Online Community for Handheld Technology
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Publications Mail Agreement No.40042804 CONCORDIA'S Vol. 29~ No. 3 http://ctr.concord.ia.ca October 7, 2004 Online community for handheld technology SHELAGH MCNALLY our everyday lives but we aren't really using them to full capacity. MDCN wants That cell phone in your pocket is about to to send images, text and music to mobile get a lot more interesting and powerful. devices in ways never tried before. The Mobile Digital Commons Network "This is a chance to experiment in a (MDCN) is one of the research projects bandwidth that is not yet heavily popu emerging from the seed grants lated. We have some room to play and announced last spring by ENCS Dean hopefully to create an online community Nabil Esmail and Fine Arts Deaµ Christo for hand-held technology;' said Michael pher Jackson. Longford, an associate professor in the This multidisciplinary undertaking Department of Design Art. has brought together an international MDCN will also be creating a physical network of artists, researchers and engi connection to the cyber world by making neers to explore the potential of wireless the information sensitive to location. · communication. A joint initiative with Jason Lewis, another associate profes the Banff Centre, it has just received a sor in Design Art, said, "The idea is to grant from Heritage Canada for just mark up [fill] space with virtual data so under $500,000. Jason Lewis, Reza Soleymani and Michael Longford try out the features of their cell that you could be on a street comer and phones on the roof of the building on Ste. Catherine St. that houses the research Cell phones, personal digital assistants institute Hexagram. Soleymani is an engineer; Longford and Lewis are part of the pro use your wireless device to plug into data (PDAs), global positioning systems (GPS) gram Digital Image and Sound in the Fine Arts. left by someone talking about an event and portable computers may be part of continued on page 5 Leafy exterior mural will become a downtown landmark JENNIFER WESTLA KE His uncompromising take on work had to cross some hurdles with this project, The leafy mural gracing the Mackay St. though. Consensus on the entry had to be far,:ade of the Integrated Engineering, reached between a creative team of three. Computer Science and Visual Arts Com Baier had his doubts about their final plex is complete. choice, which he produced after a long When it was briefly spotlit at a formal process of brainstorming and debate, but introduction to the public on Sept. 28, the his team members and his agent, Rene spaces within its grid that are dark in Blouin, loved it. The image was submit daylight appeared in all their translucent ted, and the contract was won. glory. The mural, depicting sections of a Discussion between the artist and Con deconstructed plant, will be permanently cordia over a stipulation that the mural lit at night after the building is finished. not be visible from the interior of the Although the mural's grid-based com buildil).g led to a compromise that Baier position bears something in common could live with: 15 to 20 per cent of the with the look of some of his past works, work is transparent. The mural will not the artist, Nicolas Baier, pointed out, be visible from the studios, but the win "Every time I've used a grid, I've func dows of certain public spaces will have a tioned very differently on the Guests listen to speeches in the garden of St. James the Apostle Church, at the corner vaguely stained-glass effect. of Bishop and Ste. Catherine Sts., as the mural, seen in the background, is presented to methodological level of the work." the community on Sept. 28. Although there were expenses that The divisions, or splices, in his photo would not be incurred in most art works graphs take on different purposes from the contract. This is far from being his He has built a career that allows for the (a creative team of three, and lawyers' one piece to the next. In this case, the first coup, though. creative latitude he insists on. His cre fees, for example), and the project was grid fulfills a purely formal purpose. "It's Baier's work is familiar to followers of ative modus operandi is simple, but very two years in the making, at a total cost of a collapsed point of view:• The composi visual arts in Quebec. He won the Prix broad. $475,000, the payment to the artist is sig tion forces the eye to rummage through, Pierre Ayot in 2000, and had an exhibition "I ask myself if it works or not, or if it nificant. (Consider that the average skip over and piece together an image in in 2003 at the Museum of Contemporary touches me. That's all. I won't close any annual income of visual artists in Canada the mind. Art. There's a piece of his at the Montreal doors, and I try to never do the same is $12,633.) Baier stresses that he is inter Baier didn't deny being proud of hav Museum of Fine Arts, and private thing over. It has to be different all the ested in reality, or more precisely, what he ing, with the design team Cabinet collectors buy his work through the Rene time. Otherwise it would be boring. and I Braun-Braen, won the competition for Blouin Gallery. would stop producing:• continued on page 5 h l THIS ISSUE 2 Tackling Tinseltown 3 High anxiety ) Homecoming a hit 10-11 Faculty. promotions Richard Kerr's new show New treatment developed Comedians,costumes Full professors in Arts & Science -t Joy Bennett studies facul.ty unions for her PhD SARAH B I NDER to grind. At the same time, management intransi gence can force academics to adopt tactics, such as When Concordia University management and profes work stoppages, that do not sit well with their profes sors next sit down at the bargaining table, they might sional self-image. take inspiration from Joy Bennett's doctoral disserta She concluded that on the whole, unionization has tion on the unionization of full-time faculty in had a positive effect because it codifies the rules of English-Canadian universities. the game, making them fairer and clear to both sides. Not that she included Concordia in the thesis's How tenure is achieved, how promotions are decided, three case studies. "I can't be objective about a place what constitutes a minimum teaching complement I know so well;' Bennett explained. The librarian - these are no longer decisions made arbitrarily; turned-administrator-turned-consultant has sat on they are written down and subject to a recourse pro both sides of the negotiating table during her long cedure. career at Concordia. "It has made the relationship between the adminis Concordia, whose full-time faculty won certifica tration and faculty more litigious but also more tion in 1981, actually makes a good showing on the transparent;' Bennett said. spectrum of industrial relations in academe. This transparency can be a relief to many ·on the "We take a long time to bargain, but we stay at the management side of the table, Bennett found, espe table;' Bennett said. "We've never had a strike. It's a cially for deans and vice-deans who have been faculty credit to both sides:' and are likely to resume that status at another point Compare this to Dalhousie University, one of Ben in their career. nett's case studies. The Halifax institution, certified Unionization has led to a tremendous improve since 1980, has suffered though four strikes in its four ment in salaries. Although academics don't like to last rounds of contract talks. think of themselves in the usual labour-management Or take Queen's, in Kingston, where teaching staff terms, the issue of salaries remains a high negotia rejected unionization until a salary freeze in 1995, tions priority, along with tenure and the number of then breezed through the certification process in full-time tenure-track faculty. three months due to a "sophisticated" faculty that Academic freedom is also a hot-button issue, and included supportive law-school comrades. given recent cases where attempts were made to sup By contrast, it took a lengthy battle to win the right press research results, it could take on an even higher to bargain collectively in 1974 at the University of profile in future contract talks. Bennett, who received Manitoba, Canada's first English research-level uni her PhD this spring and has submitted the thesis to a versity to have a unionized faculty association; it Canadian book publisher, credits her doctoral com was Bennett's third case study. mittee members for adding breadth and depth to the Joy Bennett By now, most of Canada's full-time university pro work: Enn Raudsepp, chair of the Journalism Depart fessors negotiate collectively through faculty ment; Donald Savage, former executive director of the associations. Bennett set out to explore the impact of Using documents and interviews with faculty and Canadian Association of University Teachers and adjunct this in her PhD thesis, submitted in August 2003 under administrators reflecting different regional and universi history professor; and her main supervisor, Jerry Tomber the title "From gentlemen's agreements to collective ty cultures, she examined why and how collective lin, dean of the John Molson School of Business. agreements: how the unionization of full-time faculty bargaining developed. Bennett is currently advising Concordia management members in anglophone Canadian universities has She found that trust can be a major issue in the admin in negotiations with part-time faculty, and is teaching a changed the management and governance structures of istration-faculty relationship, and that management management course at McGill's Graduate School of those universities:' efforts to be open can run up against faculty with an axe Library and Information Studies.