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March 2015

Publications INNOVATION NEWSLETTER
INNOVATION - Ryerson University Research & Innovation Newsletter

Issue 14: March/April 2015

Art, Culture and Communication (background of 3D printed artwork)

3D printed artwork at the Advanced Manufacturing, Design and 3D Printing Lab. Photo credit: William Pemulis.

IN THIS ISSUE

Feature Stories

Partner in Innovation

Spotlight

Around Campus

MESSAGE FROM THE VICE-PRESIDENT, RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Arts and culture enrich our lives and help us think “outside the box.” Ryerson’s faculty are taking novel approaches to traditional research as storytellers, artists, inventors, and analysts, combining traditional practices with new technologies to drive art, culture and innovation.

Ryerson is home to emerging and established artists. Award-winning filmmaker Bruce Elder (Image Arts), and member of the Royal Society of Canada, has written and produced 29 films and five books, including the most recent DADA, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect. His colleague Marta Braun, Canada’s leading photographic historian and a member of the Royal Society, won the prestigious Kraszna-Krausz Award for her book, Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science. Emerging artists such as Dr. Laurie Petrou (RTA School of Media) wrote Between, lauded in The Globe and Mail as a Top 5 First Fiction. She currently creates interactive art projects to challenge social norms. Dr. Thomas Heise (English) specializes in poetry and experimental narratives. His poetic novel, Moth; or how I came to be with you again, was a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year.

Internationally recognized photographer and filmmaker Ed Burtynsky, a Ryerson alumni, is a partner in the Advanced Manufacturing, Design and 3D Printing Lab, which is exploring leading-edge applications of 3D printing in part to support cultural preservation. Working with Burtynsky, researchers in engineering were able to replicate the bell recovered from the captain’s ship of the historic Franklin Expedition.

In part because of our unique strengths and programs, Ryerson is home to significant cultural collections, including the Black Star collection of 292,000 photojournalistic works. The collection is currently housed in the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC), Canada’s preeminent photo gallery and centre for cutting-edge exhibitions and research. Recently, the RIC announced that it was the recipient of the Berenice Abbott collection, a series of 13,000 photographs by the avant-garde photographer. 

Ryerson has produced some of the world’s best known fashion designers including Erdem Moralioğlu, Jeremy Laing, and David Dixon. The prestigious School of Fashion is also home to extensive research such as Dr. Osmud Rahman’s investigation into cultural exchange through ethnic dress. The recently announced Joe Fresh Centre for Fashion Innovation, along with Ryerson's Fashion Zone, supports ground-breaking fashion and retail-oriented innovation by bridging design and technology.

At the Faculty of Arts, Dr. Irene Gammel — Canada Research Chair in Modern Literature and Culture, Director of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada — is a leading expert in modern women’s literary and visual culture. Her books on L.M. Montgomery and Dada artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven are internationally acclaimed. Dr. Rahul Sapra (English) has published several books on representations of orientalism and India. His research looks at diverse ways of reading Shakespeare in India through translations, stage productions, and film adaptions. Dr. Jason Boyd, acting co-director at the Centre for Digital Humanities, uses emerging technologies to determine the accuracy of historical texts and challenge the ways we think about culture and literature.

Ryerson researchers also explore how technology is transforming art, culture, and storytelling. The RTA School of Media and the Transmedia Zone explores interactive art and innovative storytelling across multiple platforms. The Social Media Lab and the Infoscape Research Lab examine patterns of media use and their implications for culture and policy.

Ryerson’s leading-edge, multidisciplinary approaches bridge theory and practice. This newsletter showcases but a few of the scholarly, research, and creative projects undertaken by our faculty and students in these areas.

 

Wendy Cukier
Vice-President, Research and Innovation

 

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FEATURE STORIES

Challenging Gender Norms through Interactive Art

Words are powerful tools. As they are strung together, they take on meanings that sometimes reflect bigger sentiments and ideas than what is represented on the surface. Take the phrase, “Stop crying like a girl.” These words form a common expression with a tone that is derisive. The expression tells us that someone is crying and this action is feminine and undesirable.

Every day we are exposed to language and media content that reinforces gender stereotypes. As a storyteller and artist herself, Dr. Laurie Petrou, Associate Professor at the RTA School of Media, wants us to reflect upon the words we are using. Through a series of interactive art projects and collaborative activities intersecting gender issues, storytelling, and digital culture, she hopes to break established social molds by creating compelling multimedia content that challenge our ideas about gender.

Dr. Petrou’s latest research project investigates stories of children growing up in a gendered world. Along with her collaborator, RTA School of Media student Zac Schwartz, she conducted a series of audio interviews with children to explore how they might see, if any, differences between girls and boys. Using the material to create an interactive creative project, they will present recordings of the children telling stories to contribute to the ongoing dialogue of ways in which children see gender. In doing so, she aims to demonstrate the deep influence of gender conventions, as well as examples of people subverting these conventions.  

Other recent projects of Dr. Petrou’s include watchwhatwesay.ca, breakgendermolds.com, and Boys will be Boys. Breakgendermolds.com is a website that scans Twitter for uses of the phrases "Like a Man" and "Like a Girl", allowing users to see how often we conform to gender stereotypes and use these phrases to belittle people in everyday, ordinary language. Using the Internet as a tool for activism, her projects challenge viewers to reflect upon their use of gendered language. Her video, Boys will be Boys, explores what society expects boys to be. The video was picked up by Upworthy, a popular online news outlet focused on educational and inspirational content, and generated strong public support and discussion.

Dr. Petrou plans to showcase her work at Creative Catalyst, an upcoming research symposium on Art and Social Innovation at Ryerson. She is collaborator on the event led by Madeline Collective, an art collective specializing in the creation of socially innovative content. Principal investigators of the research symposium are Dr. Wendy Cukier, Founder of the Diversity Institute at Ryerson, and Dr. Janine Marchessault, Director of Sensorium, Centre for Digital Arts Research and Technology.

Creative Catalyst is a Ryerson research symposium on Art & Social Innovation taking place on June 11-12, 2015, featuring keynote speaker Edward Burtynsky, one of Canada’s most respected photographers. Visit the Creative Catalyst website (external link, opens in new window)  for more information on the conference themes and registration.

 

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Digital Humanities Research Destabilizes Ideas about Historical Figures

Historical figures are often wrapped up in myths. Stories about their lives can have dubious origins and become distorted through repetition. Yet, as these tall tales are shared over time, they become commonly accepted as truths or facts. Dr. Jason Boyd, Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of English, is dedicated to reversing this process. Dr. Boyd explores the use of digital technology to examine facts and fiction in large collections of life writing texts such as biographies and memoirs—in what he, playing on the concept of 'Big Data,' describes as ‘Big Lives.’

An accurate depiction of people and society in literature and history allows us to accurately preserve their legacy and our own cultural heritage, while also learning from our past. “It is important for us to understand how stories get transmitted and how we reconstruct the past, especially with large amounts of biographical material created these days in open, collaborative and public forums such as Facebook and Twitter,” says Boyd. He hopes to restore critical thinking skills that prompt readers to question what has been written about an individual. In doing so, he hopes to destabilize the idea that we can be absolutely sure in our judgments or assumptions about another individual.

At the Centre for Digital Humanities, a Faculty of Arts Research Centre, Dr. Boyd develops innovative methods to enhance scholarship in the humanities through his Texting Wilde Project. In this project, Dr. Boyd archives and analyzes early life writings of Oscar Wilde (1864-1900) to determine discrepancies in descriptions about the Anglo-Irish writer, playwright, wit, convict, and exile. With new technologies, large amounts of digitized life writing text on Wilde and other historical figures are now available. However, without Dr. Boyd’s work, there are no computer-assisted methods to analyze these texts and their narratives in a large-scale and systematic way.

Dr. Boyd uses digital text analysis and data visualization tools to encode details such as references to people, places, dates, and events, and records of Wilde's conversation in these texts. Through these techniques, Dr. Boyd aims to uncover historical inaccuracies and contradictions where facts or stories have been modified to illustrate a specific understanding or image of Wilde, such as his reputation as a subversive social theorist or a gay martyr. These depictions of Wilde have become legendary and perhaps embellished through years of retelling.

In the next phrase of his project, Dr. Boyd aims to cultivate a community of scholars who are interested in finding innovative ways to analyze a wide variety of life writing texts. This collaboration will breathe new life into understanding the ways life writing depicts and reinvents figures of the past, their cultures, and their places in history.

 

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Arch-App Highlights the Architectural Heritage of Toronto

Ryerson researcher Vincent Hui, Associate Professor of Architectural Science, has pioneered an active method of studying architecture through the lens of a novel communications tool. He has developed an interactive app called Arch-App that uses augmented reality to enhance our experience and appreciation of architecture. The Arch-App superimposes computer-generated information and images on top of the physical environment, using GPS and augmented reality technology to create a digital map of Toronto that highlights architectural landmarks.

Inspired by an interest to take his architecture classes outside the classroom, Professor Hui developed the Arch-App to provide his students with valuable experiential learning opportunities. He worked with Ryerson Librarian Graham McCarthy to develop the app infrastructure as an educational platform. The Arch-App provides a fresh way for people to learn about the heritage of Toronto and appreciate its built environment.

“Users can move around the city and use their mobile devices to see 360-degree views of notable buildings in their vicinity,” explains Professor Hui. “The App allows users to access behind-the-scene details such as the history, structural systems, diagrams, and drawings of the architectural landmarks that they wouldn’t otherwise get to see.”

The Ontario Association of Architects partnered with Professor Hui to increase content for Arch-App by developing student internship opportunities through the Mitacs Accelerate program. Interns interviewed architects involved in local building projects to gather information about their designs, including interesting insights about challenges and critical problems. Since then, the App has been incorporated into architectural history and theory classes at Ryerson, and its scope and impact has also expanded outside the classroom.

The Arch-App was recently adapted for a community celebration of the 100th anniversary of the St. Clair Streetcar and the Wychwood Car Barns. The Ontario Trillium Foundation sponsored the celebration and provided funding to improve the user interface of the App and add new features, such as interactive time lines and descriptions of notable historical figures who contributed to the development of the St. Clair community.

Currently, Professor Hui is working with Tourism Toronto to assess if the App can be used for self-directed walking tours of the City. “It is amazing for me to see how Arch-App has snowballed over the years,” says Professor Hui. “Even institutions in other urban centres including Chicago and Denver have expressed interest in replicating the App in their cities.”

 

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Helping Children with Language Impairment to Read

Children with language impairment often experience difficulty in literacy achievement as they reach later childhood years, especially reading comprehension. To pinpoint specific areas of difficulty, Dr. Kathleen Peets, Assistant Professor in Early Childhood Studies, works with children with language impairment such as delayed speech, difficulties with grammar, and the social use of language, to explore various possible impediments to reading among children with language impairment.

Dr. Peets and her students are conducting a study across schools in the Greater Toronto Area at the kindergarten, grade two, and grade four levels. “Reading comprehension difficulties are typically identified around grade four, but what about when they are three or six years old? I am interested in the relationship between language impairment in the early years and how it can lay the foundation for reading comprehension in later years,” explains Dr. Peets.

Beyond core language abilities, Dr. Peets is testing how different types of memory and narrative storytelling abilities among children relate to their listening and reading comprehension. Her research is the first to investigate the link between oral narrative and listening and reading comprehension.

The research team used multiple methods to test listening and reading comprehension among kindergarten children. An oral narrative intervention using wordless picture books to prompt storytelling was recorded and scored. Both the short-term and working memory of the children were also measured by the child’s ability to repeat words and visual block patterns, forwards and backwards. Core language was measured with a standardized test of vocabulary, sentence structure, and word structure. All of these variables were then correlated with outcomes in listening comprehension.

Preliminary results show that there are minimal differences in the oral narrative abilities between children with and without language impairment, but that these oral skills were related to success in listening comprehension in both groups. The next phrase of research will be conducted at the grade two and four levels to provide further insights on reading comprehension at later stages of a child’s education. At this early phrase of her research, Dr. Peets theorizes that oral narrative may be useful for improving literacy among children with language impairment.

“Through this research, we hope to identify specifically where the children are having difficulties,” says Dr. Peets. “Only then, we can begin to design proper interventions to support literacy learning among children with language impairment.”

 

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PARTNER IN INNOVATION

Taking SickKids Mobile

Holistic and patient-centred care are models of health care that are often discussed but difficult to implement. For these ideals to be achieved, all aspects of an individual’s well-being must be addressed—including nutrition, medication, pain management, and others—and effective communication and coordination are required among multiple health care professionals, patients, and their families. Health care providers are looking to adopt emerging technologies to help coordinate information and support the needs of everyone involved in delivering quality health care.

Mobile health refers to the trend of applying mobile technologies to enhance the delivery of health care. The Hospital for Sick Children, widely known as SickKids, takes a research-based approach to mobile health care to ensure that new innovations effectively meet health care needs. Dr. Alireza Sadeghian, Chair and Associate Professor of Computer Science, is partnering with the Hospital on its Taking SickKids Mobile project, a collaborative academia-industry initiative to be conducted in consultation with health care providers. He lends his expertise to the design and development of mobile solutions in the form of apps and interfaces.

Dr. Sadeghian and his co-investigator, Dr. Sambhavi Chandrashekar at OCAD University, were awarded a Mitacs Accelerate Cluster to create up to nine research internships for Ryerson and OCAD students. The student interns will assist with on-site field research at SickKids, by gathering, analyzing, and documenting data. The research teams will work with industry partners Blackberry and SapientNitro, who will use this data to develop prototypes of the apps and interfaces. Knowledge sharing with health care providers at multiple phases of the project will ensure that prototypes are designed for function, accessibility, and application in real-world settings.

The prototypes will allow health care providers to accurately calculate patient nutrition, verify medicine dosages, and help researchers collect data at the point of care. In addition, the project will create tools designed for patients and their families, such as apps and interfaces to help them self-manage post-operation pain and receive health information and patient education resources.

Such innovations are expected to improve overall health care, using technology to bridge gaps in services where there are limited resources. The mobile solutions stemming from this project have the potential to be transferred to other hospitals and bring about wide systematic changes in the health care sector. With these technologies, the Canadian health care system will be several steps closer to achieving their ideals of holistic and patient-centred care.

 

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SPOTLIGHT

Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd Brings Social Media Expertise and Innovation at Ryerson

Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd Image: Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd brings his Social Media Lab (SML), an interdisciplinary research lab that focuses on online communities and social networks, to the Ted Rogers School of Management. Photo credit: Ryerson University.

Social media has arguably become the most powerful communication medium of the last decade. It has fundamentally changed the ways in which people interact and engage with one another. Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd, Associate Professor in Business Management, focuses on how these changes impact society and influence our interpersonal connections, choices, and actions.

Dr. Gruzd joined Ryerson last September, bringing his Social Media Lab (external link, opens in new window)  (SML) to the Ted Rogers School of Management. The SML is an internationally recognized multi-disciplinary research laboratory that focuses on the study of online communities and social networks. The Lab also develops new tools and methods for analyzing and visualizing user-generated “big data” — the massive multi-source datasets made possible by modern technology.

Currently, Dr. Gruzd and the SML are partnering with the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) (external link, opens in new window)  on the Mining Biodiversity project (external link, opens in new window) , an international initiative designed to challenge the research community to investigate how new computational techniques can be applied to "big data" in humanities and social science research. The Mining Biodiversity project will develop a 21st Century “Social Digital Library” to facilitate the study and discussion of legacy scientific documents on biodiversity housed at the BHL. The project integrates novel text mining methods, visualisation, crowdsourcing, and social media into the BHL.

One of the goals of the Mining Biodiversity project is to turn heritage or legacy science documents into “social” digital objects that can be easily shared among researchers and the public via social media. By creating an easy-to-use mechanism to share and discuss biodiversity digital artifacts, this project will help to make earlier biodiversity documents and artifacts more accessible and raise public awareness of the evolution of our planet’s biodiversity.

Dr. Gruzd is currently also working on a research project (external link, opens in new window)  that examines online activism on social media in the context of the Ukraine crisis with a collaborator from Saint Petersburg State University. The project examines how online groups are formed and sustained on social media during crisis periods, especially when political polarization in society is at its highest level. In particular, the project determines the extent by which the ideology of a particular group shapes its network structure. 

These research projects exemplify the interdisciplinary research scope and expertise at the new Ryerson Social Media Lab. Dr. Gruzd invites potential partners to explore opportunities for collaboration.   

 

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AROUND CAMPUS

The Work of Elaine Ling: A Conversation with Michael Mitchell

Thursday, April 2, 2015 | 12:00pm
Ryerson Image Centre, Peter Higdon Research Centre, RIC-241 122 Bond Street, Toronto, ON

In 2014, the Ryerson Image Centre received an acquisition of thirty-six photographs by local photographer Elaine Ling. These new holdings supplement the existing collection of works by Ling donated in 2002, which as a group represent a significant body of photographs examining constructed environments. Seeking the solitude of deserts and abandoned structures left by ancient cultures, Ling has explored the shifting equilibrium between the natural and the man-made in her photography. Join Toronto photographer and writer Michael Mitchell for a discussion on the dialogues present in Ling’s work, as well as her photographic practice.

Book Launch - Immigrant Experiences in North America: Understanding Settlement and Integration

Thursday, April 30, 2015 | 5:30pm-7:00pm
Ted Rogers School of Management, 7th Floor, TRS 1-148, 55 Dundas Street West, Toronto, ON

Attend our book launch for Immigration Experiences in North America: Understanding Settlement and Integration. Co-authored by Harald Bauder, Director of the Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement and Professor John Shields, our book looks into how immigrants are integrated in North America. Olivia Chow will be in attendance as special guest speaker.

 (PDF file) More Info (opens in new window) 

 

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