity in the way the Chinese embrace technology, in the way they organise, and in the way they deal with people from outside China, from outside the middle kingdom. Their communist ideology is more akin to imperial Chinese than Marxist ideologies. ” Haley, Massey’s newest School of Business professor, is a long- time China watcher and analyst: her interest in emerging market economies, of which China is one, stretches back to 1992. China has made for good watching. From 1978, when Deng Xaioping took power and the ‘bird cage’ economy was created – the bird being the free market, the cage being the central plan – it has been an economic phenomenon.
For three decades China’s GDP has grown at the rate of around 10 percent year on year. In 2009 the value of China’s exports overtook that of Germany, making it the world’s largest exporter; in the second quarter of 2010 it overhauled Japan, becoming the world’s second largest economy.
China has had advantages: cheap and compliant labour, state- supplied credit at low rates, inexpensive land.
Even so, within this pattern there are oddities. Consider the abrupt rise of China’s steel industry, as Haley did when commissioned by the Alliance for American Manufacturing. In 2005 China was the fifth largest exporter of steel in the world; in 2006 it became the largest.
What had happened? It wasn’t cheap labour or centralised and highly efficient industry. Haley looked closely at the Chinese steel industry and found it to be highly fragmented – and, if anything, becoming more so.
Instead, what stood out was the scale of Chinese subsidies. In 2007 these amounted to $15.7 billion – money that went to support coal, coke, gas and electricity to keep the furnaces running. Indeed, according to her research, China’s steel exports almost perfectly correlate with the level of the subsidies.
Similarly, in studies conducted for the Economic Policy Institute of the Chinese glass and glass products industry and the Chinese paper industry, she again found huge levels of subsidy: for the glass and glass products industry the 2004 to 2008 subsidies came to more than $30.3 billion; for the paper industry from 2002 to 2009 the subsidies came to $33.1 billion.
These subsidies are in addition to another subsidy-in-effect: the Chinese have held the value of their currency, the renminbi, at an
artificially low level. It should, critics say, be worth 25 to 40 percent more.
Who gains from this? The Chinese exporters and, for now at least, the world’s consumers. Who loses? The industries and labour forces that are put at an unfair disadvantage – many of them US based.
No wonder then that in the US, where the current unemployment rate stands at 9.7 percent, the US-China trade deficit stood at US$46.3 billion for August 2010 alone, and the talk is of a double-dip recession, that trade sanctions are being actively contemplated.
However, despite the cause being taken up by President Obama with China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, Haley doubts the Chinese will allow the renminbi to appreciate markedly.
“It’s not in the Chinese government’s interests as it views it – although it increases the Chinese people’s purchasing power. So the government will not devalue the yuan voluntarily. The Chinese make noises once in a while but do little, and I think the rest of the world has realised we have very little influence on China; we can only influence our own actions, and we don’t have many options.”
That the Chinese and US economies exist in a delicate balance restricts what either can do. The US is massively in debt to China.
China cannot sell off its reserves of US currency without devaluing the currency and its reserves in the process.
But Europe has imposed protectionist measures, says Haley, and the US is likely to follow suit.
“This is not a free market we are operating in, so we shouldn’t operate on free market assumptions.”
Haley has testified several times before the US Congress about her research findings. In July 2010, 104 US senators and representatives wrote a bipartisan letter to President Obama recommending action on China trade. It drew on Haley’s research into the paper industry.
So what of New Zealand? In 2008 New Zealand entered a free trade agreement with China and in 2010, as exports to the US declined, China became New Zealand’s second largest trading partner after Australia, whose own economy was being fuelled by China’s appetite for minerals.
Thus far, New Zealand’s exports to China have been dominated by natural resources – products like milk powder, wool and logs.
Haley worries that New Zealand could prove naive in its dealings with its vastly larger and more powerful partner.
“How do I put this delicately? New Zealand should take a more strategic view.”
Enter the dragon
The resilience of China’s economy may have been the one bright spot in the global financial crisis. But Professor of International Business Usha Haley counsels caution: not everything that is good for China is good for its trading partners.
She talks to Malcolm Wood.
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 13 China is in the business of picking winners and trying to own
areas of endeavour that will move it up the value chain. Sometimes the tactics it has employed have included an element of bait-and- switch: a foreign business with valuable intellectual property is lured to China on the promise of cheap manufacturing only to find that the ‘property’ part of the formula is less fastidiously observed than in the West.
“The Chinese government is not interested in foreign investments in general manufacturing the way it was in the 1980s and 1990s.
That is no longer a draw for China. The government would like foreign investments in clean tech, green tech, biotechnology, aviation – industries that it has anointed as strategically important.”
Most of these are not areas of natural strength for New Zealand, but dairying,where New Zealand does have substantial intellectual property, is one area of national strategic interest where care needs to be taken.
New Zealand should also be careful when it comes to the issue of land ownership. There should be national debate over the Chinese- backed bid for the Crafar farms.
“The Chinese are acting rationally by taking an opportunity that, I suspect, is being bankrolled by the China Construction Bank.”
We need to remember, says Haley, that New Zealand’s area of arable land is trifling compared with the acreages available in China – or the US for that matter – and that the New Zealand land and landscape embody other spiritual, emotional and national values too precious to alienate.
New Zealanders should also be aware that some of its areas of natural strength can be contested. “Take wood, for example. China subsidises its plantations so there will come a time, probably within the next five to seven years, when it doesn’t need imported wood from New Zealand or the US.
“New Zealand should not be relegated to becoming an exporter of natural resources and agriculture when there is a chance to move up the value chain and export more sophisticated manufactured products.”
In the longer term, Haley does not see China’s growth continuing unchecked for many more years. China, she says, faces some fundamental problems, two of them rooted in the age profile of its population, which is becoming older –– “China is going to be in the unenviable position of becoming an old country before it becomes a rich country” – and which, because of prejudice against female children, will have large numbers of unpartnered men.
Her faith in the resilience of the US is undimmed – “I think it will come back. The US is going through a period of readjustment and recovering from bad policies and intense global competition” – and she sings the virtues of a free society – a free press, free internet, free universities and free speech – as an engine of innovation.
“Currently, the Chinese are not the leaders in first-order cutting- edge technology, but rather in second-order applications. Money can buy innovation only to a point.”
Interesting times lie ahead. “This is an extremely complex world.
I tell my students, you have to be able to chew gum, whistle and walk at the same time.”
“How do I put this delicately?
New Zealand should take a more strategic view.”
Indian-born US citizen Professor Usha Haley’s academic qualifications include a Master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in political science, and Master’s and PhD degrees in international business and management from NYU’s Stern School of Business.
Her research interests have included boycotts, divestitures and regulations, and the economics of developing markets.
The Chinese Tao of Business: The Logic of Successful Business Strategy, the 2004 book she co-authored with husband George T Haley (an industrial and international marketing professor) and Chin Tiong Tan, was a well reviewed best seller and remains an essential guide for anyone aspiring to do business there.
She has written for The Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek and been cited in The New York Times, The Economist, CNN and The Wall Street Journal.
Currently Professor Haley is working on research into the Chinese auto parts and green tech industries and is completing her seventh book, Subsidies to Chinese Industry: State Capitalism, Business Strategy and Trade Policy. The book, again to be co-authored with George T Haley, will appear under the imprint of Oxford University Press in February 2011.
Besides the US and India, she has lived and worked in Mexico, Singapore, Finland, Thailand, Vietnam, Italy and Australia.
14 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
the play’s the thing
VIEWPOINT
What can society’s future leaders and communities learn from theatre? Passionate about inspiring people through teaching and drama, and the recent recipient of the annual National Tertiary Teaching Award for ‘sustained excellence’, senior lecturer Angie Farrow at Massey’s Palmerston North campus is an award-winning playwright who teaches creative processes, theatre, public speaking and leadership skills. She talks
to Mark Amery.
Given the array of means of socialising and being entertained online and on screen, why should theatre still matter?
Jean Louis Barrault once described theatre as a “present art”. He reckoned it was one of the few arenas that required both actor and audience to be in the moment. It is also about telling stories that can help us see ourselves more clearly. These stories can have a poetic value that often touches us spiritually. I think we live in a time of great distraction and this is not just to do with the way that technologies beguile us away from the moment of experience, but because many of us are caught up in the desire to achieve and consume. I strongly believe that theatre can bring us back to a sense of community.
Right now, I am working on the Manawatu Festival of New Arts. It involves around 60 people and it is sometimes exhilarating to be in the same place with all these people, all working for the same end, all feeling the excitement of anticipating the first night. I am sure there must be some kind of scientific reason why this kind of community experience is so arresting. Does a large group give off a particular chemistry when it is of one accord? I am not religious, but group singing can have the effect of making me want to sign up for a baptism! Like religion, theatre is about taking people into altered states. It is also about bringing them back to a place where they can meet and learn and grow.
I like to think of theatre as a place where people can experience a kind of collective dream. And because the experience of watching the play is always collective, it is somehow more intensive. Sometimes, it is as if the audience is saying, “Yes, we have all done this, we all know how this feels. We have more in common than we thought”. I think theatre is one of the few areas left to us where we can have this shared and intense experience of congregation.
In a time of increasing online learning tools, is this sense of congregation and community something you also see as important about universities having physical campuses?
We have a terrific campus at Palmerston North. It is spacious, beautiful and, I think, very conducive to learning. One of the joys for me has been developing the on-campus summer school paper, Creative Processes. Students come in January when the weather is often balmy and there is often time to wander around the grounds or talk to fellow students. People often describe their experience of doing the course as life changing and I think that this is due, at least in part, to the electric atmosphere that is often generated when a lot of people with a similar purpose gather into one space. Extramural students often experience loneliness when studying at home and the campus course is a great way to offset the isolation of distance learning.
I am not against online learning. Indeed, I think it’s a useful tool and especially helpful for the extramural student. However, I don’t think we have to fall in love with it. I see many people in thrall of the computer because it is so tricky and clever and attractive and because it usually does what we tell it – and perhaps because it is another kind of consumption. In Britain, I know of some institutions that are buying into online learning wholesale because it is cheap to run and because it allows lecturers to focus on the more lucrative pursuits of research. All their lectures and learning materials have gone online and their campuses have largely been vacated by students. I am horrified by this idea. For me, nothing beats a face-to-face learning environment, where students are getting inspiration from each other and engaging in a living and breathing exchange of ideas.
Everything I teach relies on working relationships between participants in three-dimensional space. Theatre and public speaking are collective activities and everyone needs to be there in the flesh to make them work. Theatre online would be like reading the recipe book without ever sampling the food.
How much have you learnt about teaching from theatre and playwriting?
Theatre is an all-encompassing, whole-body thing and it has taught me a lot about the nature of teaching. When students have to learn through their bodies and hearts as well as their heads (as performers
| Massey University | November 2010 | definingnz | 15 do), I find that the learning is richer and becomes more embedded
somehow. I know from years of experience that some students can only learn fully when their bodies are engaged. Look for the fidgeters in any classroom and they will usually be your kinaesthetic learners. Many of us think that university teaching should be about paying attention primarily through cognition or mental reasoning, but I think there is a place for multiple pedagogies and theatre is a great place to learn about what these might be.
Knowing a bit about the craft of acting has also been helpful because I can apply it to my performance as a teacher. Like an actor, you have to be totally immersed in what you are doing, to know how to tell good stories, and to be tuned in to some kind of higher purpose. At the same time, teaching isn’t ‘acting’ because to be any good, you have to be authentic and true to your spirit. You don’t have the actor’s mask that can often hide your true feelings.
My colleague, Thom Conroy, uses a phrase ‘getting yourself out of the way’ when he talks about the art of writing. I think it’s true for teaching also. Somehow you have to get your ego and all distracting thoughts well away from you and let the work - the art - come through you. When I am teaching really well, I can lose myself. It is a kind of immersion that can lead to moments of inspiration and genuine flair.
Does strong leadership also involve similar creative skills to those of the theatre director or artist?
In the ’80s I did a Master’s in creative arts in education at Exeter University. The research seeded a deep fascination in me for the
creative process. The principles of creative process can be applied to most human activities and not just the arts. I used to teach a course in creative leadership in which I employed a lot of the techniques that I would use as a theatre director. In order to get actors ready for a show, you often need to take them through a range of exercises that would enable them to be emotionally, spiritually and physically ready for the creative act. I have come to understand that those exercises can apply to just about all aspects of human endeavour, not just theatre.
Creative practice is often very paradoxical. You have to be prepared in order to be spontaneous. In the moment when you become attached to the work, you have to be willing to let it go. You cannot create with just your heart; the mind must be engaged also. You cannot achieve a sense of order in the work unless you have experienced chaos. In creative leadership, you need to let go of your power in order to be powerful. It is possible to teach these things and to give the students an understanding of how they can work with their own resistances and strengths in order to find a creative edge.
How easy meanwhile is it to teach playwriting?
There are a lot of skills involved, and most of these, such as building a character or shaping a narrative, are reasonably straightforward to teach. What is much more difficult I think is helping students to come up with original ideas. I often talk about ‘inside out’ writing.
By this I mean writing that comes from some kind of inner impulse or unconscious voice. I encourage students to write ‘automatically’
without premeditation or conscious manipulation of the words. It is often by this means that writers find a unique take on a subject or character. I guess it is because their ‘censoring’ voice is suspended.
I also encourage writers to get some experience of acting and directing in order to learn the language of the stage. People who write a lot of short stories or novels often find the shift to playwriting quite difficult because they are used to their words being received by a single reader, often in a very private setting. But theatre is a public and collective activity and the theatre play is a blueprint for three-dimensional action. The playwright therefore needs to write with a strong sense of how the play will look, sound, feel and move in theatrical space.
In the moment when
you become attached
to the work, you have to
be willing to let it go.
16 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
evolution at work
FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH
A few millilitres of nutrient broth, a bacterium and a few days: these are all the ingredients you need to watch evolution happening before your eyes.
Professor Paul Rainey talks to Malcolm Wood about experimental evolution, Oxford, and his hopes for the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study.
16 | definingnz | November 2010 | Massey University
