So we did make it to Nuit Blanche, but though I read everything I could, we didn't have a thorough plan or make it out the door very efficiently. We did however manage to see a lot of interesting things, sometimes through sheer serendipity. We started out on the U of T campus trying to find a place to park, when we passed the International Student Centre - which wasn't on my list - but we were drawn in by the pink cords and suspended labels wrapped in a web around all their trees.
Maleta Stories was one event with, to my mind, superceded its description. The installation was about immigration, particularly people who came to Canada with one suitcase from the Philipines. By inviting participation from attendees, who could fill in tags and attach them to the wires through the trees, it really became much more universal and fascinating. We wandered under the wires reading people's stories. I imagine the installation would have grown more layered and interesting through the night.
Next we headed to Hart House, passing various installations involving lights and music, and apparently video games, along the way. I wanted to see
AirSHIP. The Music Room, with its pseudo-medieval vaulted wooden ceiling was a wonderful venue for these luminous blimps. They proved very difficult to photograph, but imagine the ceiling filled with transparent blimps with globes of interior light, trailing strings to a mirrored floor, with ambient music. I heard someone compare them to giant jellyfish. It had a sort of magic. Also impressive was that this art installation was made by engineering and architecture students who are part of a solar blimp team.
Next we headed over to Victoria College (technically University, but whatever, I say, as an alumni).
Slow Moving Falls was projected on a two and half storey screen in front of the building. It shows a film of Niagara Falls, projected upsidedown and in extreme slow motion. It was mesmerizing. It was funny to see people try tp bend over and look at the screen with their heads upsidedown. Around the corner was
Radiophonic Territory which involved an exterior "confessional" where confessions were broadcast within the building and on the radio. Since this installation wasn't on my priority list, we didn't stand in line to hear the confessions, but we watched people consider entering the box.
I was anxious to see and participate in
L'écho-L'eau, a simulated log-run within the MaRS building. Despite the long line on the exterior of the building, the wait wasn't too long - in fact we spent far less time in lines this year. We even had to sign a waiver, but that didn't slow us down. There was an immense but shallow pool set up in the large lobby. We had to remove out shoes and walk through the water. At the far end was the 'log-run'. We were given large umbrellas and got to walk on the logs under similated rain. I enjoyed the experience. After the log run we were encouraged to look at the 'reflecting pool' with illusion on the floor below. (On our way we passed
Taddle Creek sound installation at University and College - which, while not substantial, was evocative of the sound of a river).
I wanted to see
The Heart Machine, a flame-throwing installation from Burning Man. We went down University Ave. and were confused by one of the nomadic installation, which I heard called the 'Renegade Parade', though I haven't found it on the website. The travelling installation was a rave on wheels; a pickup truck with DJ, dancers and light show which was advancing through the streets. When we reached the Heart Machine, so did the rave. RJH wanted to photograph the rave, but I wove through the cars to the flames, and found myself behind the Heart Machine. Though cordoned off, we had a better view than the crowd at the front. Soon, using his trusty business card (not even a press pass) RJH talked himself up onto the scaffholding to photograph the scene from above. The woman at the cordon allowed me in and said I could stay out of the way by the truck. Much to my amusement, while RJH photographed the scene, Nuit Blanche volunteers assumed I was on staff and started reporting to me. I was told that the Renegade Parade performers were going to come through. I asked if I was in the way and was told, "Oh no, I just thought you should know," so I played along and granted my approval. It was quite the spectacle with flames on one side and rave on the other.
Next we headed downtown. I wanted to see installation at the Eaton Centre and City Hall. We parked and headed through the crowd. Fist we hit
Barricades, a sort of commentary on the G20 and surrounding events in this city, which turned barricades on their heads.
Then we made it into the Eaton Centre and found the
Paparazzi Bots. Moving robots, equipped with point-and-shoot cameras and facial recognition software could choose (or not choose) people to focus on like paparazzi, to photograph and broadcast their image. It was interesting to see people grinning hopefully, wanting to be the centre of attention.
We headed past
Shannon's Fireflies, which unfortunately was having technical difficulties, and thus was not lit, to City Hall. He heard the eery invisible parade (music broadcast without visible source). I was interested to see people 'flying' around Nathan Phillips Square. I knew lines would be long, but thought they would be something to see. It turns out that the lightshow was much more interesting.
Flight Path allowed visitors to ride a bird-shaped zip-line container to 'fly' across the square - except they moved quite slowly, so it wasn't that exciting. The lightshow, on the other hand was very impressive. Lines and planes of multicolour light were visible throughout the smokey square. It seemed that images of clouds were projected onto the light planes. This gave the illusion of a 3D projection, and the feeling of being embedded in the sky. The lights also formed archways, squiggles and other shaped.
To the south of City Hall, someone played drums within a disassembled car, which exploded outward as in an 'exploded technical diagram'.
I needed to see the glowing wolves, so we headed to the Cloud Garden, north of Scotia Plaza to see
INFRA. To be honest, I was expecting more from the resin wolves glowing with fluorescent colours allegedly micmicking their heat energy as viewed in the infrared.
Inside the Scotia Plaza, I was keen to see
City Mouse, a sculptural investigation of what is natural. Within the skyscrapper's lobby, a miniature simulated forest is filled with taxidermied animals (raccoon, wolf, bear and hawk). The animals in turn are filled with unusual and detailed scenes of masked business people, at their desks, in their cubicles, waiting for the elevator or shredding documents. I was not disappointed, despite the wait to see a small exhibit; I really admire what worlds artist Julia Hepburn created.
We headed home after that, quite slowly. We debated going to Trinity-Bellwoods, but only drove by. I wanted to see the balloon installation outside the Drake Hotel. It was a mistake to attempt to drive along Queen Street just as the bars let out, but I did catch a glimpse of the giant clown, the patchwork covered van, and other Parkdale LEITMOTIF entries.
Overall, it was a good night. I felt perhaps less moved than on other previous Nuits Blanches, but, we managed to see some intriging and beguiling art, some great spectacle, no one fell off a dubious scaffholding, and we had some unusual experiences we won't soon forget. This is really a wonderful event in the life of the city, and everyone should check out what they can.
In 1956, the work of theoretical physicists Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang suggested that perhaps the weak force might not be the same 'through the looking-glass'. Further they noted that this remained untested. The bias was strong. In fact, physicists thought of the "Law" of Parity Conservation and thus Lee and Yang weren't taken seriously until Lee convinced his colleague at Columbia University, the brilliant experimentalist Chien-Shiung Wu to test the theory. 
Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997, Chinese-born American physicist, whose nicknames included the “First Lady of Physics”, “Chinese Marie Curie,” and “Madame Wu”) came up with a truly beautiful experiment to test whether the weak force conserves parity. In my print on the left I show Mme. Wu in her lab and a schematic diagram in the box shows the heart of one half of her experiment. Mme. Wu is reflected in the mirror on the right side, and the second half of her experiment (shown schematically) is shown in the box - what actually happens when the reaction is reflected in the mirror. She chose to use Cobalt-60, which I've designated with the cobalt blue sphere. Cobalt-60 is radioactive and beta decays naturally; neutrally charged neutrons within its atomic nuclei spontaneously give off electrons and become protons. (This shows another symmetry and conservation law: conservation of charge. A neutron is neutral, it has zero charge. An electron has charge -1 and a proton has charge +1. So the total charge before is equal to the total charge after). She placed the Cobalt-60 withing a strong magnetic field, designated by an electromagnet on the print. You see a power source (a long horizontal line with shorter horizontal line on top labelled '+') connected to a wire spiralled around a horseshoe-shaped metal piece which becomes an electromagnet. The top side becomes the North pole of the magnet and the bottom the South. The electrons given off by beta decay (the tiny dots) are preferentially given off in the direction of the North pole (upwards). Now, when you reflect this set-up in the mirror the poles of the magnet must switch, with the North pole on the bottom. The directionality of the magnetic field is determined by the 'right-hand rule'. Using your right hand, if you curl your fingers in the same direction as the spirally wire, your thumb will point toward the North pole of the magnet. If you reflect the horseshoe and wire in the mirror, you find your thumb points the opposite way. When Cobalt-60 is placed in this spatially inverted set-up, the electrons emitted go the opposite way, downward toward the North pole of the magnet. As you can see in the print, the result is not the mirror image even though the set-up is the mirror image. To actually measure this effect of course, more care and subtlety were required than shown in my schematic; it involved cooling the Cobalt-60 in a special cryogenic facility and very large magnetic fields - but it was as ingenious and elegant as the simplified version. To my mind, this is undoubtedly a beautiful experiment and the results were nothing short of stunning. For their theoretical work on the question of parity in the physics of subatomic particles, Lee and Yang were quickly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957; the Nobel committee neglected to include Wu.*
She did receive many other honours. Wu took part in the Manhattan Project (wikipedia states she is believed to be the only Chinese person to do so) and literally wrote the book on beta decay. She was the first: Chinese-American to be elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; Female instructor in the Physics Department of Princeton University; Woman with an honorary doctorate from Princeton University; Female President of the American Physical Society, elected in 1975; winner of the Wolf Prize in Physics (1978); Living scientist to have an asteroid named after her. She won many awards and fellowships including: the Research Corporation Award 1958; the Achievement Award, American Association of University Women 1960; John Price Wetherill Medal, The Franklin Institute, 1962; Comstock Prize in Physics, National Academy of Sciences 1964; Chi-Tsin Achievement Award, Chi-Tsin Culture Foundation, Taiwan 1965; Scientist of the Year Award, Industrial Research Magazine 1974; Tom W. Bonner Prize, American Physical Society 1975; National Medal of Science (U.S.) 1975; the aforementioned Wolf Prize in Physics, Israel 1978; Honorary Fellow Royal Society of Edinburgh; Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science; Fellow American Physical Society. And I bet you hadn't heard of her! I'm trying to redress that.
