Nerd Nite v58: Sea Otters, Coast Salish Art, and the Three Draculas | Fox Cabaret
Cultural Experiences
Get ready for another round of fun, quirky, and brain-tingling talks at the 58th
Nerd Nite Vancouver.
This month we’re diving into the fuzzy (but ferocious) world of
sea otters
, exploring the rich traditions and meanings behind
Coast Salish art
, and unraveling the mysteries of not one, not two, but
three Dracula
translations. Grab a drink, settle in with your fellow nerds, and prepare for a night where science, culture, and pop history collide in the most entertaining way possible!
This month we're donating to the
Aboriginal Mother Centre Society
(AMCS) you can add on to your ticket to support!
Aboriginal Mother Centre Society (AMCS) is a place where Aboriginal mothers, whom are facing homelessness and/or dealing with their child/ren in care of the Ministry, can come to stay. The women can rebuild their sense of self-worth and identity for a better future for themselves and their children. AMCS is a place where they can come to be together as a family. This place would be the best fitting for babies, children, and mothers, anybody who is coming through a block in their life.
Otterly Hungry: How sea otters shape their ecosystems through diet
Sea otters may look like adorable, fuzzy angels, but behind those whiskers lies a ferocious appetite that can reshape entire ecosystems. To figure out just how much these critters need to eat to fuel themselves daily, Julia built a bioenergetic model—basically a sea otter calorie calculator—that accounts for age, sex, and reproductive status. Whether it’s scarfing abalone or cruising for urchins, an otter’s dietary choices can make or break their energy balance—and ultimately, their survival. She also tested what happens when their favorite food gets harder to find or is less nutritious, and spoiler: it’s bad news for foraging efficiency and habitat range expansion. This talk will discuss which group of diet specialists has their work cut out for them and how the age, sex, and reproductive state of sea otters affects their overall energetic requirements.
Bio:
Julia Adelsheim (she/her) hails from Albuquerque, New Mexico and spent many years living in Salem, Oregon completing both a B.A. and B.S. at Willamette University and Portland State University, respectively. At Portland State, Julia focused on marine mammal necropsy and was a necropsy technician with the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Julia completed her MSc with the Marine Mammal Research Unit in the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF)at UBC. She is currently an instructor in the IOF teaching science communication courses forvisiting international students and also works as a marine naturalist at Wild Whales Vancouver.Her interests outside of academia include bird watching, baking, hanging out in tide pools, andwatching brain-melting reality television!
Exploring Coast Salish Art
Have you ever looked at the ever growing displays of public Indigenous art around Vancouver and the surrounding regions, trying to place where exactly this art comes from? Maybe you have some questions as to what you are seeing and why you are just starting to see more now than ever before.
Explore Coast Salish art and its revitalization with Coast Salish youth artist Alysha Collie. Alysha is a storyteller, a public speaker, a filmmaker and somehow finds time in between all that to be a part of the growing number of young Coast Salish people who are taking this ancestral art form in new directions and spaces.
From her unique perspective she will guide others through her journey of connection to her ancestral art form including answering the following:
What is Coast Salish Art?
What is the history behind the art form?
Why is it becoming more visible now?
Who gets to create Coast Salish art?
How can we appreciate and not appropriate Salish art?
What does the future of Coast Salish art look like?
By the end of this 13 minute talk, you will have nerded out about the significance of Coast Salish art and why it is integral to being visible by those who have the right to create it on these lands.
Bio: Alysha Collie is a Coast Salish artist from the Soowahlie First Nation.
She works at 3 Crows Productions as an Indigenous Educational Storyteller and Filmmaker. 3 Crows Productions is dedicated to educating the future generations of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members through presentations, live theatre performances and documentary filmmaking. She also works as the Indigenous Community Engagement Manager at Zee Zee Theatre and is the Indigenous Community Engagement Coordinator at Touchstone Theatre.
Alysha runs her own company called The Collie Collective (@Collie.Collective on Instagram) where she focuses on decolonization and reclaiming her ancestral roots through her beaded jewelry, Salish art and apparel creations.
Over the last 3 years, Alysha in partnership with local theatres, has raised over $4,500 for local Indigenous non-profits who support healing initiatives for the multi-generations that have been affected by the Residential School system in some of the most underserved parts of Vancouver.
The Three Draculas
In 1897, Bram Stoker's novel
Dracula
was published. Shortly afterwards, an Icelandic translation appeared - and for more than 100 years, nobody noticed that it was not, in fact, a translation. The text is a third the length of the original, and the Icelandic author sped through the parts he thought were a bit boring; almost all the characters' names were changed; it's a lot sexier; some characters are missing, while new ones show up (including Sigmund Freud); the Count is obsessed with boobs, and Social Darwinism.Mysteriously, many of this version's different characters and plot innovations appear in Bram Stoker's unpublished notes but not his novel. Even more mysteriously, the Icelandic adaptation turns out to have been based on an 1899
Swedish
version of
Dracula
, by an unknown author, who decided to make it nearly twice as long as the original. Maybe to fit in extra story elements about a cult, serial murders in London, and the Count leading a huge political conspiracy so that he can rule the whole of Europe.
Bio:
Helen Zaltzman is a writer, performer, and the award-winning host and producer of the entertainment podcasts The Allusionist, Answer Me This and Veronica Mars Investigations. She has performed on stages across North America, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the UK, talked at TED about the dots on the letter i, and made the world's first (only?) giant inflatable Boggle set. She has appeared as a guest on a bunch of shows including The Bugle, 99% Invisible, Ologies, No Such Thing As A Fish, Short Cuts, The Infinite Monkey Cage, West Wing Weekly, Bullseye, Home Cooking, Judge John Hodgman, Buffering the Vampire Slayer and Jordan Jesse Go. She has co-authored two books that have almost certainly been pulped by now.
Information Source: Nerd Nite Vancouver | eventbrite