Tag Archives: City of Vancouver archives

Art. Science. Optics. A Collider Café event in Vancouver (Canada) on January 23, 2019

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The Curiosity Collider folks have decided to ring in the new year with an event focused on optics. Here’s more from their January 15, 2019 announcement (received via email),

FROM CONTEMPORARY ART TO SCIENCE ILLUSTRATION, IS “SEEING” REALLY
“BELIEVING”? OR IS THERE MORE TO IT THAN THERE SEEMS? HOW CAN WE EXPLORE
THE POSSIBILITIES THROUGH ART AND SCIENCE?

OUR #COLLIDERCAFE IS A SPACE FOR ARTISTS, SCIENTISTS, MAKERS, AND
ANYONE INTERESTED IN ART+SCIENCE. MEET, DISCOVER, CONNECT, CREATE. Are
you curious? Join us at “Collider Cafe: Art. Science. Optics.” to
explore how art and science intersect in the exploration of curiosity.

When: 8:00pm on Wednesday, January 23, 2019 Doors open at 7:30pm.
Where: Café Deux Soleils. 2096 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC (Google Map).
Cost: $5-10 (sliding scale) cover at the door. Proceeds will be used to cover the cost of running this event, and to fund future Curiosity Collider events.

With speakers:

Annie Briard, Contemporary Artist : What our eyes perceive but we do not see
Catherine Stewart, Visual Artist: The Museum as Muse: natural history collections as a resource for artistic exploration
Vicky Earle, Medical and Scientific Illustrator: The Art of Science & Medical Illustration
Ramey Newell, Photographer/Film Maker/Artist: Manifest Obscura: Reimagining/reimaging landscape through microbial collaboration
Julius T. Csotonyi, Paleoart, Natural History and Science Illustrator: A Mutualism of Endeavors

Head to the Facebook event page – let us know you are coming and share this event with others! Follow updates on instagram via @curiositycollider or #ColliderCafe. 

The announcement also includes other art/science events currently happening in Vancouver,

Looking for more Art+Science in Vancouver?

The work by one of our Collider Cafe speaker Catherine Stewart is on exhibition at the UBC Beaty Biodiversity Museum! “Skin & Bones” until August 13, 2019.

Another exhibition at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum: The Wild Creative by Asher Jay until April 28, 2019. “Examine biodiversity loss during the Anthropocene – the Age of Man – through compelling artworks and thought-provoking narratives.”

Our friends at the Story Collider will host their next Vancouver event “Kinship” on January 22. Learn more about the event & get tickets on Eventbrite.

Museum of Vancouver and Nature Vancouver are hosting Wild Things: The Power of Nature in Our Lives, an exhibition that delves into the life stories of local animals and plants. Interactive sessions every weekend. Until March 1, 2020.

For more Vancouver art+science events, visit the Curiosity Collider events calendar.

That last event (Wild Things at the Museum of Vancouver) is going to be available for viewing with a $5 Winter Wander ticket on February 2, 2019. A January 14, 2019 posting on the Miss604 blog has more,

Experience unique waterfront attractions showcasing art, history, crafts, science and performances during Winter Wander at Vanier Park on February 2, 2019. Enjoy local food vendors, enter to win great prizes, and get to know your local museum, space centre, archives, and more during this affordable, family-friendly event

Winter Wander at Vanier Park

When: Saturday, February 2, 2019 10:00am to 5:00pm
Venues include

Museum of Vancouver
The Museum of Vancouver inspires deeper understanding of the city through stories, objects and shared experiences. Check out their latest exhibits and their permanent collections and exhibition halls.

H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
The Space Centre is BC’s top space science attraction, inspiring visitors with shows, exhibits and some of Vancouver’s most unique special events

Vancouver Maritime Museum
Make some maritime-themed origami 10:00am to 4:30pm, visit with Parks Canada interpreters 10:00am to 4:30pm, climb on-board the St. Roch and celebrate 90 years of adventure, enjoy music from a string quartet onboard the St. Roch, and more

City of Vancouver Archives
The City Archives houses over 4 km of documents about the history of Vancouver, containing both government and public collections

Vancouver Academy of Music
Vancouver Academy of Music (“VAM”) is the city’s premiere centre of music education, serving aspiring musicians from early childhood to collegiate levels

Bonus: Bard on the Beach performances!

An undated posting at Vancouver’s Best Places gives you a sense of what to expect along with some handy tips,

At Winter Wander, expect lots of people, fair-sized lineups, and an event schedule with a list of entertainment and special activities throughout the day.

Live entertainment doesn’t happen all over the place. There is a set schedule and different things happen at specific times. The museums are open constantly all day. If you want to be entertained by the Bard on the Beach crew, however, you’ll need to check the schedule and be at a certain place at a certain time.

Although crowded, Winter Wander isn’t insanely busy. The venues are indeed crowded, but, surprisingly, not as bad as one might expect, or at least they weren’t when we’ve been. There is a pretty big lineup to get in before the doors even open in the morning, true, and you do need to wait your turn to get photos of your child in the model astronaut suit at the Planetarium, or to board the St. Roch police boat at the Maritime Museum.

…

Tips and Advic

Below are some tips and advice to help you make the most out of your experience at the Vanier Park museums on Winter Wander day

TIP #1: Go expecting the museums to be insanely crowded, and then hope to be pleasantly surprised. Go expecting small lineups and not too many people, however, and you’ll likely be disappointed

TIP #2: If you haven’t been to the museums at Vanier Park for a long time, you don’t mind crowds and you have children or guests from out of town, then definitely check out Winter Wander. For just $5, it’s a fabulous deal

TIP #3: Some venues and museum exhibit areas will be more popular and consequently more crowded than others. If a lineup for something is too long, simply move along to something else. There’s lots to see, so don’t fret if you don’t get to see everything

TIP #4: The best thing about the HR MacMillan Space Centre is the Planetarium and its shows about the stars and space. Chances are they’ll be busy, so don’t be disappointed if it’s not worth the wait. If you can get in to see a show though, do

TIP #5: Entertainment at Winter Wander happens at specific times and at certain places over the course of the day. When you arrive, check the schedule and decide what you want to see (including possible shows at the Planetarium). Then, plan your visit accordingly

TIP #6: Expect to spend between about an hour and all day at the event, but likely all morning or all afternoon. The length of your stay will depend on your level of interest in museums, model ships, history and space, but also on the crowds and the interest level and tolerance of crowds of the people you’re with

TIP #7: While at Vanier Park, go for a walk and explore. There is a beautiful walking trail all along the waterfront with views of the city. Especially if the museums are crowded, a break for some fresh air can be nice.

There you have it.

French want more nanotech public debates; British science oral history project

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After last month’s post about disturbances (causing at least one cancellation) taking place during a series of nanotechnology public debates in France, it was a surprise to find that at least one French group wants to continue the ‘discussion’. This last series of  events has been completed with a report due in April 2010. According to a news item on Chemical Watch, France Nature Environnement (FNE) is urging more public debates. From Chemical Watch,

The French public debate on nanotechnologies that began in September ended this week. An official summary of the 17 debates will be published at the end of April, but environmental organisation France Nature Environnement (FNE) says in its conclusions that further discussion is needed to decide where the technology is useful for human advancement and where its use is unacceptable.

You can look at the FNE news item here but it is in French and the site doesn’t seem hospitable to Firefox,  so do try another browser.

Meanwhile, the Brits are embarking on an oral history of British science. From the news item on BBC News,

The British Library has begun a project to create a vast, online oral history and archive of British science.

The three-year project will see 200 British scientists interviewed and their recollections recorded for the audio library.

…

“We have long been painfully aware that there’s a marked absence of significant recordings of scientists,” said Dr Rob Perks, curator of oral history at the British Library.

For instance, said Dr Perks, in the current sound archives there are only two recordings of Ernest Rutherford, none of computer pioneer Alan Turing, hovercraft inventor Christopher Cockerell or AV Hill, a physiologist and Nobel laureate.

A study carried out prior to the project being started found that in the last ten years, 30 leading British scientists including 9 Nobel winners have died leaving little or no archive of their work.

I’m glad to hear that this oral history is being preserved although I do wonder about the recording formats. One of the problems with archiving materials is maintaining to access them afterwards.

Coincidentally, one of the local Vancouver papers (The Georgia Straight) has an article by Rhiannon Coppin (in the Feb. 25 – March 4, 2010 issue) about the City of Vancouver archives and their attempts at digital archiving. From the article,

Every day, Vancouver’s city archivist and director of records and archives runs a rescue operation on our past. Les Mobbs might send out film reels from the ’30s for repair, or he could receive a donation of early-20th-century photographic negatives that need to be catalogued, scanned, and put into cold storage.

Lately, Mobbs has been putting equal consideration into how to preserve our future. More and more of the city’s legal and cultural record is being created in a digital format; in other words, it’s “born digital”, he told the Georgia Straight.

…

The pitfall in digital archiving is that we’re poor caretakers of electronic file formats. In 50 or 100 years, we’ll know we’ve won the preservation game if we can open and read a computer document created today. But even in 2010, we’re missing out on 20-year-old WordStar files stuck on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks. Ironically, it may be safer to keep a paper copy of a document than to store the original computer file.

“We’ve been dealing with paper for 2,000 years,” Mobbs said. “We have a lot of experience with what paper is, what it looks like, and how it’s preserved.”

While acid decay, mould, brittleness, and water damage are formidable but vanquishable foes, machine decay, format obsolescence, and file integrity degradation are virtually unconquerable. The short lifetime of many licensed software formats and the quick deaths of so much hardware (remember LaserDisc?) have posed a particular challenge for archivists like Mobbs.

“How do we preserve material that is, for all intents and purposes, essentially transitory?” he asked.

While this discussion might seem irrelevant on a mostly science-oriented blog, the ‘memristor’ story highlights why information about the past is so important. In 2008, R. Stanley Williams (HP Labs) and his colleagues published two papers, the first proving the existence of a fourth member, a memristor, of electrical engineering’s ‘holy trinity’ of the resistor, capacitor, and inductor and the second paper where they established engineering control over the memristor. Williams  and his team both solved a problem they were experiencing in the lab and made engineering history, in part  by reviewing engineering theories dating back at least 30 years. You can read my post about it here.

Imagine if those theories had been locked into formats that were no longer accessible. That’s one of the major reasons for preserving the past, it can yield important information.

In the interest of full disclosure, I once worked for the City of Vancouver archives.