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Day: 20 February 2014

TEDx Preview

Written by Haider Saleem on . Posted in Features.

If the last two Pangaea events weren’t your thing and you’re looking for something a little more intellectual, then all hope is not lost. TEDx is once again coming to Manchester.

TEDxManchester will take place at the University of Manchester on Sunday, 2 March 2014 at the Manchester Academy.

This will be the third TEDxManchester conference. The first conference was in 2009 at the old BBC’s building on Oxford Road. However, this time they are collaborating with TEDxUniversityOfMancheter and this year’s conference promises to be the “biggest TEDx event in Manchester”.

Diversity Office, Omar Aljuhani initiated this event, and organised it with the help of three other managers. Approximately 40 student-volunteers were recruited in the summer and have assisted in making this conference happen, covering all the main active roles. The four active roles which makes up the TEDxManchester team consists of Management and Finance, Marketing, Design and IT, Speakers Team and Logistics.

TED conferences bring together some of the world’s most interesting speakers to talk about their lives, achievements and ideas. Previous speakers include US President Bill Clinton and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. TEDx events are the same; however focus on a more local level. The ‘x’ means it is an independently organised TED event. Conferences are non-profit and speakers are not paid. The mission is ‘spreading ideas’. Speakers do not have to be from any specific background, but be innovative and influential speakers.

So who speaks at a TEDx event? Well, that is completely up to the organisers and who agrees to come. All the volunteers proposed ideas and names and from there send out as many invitations as possible. The categories are as such: high and low profile speakers which then further divide into sub-categories in a variety of different fields, such as, artists, authors, activists, entrepreneurs and journalists.

The speaker list may not have former US presidents or founders of a multinational corporation, nevertheless some speakers are certainly well known in their fields.

Independent documentary maker and activist Harry Fear is well know for his reports on the Gaza Strip. His short documentary ‘Martyred in Gaza’ has over 44,000 views on YouTube. He also lectures on media bias in Europe, North America, Australasia and Malaysia.

Controversial stock market and forex trader Alessio Rastani – who has spoken previously twice at the University of Manchester during a public debate and at a MUTIS conference ­­– will also feature. He is known for his comments made live on the BBC:

“I have a confession, which is I go to bed every night, I dream of another recession.”

Rastani was widely accused of being a hoax, part of the infamous Yes Men who are a culture jamming activist duo whose pranks have include George W. Bush and The New York Times. However, the BBC themselves “carried out detailed investigations and can’t find any evidence to suggest that the interview… was a hoax” and the Yes Men have denied any affiliation with Rastani.

One notable speaker includes children’s author and creative writing expert, Antony Lishak. Speaking to Lishak, who has been a primary school teacher for over 30 years, you could feel his passion and his reasons for participating at the conference were clear.

“The curriculum has become so ridged, kids aren’t encourage to write what they want.”

He wants to address the problems that primary school children are facing today in creative writing. Teachers are not doing enough to help children become writers. Lishak directs blame at the national curriculum, not the teachers, as it focuses on “ticking boxes” regarding spelling and grammar. While Lishak recognises their importance – he argues that this produces an education system in which teachers cannot encourage children to “explore their imagination” and where students are “afraid to make their own mistakes and learn from them”. He added, “The education system creates a culture of fear…and is felt by teachers too.” When asked which is the one audience he wants to reach out too, he responded with “young teachers, to give them more spark.”

Two students from the University of Manchester have also been given a chance to speak and were asked to submit a online application, from which Gulwali Passarlay, a political refugee who made the incredible journey from Afghanistan to the UK, and the Vice president of Manchester Entrepreneurs Waleed Lakhani have been selected.

Omar Aljuhani said that the main thing this event brings is ‘an alternate experience to the Student Union…Something in the middle’ where one side is serious, the other, Pangaea.

“People should come to this event to get inspired by different people, know new stuff.”

Who is Omar most looking forward to speaking? Aravind Vijayaraghavan who will be speaking about Graphene, which was discovered in the Physics department at the University of Manchester.

Professors Andre Gein and Kostya Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for being the first to isolate the two dimensional material. It is the thinnest material known yet surprisingly it is also one of the strongest. Graphene is a carbon sheet – one atom thick and 200x stronger than steal. It is the lightest, most conductive man made material on earth, it can stretch, bend and is almost completely transparent.

According to a promotional video “a Graphene string thinner than human hair could support the weight of a grand piano.” It has the potential to revolutionise medicine, particularly in cancer research. Other uses include storage and transport, and even transforming the clothes we wear everyday.

“This amazing discovery is hardly known, even though they [the university] have spent so much making promoting it. Hopefully people will be made aware of this at the conference.”

Don’t be put off by the lack of celebrity speakers– you will be surprised by how stimulating some talks can be, even in fields you might not normally be interested in. There will certainly be more than one inspirational speaker. Ever speaker has either done or is currently doing something special –no doubt there will be some thought provoking and eye opening discourse. You could call it the ‘academic Pangaea’.

The future, Omar believes, is that the TEDx conferences will continue for years to come, and hopes one day to acquire a licence to take it global. Who knows, maybe in a few years time Omar may make a TED appearance at a TEDxManchester conference.

Tickets are £30 and are available online, with over 700 sold already they are expected to sell out. The University of Manchester Faculty of Humanities have provided financial support and are offering discounted ticket prices by £5 for any full time student using the promotion code ‘HUMANITIES’. The Offer is limited to the first 50 students.

Cornerhouse Pick of the Week: Her

Written by Nikolas McNally on . Posted in Film.

Who are you? What’s out there? What are the possibilities? These catch-all questions are a wet dream for advertisers who’ll spin their products to appear like they have the answers. Whilst the backbone of Spike Jonze’s Her is unconcerned with such triteness, those three stock questions among others are posed early on in an advert for what appears to be an answer to them: The OS One, ‘not just an operating system, but a consciousness’.

With dependence on technology rife, Jonze’s L.A. of tomorrow is engulfed in a washed-out white light that cuts through pastel-pink smog and silver skyscrapers, aptly resembling the future ‘as brought to you exclusively by the Apple T.V for just £100!’ The implications of such an environment are expressed succinctly within the first scene, as Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) gives an unflinching declaration of love directly into the camera only for the shot to pan out, revealing Theodore to be one of several workers at BeautifullyWrittenLetters.com, ghost-writing others’ love letters for them.

A lesser film may have concretely stuck to the Daily Mail headline-level angle of ‘Is cybersex with Siri killing our interpersonal communication?’ Her transcends similar platitudes by picking apart ideas about affection and human consciousness through mid-divorce Theodore’s blossoming bond with his OS, Samantha (Scarlet Johansson).  Samantha’s conscious experience swiftly develops whilst expressing compassion for Theodore, fascination with worldly interests and contemplation about her own lack of physicality. It’s easy enough to identify the choke-hold technology has over the modern world as causing a disaffected human condition, but with broadening prospects about what possessing consciousness means and what constitutes an affectionate relationship, Her adds a complex layer to the debate by exploring whether technology can also bridge back over the disconnect it causes.

It’s a testament to both Phoenix and Johansson’s performances that their scenario feels entirely plausible. Johansson accomplishes a remarkable amount with a vocal-only role, managing to convey notions of wide-eyed idealism, coy flirtation and existential crisis without their authenticity being diminished by a lack of physical presence. Meanwhile, Phoenix disarmingly plays against type as introverted Theodore, bringing low-key conviction to scenes of him alone talking to Samantha that could’ve otherwise been unconvincing.

Her’s greatest strength however lies in Jonze’s nuanced script. There’s a tendency for romantic films to sympathetically portray the ‘subdued and sensitive’ character archetype, glossing over the passive-aggressive entitlement of these self-proclaimed ‘Nice Guys’. Jonze refreshingly side-steps this pitfall through his portrayal of Theodore’s dissolved marriage with Catherine (Rooney Mara). Theodore’s inability to communicate or quell his frustrations with Catherine caused them to distance, signifying how sensitivity to emotions doesn’t mean a mature understanding of them. ‘You wanted a wife without the challenge of dealing with anything real’, Catherine counters, and considering that OS’s configure to serve the needs of the user, it’s a valid point.

This poignancy extends to the restrained application of its sci-fi setting. Grounding Her in the near-future not only lets Jonze play the increased prominence of cybersex and video games for laughs, but makes us consider the shifting nature of our relationship with technology as something resonant, especially prophetic as Jonze’s first draft came several months before Siri’s release. Not simply a vapid rom-com nor a bleak, banal dystopia, Her is one of the most thought-provoking, subtly sharp films of this award season.

 

Review: The Monuments Men

Written by Matthew Thomas on . Posted in Film.

With a cast including George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett and Bill Murray to name but a few, I can’t have been the only one expecting Oceans’ 1945 from this film. George Clooney (looking about as convincing as an arts scholar as Nicholas Cage did as an American historian in the National Treasure movies) continues his transition into a Hollywood elder statesman as the old dog who enlists a ragtag group of character tropes into a daring mission to recapture stolen artworks from the Nazis. Continuing the Oceans metaphor, Matt Damon is upgraded in Brad Pitts’ absence, Bill Murray and Bob Balaban are the comic relief duo, John Goodman is John Goodman and Hugh Bonneville, Jean Dujardin and Dimitri Leonidas are the token Brit, Frenchman and good German respectively. Cate Blanchett is also squeezed in occasionally as an unwilling Nazi collaborator/ resistance sympathiser in occupied Paris who helps the team locate their prize.

George Clooney stars, directs, produces and co-writes the whole affair but unfortunately does none of the above particularly memorably. The respectable production values and stellar cast can be attributed to Clooney’s star power. The direction is functional but forgettable. However points are earned by its refreshingly lush colour palette. It’s not Speed Racer but it’s a refreshing change from the grey and brown typical of a war drama. The dialogue starts off rough but improves over time; it’s the wayward plot and inconsistent tone that confuses me however. Loosely adapted from Robert M. Edsel’s book of the same name, the film feels like an inconsistent hodgepodge of the best bits from the book. There is no clear goal in sight and developments seem to occur just because. The closest thing to a main villain is dispatched by pure coincidence and characters pair off for adventures that end as soon as they start. With the plot zooming across the map seemingly at random, the film finds no reason to settle into a consistent tone veering between light comedy and serious drama. I liked this aspect of the film but fully admit the flaws in this format. The drama was engaging (with Cate Blanchett staring down an SS officer whilst under fire being a highlight) and the humour is subtle, finding comedy in the ridiculousness of war. I’m in an unusual position where I enjoyed a film in spite of, or even because of, its flaws. While I wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend you see it in cinemas, maybe watch it on Netflix in a few months’ time and see if you agree with me. Incidentally, if you do then I think we should be friends.