Raymond Biesinger on commercial-arts doom and gloom

Please listen to the entire interview here; thanks to CIUT FM for originally broadcasting the conversation.

A musician in the Famines and a self-taught illustrator, Raymond Biesinger's CV is very impressive: he’s published in the New Yorker and The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Le Monde, Monocle, and has contributed to ad campaigns and commercial projects for some of the world’s best-known companies. Check out his website at www.fifteen.ca.

With a style of illustration that's been described as  mechanical, and inhuman, he's built a committed following on his strength in distilling subjects as enormous as the First World War into two- and three-colour conceptual images which, in their stark rationality, communicate deeply.

He's a thinker, and he's thought about the consequences of hobbyism on creative industry, about the burgeoning culture of 'free' on intellectual property rights. Hope you enjoy listening to the conversation.

Dr. Gregory Ramshaw on the commodification of nostalgia

Please listen to the entire interview here; many thanks to CIUT FM for originally broadcasting the discussion.

Gregory Ramshaw is an assistant professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University, South Carolina. He has taught and written and extensively about the social and cultural implications of heritage-based tourist attractions, with a particular focus on sport heritage sites. Prior to life in the academy, he worked at western Canada’s largest living history museum, dressing up in costume and pretending it was 1846 for the visiting tourists (which is--full disclosure--where we first met. Best. Job. Ever).

Greg first introduced the distinction between history and heritage (a difference in temperature: cold versus warm), then dug into some of the many purposes heritage serves in Western culture. Specifically, heritage contributes to the construction and prioritization of particular narratives within a society's culture. Consequently, it's a valuable asset for governments of various levels, corporations of various sizes--oh, and the sports teams themselves (in this example), who play the roles, enact the storylines, and become the subjects of grand shared metaphors.

Ted Bilyea on food doom and gloom

If you missed it on CIUT FM, please listen to the full interview here

Ted Bilyea is the past President of Maple Leaf Foods International, a Director on the board of the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency, and a Director for PrioNet Canada. We spoke about the history of food production, from subsistence farming to industrial-scale agricultural production, and the challenges facing the industry, and our species, as a result. The images bleow, which are illustrative of his points, are taken (from the most part) from powerpoints he's delivered on the subject.

Scary stuff.

Livestock population density