Photo and sculptures by Luke Austin

In the spring we profiled graduating student Luke Austin, a familiar face at UBCO who many students know from seeing behind the counter at the Well and Roses. But Luke was also known  for making sculptures out of rocks, spending hours behind the UNC or downtown dexterously posing stones on top of each other. During the graduation profile interview, we talked to Austin about his unique hobby.

How did you get into stacking rocks?
When I was 11 years old or something I was at a fair in London, Ontario and I saw this guy balancing rocks. I tried it when I was like 16 years old just playing by myself by the lake [...] and then I realized how to do it and I got reasonably good at it. I just had this bright idea to see if I could busk and do that, and see if anyone would enjoy it. I mean, that’s what it’s for, to share with people.

What kind of rocks do you look for?

Anything—you don’t really look for any type of rocks. It’s more about working with what you find.

I can’t really think of any criteria, you just know whether it’s gonna balance or not. You look at it, you pick it up, you see different imperfections in the rock, because it’s those imperfections that you use; you can’t see [them] from afar but it’s those little tiny chips out of the rock that make it stay.

Round rocks will almost always work because of the center of the weight. And there’s always lots of imperfections in round rocks. The round smooth ones the ones that look the smoothest are actually probably some of the easiest to balance because they fit so smoothly into the other imperfections of the other rocks.

You can pretty much pick one up and give it a look and if you don’t see anywhere where it could be standing or in a way you want it to stand then you just pick another one.

What’s the tallest you’ve built?

Probably like 6 and a half feet. Maybe 10 feet. I have a picture of my buddy standing beside it.

How long does it take to make an average one?

One that’s like 3, 3 and a half feet, it could take me anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour.

Depending on the rocks?

And depending on how small the point of balance is. If you want it to be smaller, the more impressive it looks, but the harder it is to keep yourself steady enough to not knock it over. A [strong wind] and anything that is a [smaller rock] would blow right off.

Anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, really, but after an hour you just kind of give up on one that’s [only] this big, just like fuck it. But then the beauty of it is that it’ll always eventually work. You just pick up a different rock. If you get frustrated, another rock is always going to work. There is always a way to make it work because even if one rock doesn’t have the imperfections that you’re looking for, the other one is going to.

Is that how you approach life as well?

Just keep tossing away rocks that don’t work? [laughs]

I mean like always finding a pathway. Because it takes a lot of patience to make a rock structure…

Yeah, it takes a lot of patience. I think the only things that I would say about how that relates to my life is probably the way that I think in terms of what I want to convey to people. That I’m taking my time and just being careful with my words I guess. Because I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I want to make sure what I’m thinking is actually what I’m saying. And so it takes a lot of patience and precision, I think, to do that in certain cases. But I don’t just toss a way the rocks that don’t work. [laughs] Things aren’t just garbage because they don’t work for me.

Does stacking rocks inform your approach to other things?
I think the only thing that I would say about how that relates to my life is probably the way that I think in terms of what I want to convey to people. [I make sure]  I’m taking my time and just being careful with my words.

I’ve been a fan of Canadian writer-director Gary Burn’s since 2006’s Radiant City so I decided to check out an earlier endeavor of his: Waydowntown (2000). The dark satire’s premise revolves around four twenty-somethings trapped in awful desk jobs. Set and filmed in downtown Calgary, our cynical narrator Tom (Fabrizio Filippo) explains that their office building is part of an indoor walking system which is made up of offices, apartments, and a mall. In theory, no one has to leave the indoor consumer world at all. In an attempt to spice up their monotonous routines, they’ve concocted a bet, a kind of human endurance test: whoever can last for an entire month inside this glass-walled maze gets an entire month’s salary, $10 000.

The movie takes place with week to go until a winner is declared and follows around Tom, Sandra (Marya Delver), Randy (Tobias Godsen), and Brad (an under-utilized Don McKellar). Tom is struggling to make sense of his own morality and fears he might be turning into a psychopath (a clear commentary on the business world). Despite strong performances from all the supporting cast, McKeller’s Brad is the most interesting even with the least screen time. He contemplates death throughout, stapling uninspiring mottos such as “submit to commitment” to his chest and mulling over his unlikely suicide weapon.

Most scenes are shot in an oppressive color palette, somewhere in between black & white and color. The entire movie feels like it’s sitting beneath glaring fluorescent lights. Quick cuts help give us a sympathetic but jarring sense of claustrophobia, particularly close-ups of the ventilation system which start to drive Sandra a little bit crazy.

At one point, Tom confesses to his desk mate that his speech “isn’t really leading up to anything” and this phrase is an accurate definition of the movie. But that isn’t a bad thing; the journey is worth it. And the fact that the entire narrative plays out during a lunch hour and stays fresh the entire way is a commendable feat. Although almost a decade and a half old, this 75-minute romp is still disturbingly relevant today and deserving of a watch.

Check out the Waydowntown trailer.

An ice cream cart parked in the shade at the University of the Phillipines. Photo by Francine Lingad

When I was growing up, Saturday mornings weren’t complete without a serving of soft and sweet taho. I lived in the Philippines, where street food is more common than rain in Vancouver. In the morning there was taho, soft tofu sweetened with brown sugar syrup and served with small sago or tapioca pearls. In the afternoon, just after school, there was sorbetes or “dirty ice cream.” In the evening, vendors sold balut and penoy, duck eggs.

I remember it being a multisensory experience. Vendors often announce their wares, and it wasn’t so much their voices that were distinct—it was they way they said it: in singsong, elongating vowels, or adding a syllable. I almost always bought taho from the vendor who alternated between “tahoooo” and “ta-hoooo hoy,” as he was coming down the street. That was my cue to get a glass or mug and ten pesos ready, and wait outside until he reached the front of my house.

There are few rules that govern street food: fall in line, don’t litter, and enjoy! Photo by Francine Lingad

The mamang sorbetero, the local ice cream man, was different. He carried a bell and his two-wheeled cart was painted with bright colors. There were usually three to four flavors in the cart: chocolate, cheese, and ube (purple taro) were the most popular in the 90s. I always wondered how ice cream didn’t melt in the wooden cart, in equatorial heat.

Balut is one of the most controversial street foods in the Philippines. It is a duck egg boiled after the chick has developed into a recognizable embryo. You can see clearly the duckling-in-the-making when you crack open a balut: it has a soft beak, legs and feet, and fine dark hair. For people uncomfortable about eating balut, penoy more closely resembles hard-boiled chicken eggs.

Taho, sorbetes, balut, and penoy are typically sold by mobile vendors. That is, vendors typically walk around and stop when they have customers.

Other street foods are sold in stalls. For a while, I lived near the University of the Philippines, where there are designated spots on campus for street food vendors to cook and sell their wares.

Some vendors sell processed fishballs or squidballs, fried as you wait. It’s an interactive experience: you grab a barbecue stick, pick out a few from the wok, and dip these in sweet and sour sauce or spicy sauce.

Still other vendors sell grilled innards of chickens and pigs. Isaw, atay, baticolon. Intestines, liver, gizzards. Other street foods have creative names. “Betamax” are rectangular masses of pig’s blood. “Helmet” refers to chicken heads. Both are skewered and cooked over charcoal. A quick dip in spicy vinegar and it’s ready to eat!

Photo by Francine Lingad

These are just some of the street foods north of the Philippines. The list goes on in the country of over 7,000 islands. Though its history is unclear, one believable theory is that Filipinos ate what was available. After all, it’s a country with over 300 years of Spanish colonization followed by occupations by the United States and even Japan for a brief period—Filipinos are no strangers to repression. There are no policies or regulations on street food, and there are food safety concerns, but it’s arguably the most authentic Filipino cuisine. I say this not only because it is popular among the working class that outnumber the social elite, but also because it reflects the Filipino spirit—creative, versatile, and ever resilient in the face of oppression.

A vendor serves fishballs straight from the wok. Photo by Francine Lingad

This poem comes from Common Ground, an anthology of UBCO student writing about place. 

Argentina you are something to adore.

You survive.

You rise upward from something dirty,

Worse than the dirt of the Earth.

Something that will cause pain forever,

Like scattered leaves in a windstorm.

Rising up.

It feels never ending, those strained emotions of sorrow.

Anger gathers with this storm,

Thunder clouds cover Argentina’s land,

Strangling her ability to recuperate.

Recuperate from the coup.

Argentina, Argentina,

Gather silver for your brighter days.

Argentina is an evolving land.

Struggling against that dirty history.

On that will be forever remembered in bleeding hearts.

Those affected by place, identify with the landscape.

The landscape.

Filled with opportunity to revive, survive.

Adversity before diversity.

Emerging through the Andes and Amazon, filled with lush beauty.

The land has suffered at the hands of powerful leaders.

Using, abusing the abundant resources of Argentine heritage, landscape.

A landscape once filled with prosperous principles.

Now robbed of the immaculate desire for change.

Time to rise up.

Argentina, Argentina,

Gather silver for your brighter days.

Image by Laura Reyerse

Originally from February 2014

But really, what does the fox say?

We’ve all heard the very annoying extremely catchy song, “What Does the Fox Say.” If you haven’t heard it then get out from whatever rock you’ve been living under and join the land of the living.

“Dog goes woof, cat goes meow.

Bird goes tweet, and mouse goes squeak.

Cow goes moo. Frog goes croak, and the elephant goes toot.

Ducks say quack and fish go blub, and the seal goes OW OW OW.

But there’s one sound that no one knows…

“WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?”

We might not know what sound the fox makes, but we can predict that the fox, like other animals, has a complicated system of communication. Many researchers have studied the communication systems of animals and you’ll likely be surprised how complicated their communication is.

Prairie dogs are a type of ground squirrel native to North America. These creatures have a complex system of danger calls that they use to alert their colony of danger. Their calls can include information about the size, colour, and speed of the approaching predator.

When you hear a bird chirping outside your window on a Saturday morning, your first thought is probably, “how can I make the stupid bird stop singing” but what you likely don’t think about is that the chirping is signaling some complex meaning to another bird. Calls are used to signal of danger and songs are generally used by male birds to establish territory and attract a mate.

Chimpanzees are known as the closest non-human primate to humans. One of the distinguishing characteristics that separate humans and chimps is human language. To investigate chimpanzees’ capacity for language many researchers have attempted to teach chimps human language. Speaking is challenging for chimpanzees though, because their vocal cords are very different from humans’, however chimpanzees have had great success learning sign language. A chimpanzee named Washoe was the first to successfully acquire the ability to communicate, in a limited capacity, using sign language. Gorillas have also had success with sign language.

Human languages contain features that distinguish them from animal communication. Linguist Charles Hockett compared human and animal communication and labeled the unique features of human language:

-Displacement (the ability to talk about things distant in time and place)

-Productivity (the ability to make new forms of communication)

-Traditional Transmission (some teaching of the language is necessary)

-Duality of Patterning (combing arbitrary items to make new arbitrary items i.e. sounds into words).

These four are the only ones that are truly human  Nonetheless, some animals display these features. Apes can lie and talk about things in the future. Prairie dogs can come up with sounds to distinguish colours and even people… In the end, it’s interesting that animals have aspects of complex systems, just like us.

Oh—and what does the fox actually say? Apparently it’s a screamy howl that helps to identify their presence amongst other foxes.

The features of language

1. Vocal-auditory channel — This means that the standard human language occurs as a vocal (making sounds with the mouth) type of communication which is perceived by hearing it. There are obvious exceptions: writing and sign language are examples of communication in the manual-visual channel.

2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception — This means that the human language signal is sent out in all directions, while it is perceived in a limited direction.

3. Rapid fading (transitoriness) — This means that the human language signal does not persist over time. Speech waveforms fade rapidly and cannot be heard after they fade.

4. Interchangeability — This means that the speaker can both receive and broadcast the same signal.

5. Total feedback — this means that the speaker can hear themself speak and can monitor their language performance as they go.

6. Specialization — This means that the organs used for producing speech are specially adapted to that task.

7. Semanticity — This means that specific signals can be matched with specific meanings. This is a fundamental aspect of all communication systems.

8. Arbitrariness — This means that there is no necessary connection between the form of the signal and the thing being referred to.

9. Discreteness — This means that the basic units of speech (such as sounds) can be categorized as belonging to distinct categories.

10. Displacement — This means that the speaker can talk about things which are not present, either spatially or temporally.

11. Productivity — This means that human languages allow speakers to create novel, never-before-heard utterances that others can understand.

12. Traditional Transmission — This means that human language is not something inborn. Humans must learn, or acquire, their native language from other speakers.

13. Duality of patterning — This means that the discrete parts of a language can be recombined in a systematic way to create new forms.

 List originally from http://people.exeter.ac.uk/bosthaus/Lecture/hockett1.htm