IN the MOOD Photos by Samuel Hartnett

This issue 2 Hubble telescope 3 Human rights 4 Justice Chambers University of Auckland news for staff | Vol 43 | Issue 10 | 27 June IN THE MOOD Photos by Samuel Hartnett On a recent bleak wintery day, 240 brightly coloured “mood” sticks were carried by a crowd, in procession across Auckland City, creating accents of vivid colour against an otherwise grey backdrop. The hikoi was part of a work by Associate Professor Peter Robinson (Elam School of Fine Arts) for the 5th Auckland Triennial, entitled If You Were to Work Here: the Mood in the Museum. Consisting of long, slender, felt-covered aluminum rods, Peter Robinson’s artwork is an evolving piece that plays with hierarchy and protocol, and changes depending on people and place. The artist adopted the Hippocratic colour mood, removed them from the Art Gallery floor wherever they want in the exhibition halls system - red (sanguine), blue (phlegmatic), yellow and transported them on foot to the Auckland (see above). Around 60 Museum employees, (choleric) and green (melancholic) - to imbue Museum. from all echelons, will participate in the each coloured stick with emotion. Following a formal ceremony where Museum ever-changing selection and display of the sticks If You Were to Work Here... started its first staff welcomed the work, the sticks were rested for the duration of the show. phase on the floor of the Atrium of the Auckland against the walls of the grand foyer for a day, Make sure you get along to the Museum and Art Gallery, where it was laid out to resemble a before beginning their next transformation. The view this marvelous evolving installation. We large roimata tukutuku pattern. Seeming formal artwork will now remain at the Museum until welcome images depicting interesting stick and solemn in the gallery, next the work became mid-August, being constantly altered as locations, for possible placement on the staff lively when taken into the streets by volunteers members of staff choose a “mood” stick, intranet. For more information visit: who, each picking a coloured stick to reflect their depending on how they feel, and place the stick aucklandtriennial.com UNIVERSITY NEWS IS PUBLISHED BY Communications, Fisher Building,18 Waterloo Quadrant, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142. EMAIL [email protected] www.auckland.ac.nz/universitynews EDITOR Judy Wilford PHOTOGRAPHY Godfrey Boehnke, Samuel Hartnett DESIGN AND PRODUCTION The University of Auckland Staff member’s film showing in Shanghai 2,064 short film nominations received for the festival from 90 countries. Peter initially graduated from the University in 1998 with a BSc majoring in psychology, but his on-going interest in film spurred him to an MA in Screen Production. He finished last year with first class honours. The postgraduate Screen programmes are run through the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies. FTVMS is the only New Zealand film school that belongs to CILECT, an international grouping of elite film schools that was established at Cannes in 1955. “I had always studied maths and science but what I was always interested in was film. I haven’t really looked back since. I feel really lucky.” Peter Simpson, senior technician in the one’s breath. The socially awkward outsider He credits his department colleagues and Department of Film, Media and Television plans to use this achievement to impress fellow professional staff manager Gaynor van Beurden Studies (FTVMS), has had a short film accepted student Sarah enough to persuade her to for their support during his MA and the making into this year’s 16th Annual Shanghai become his girlfriend. of the film. International Film Festival. The film was completed as part of Peter’s MA Peter flew to Shanghai on 15 June to attend A Few Seconds More tells the story of Ben, a in Screen Production last year. It has been the festival. During his visit he planned to attend boy of ideas and fixations who flits from one epic selected into the festival’s International Student some of the film master classes, including one project to the next. His current obsession is to Shorts Exhibition and Competition. The selection being hosted by Oliver Stone. become the world record holder for holding is impressive as A Few Seconds More was one of Spot the difference Stars (eight times the mass of our sun) that are Adding to the complexity is the frequent work with colleagues from Belfast, as well as for about to explode - as massive supernovae that occurrence of binary stars – twin stars in close the supernova work with his Baltimore burn out in a few days – would be expected to proximity – which means that even when one of collaborators. Their successful application to use show up quite clearly when viewed by the pair explodes, the other may be left behind the telescope was called “How low can they go”, cutting-edge observatories. in the telescope images. John compares the though John admits he would have preferred painstaking work to stellar forensics. But in fact, they are often too dim to be “Interstellar limbo”. The supernovae he will study exploded long detected by a telescope and tend to be less John feels lucky to have succeeded. The enough ago that the light from the explosion has bright than physicists’ current models of stars telescope is hugely oversubscribed, with now faded. His American colleagues will use the predict. University astrophysicist Dr John scientists asking for five times as much access as new data to investigate two possible reasons the Eldridge (Department of Physics) has won time is available. on the Hubble Space Telescope to learn more stars are less bright than expected: one is that about why this is so. the energy inside the star is different from that Working with colleagues from Baltimore, he predicted by current models, and the other is will use a technique called image subtraction to that the surface of the star produces dust that compare images of the night sky before and obscures its light from the telescope. after a supernova is detected, to determine Because supernovae are quite rare (there is which star has exploded, what it looked like only one each century in our galaxy), any before it exploded, and how its characteristics information that can be gathered is a valuable compare with current models. addition to physicists’ stellar models. But it’s not It’s like a “spot the difference” puzzle, just a question about the far reaches of space. complicated by the fact that he’s looking for “All the stuff that makes me and you comes from stars that may be below the telescope’s level of supernovae,” John explains. “The heavy detection. Hubble operates in deep space and, elements, like carbon, iron and gold, all come as with a camera taking pictures in the dark from supernovae, so studying them is important without flash, its images contain a lot of “noise” in order to understand how everything came to or graininess. The challenge is to subtract the be.” same amount of noise from the “before” and John came to the University in late 2011, after “after” pictures to try and detect any glimmers working at Queen’s University Belfast, Paris, and of the star that exploded. Cambridge. He will use Hubble data for ongoing 2 27 June 2013 Human rights and the constitution From the Vice-Chancellor However, others gave contrasting emphases. Ced Simpson, a leading NGO activist, suggested that the question of whether we need additional protection for human rights should be explored by asking those whose rights might be compromised. He added that New Zealand has signed many more international documents that guarantee rights than are properly reflected in domestic law, and that the opportunity should be taken to modify this. Various workshops conducted during the symposium brought suggestions such as The recent decision by the University to acquire providing additional rights. the former Lion Breweries site to create a For example, Associate Professor Jennifer Newmarket Campus linked to the City and Grafton Curtin from the Department of Political Studies Campuses is very exciting, but it also creates for us the new challenge of gradually repatriating Our New Zealand constitution is currently was the rapporteur for a workshop that activities from the Tāmaki Campus to the three being reviewed. (Yes, we do have one, just not concluded that there was a good case for better inner city campuses. in a single document.) incorporation (into New Zealand’s framework) of the rights supposedly guaranteed at the The University Council has adopted a set of Submissions can be made to the Constitutional international level by the Convention on the “Principles for the withdrawal from Tāmaki”. Advisory Panel (www.cap.govt.nz) until the end of Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Paramount among these is the principle that the this month. Women. Other workshops considered the issue of withdrawal must be orderly, ensuring that the The background to the review of the human rights from the perspective of people with greatest possible benefits are created for, and the constitution was set out at a recent symposium disabilities, of young people, and in the context of minimum amount of harm done to, our students, hosted by The University of Auckland’s NZ Centre economic interests. staff and community partnerships. The University for Human Rights, Law, Policy and Practice. There were also debates about the mechanics will seek to maximise the financial benefits of the Dr Ranginui Walker, a member of the of securing rights. Dr Wayne Mapp, now a Law withdrawal in order to contribute to the cost of Constitutional Advisory Panel, explained that the Commissioner, expressed the view that there Newmarket and other campus development current conversation was part of a series that should be an expanded and consolidated activities.

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