features

Capital Voices Seeks Albany’s Recorded History
By Greta Petry
Gerald Zahavi and Susan McCormick want to know what’s in your attic.

Specifically, they want to know whether Capital Region residents have reel-to-reel tapes, long-playing records, or even wax cylinders from Edison’s day that carry the sounds of the region’s history.

Zahavi, a full professor who joined the Department of History faculty in 1985, and McCormick, a fifth-year doctoral student in the department, are planning events in April and May to officially launch the Capital Voices ~ Capital Lives Aural History Project, an ongoing effort to gather, preserve, and make accessible the sounds, voices, and stories of the historically-rich Albany region (http://www.talkinghistory.org/albany).

Albany, or Dat’s de only town looks good to me/words by May Irwin; music by Hughie Cannon; arr. by Al La Rue. Sung by May Irwin in musical comedy “Mrs. Black is Back.” Cover illustration: photograph of May Irwin; floral border design. Originally published: New York: Chas. K. Harris, c. 1904.

Last September, the two won a $10,000 media consultation grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a model regional aural and oral history project and a pilot radio documentary series, “Tales of Cold War Albany,” which they will co-produce. The documentary programs produced under the auspices of Capital Voices ~ Capital Lives will be available to National Public Radio affiliates both locally and nationally and will be archived on the Capital Voices Web site.

Capital Voices ~ Capital Lives is more than a documentary production initiative; it is also about gathering, preserving, and disseminating the sonic history that defines this region’s character.

The effort grew out of planning for the Albany Heritage project, a year-long series of programs sponsored by the University in partnership with more than 40 educational, cultural, and governmental agencies to celebrate Albany’s 350 years as a civic community.

Capital Voices ~ Capital Lives also owes its inspiration to the work of “The Kitchen Sisters,” radio producers Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva. The two have been honored with many broadcasting awards for their work on NPR’s “Lost and Found Sound,” a series that explores history through recorded sound. Nelson and Silva are the first two guest speakers whose local visit is funded in part by Zahavi and McCormick’s NEH grant. They will appear at “A Century of Sound: Listening in with the Kitchen Sisters,” Tuesday, April 22, at 7 p.m. in the Linda Norris Performing Arts Center of WAMC, 339 Central Ave., Albany.

Capital Voices ~ Capital Lives is the latest effort by the history department to focus on the importance of aural history, that is, history received through the ear. McCormick said: “Our goals are to find out what existing recordings are out there, collect them, preserve them, decide in what form and how we want to disseminate them, and determine how people will access these recordings. Down the road, we will develop teaching materials to accompany these recordings.”

Doctoral student Susan McCormick and Professor of History Gerald Zahavi./Photo by Gerald Zahavi

Zahavi already teaches a documentary production course and an oral history course to a mixed group of undergraduate and graduate students. The documentary class often attracts students from outside the history major, including those from anthropology and sociology interested in the qualitative methods taught.

Students are provided with opportunities to engage in all forms of aural history research and often produce outstanding projects. For example, former undergraduate student Wake D’Elia produced a Web site with sound, text, and photos on the Carpinello Ice Company of East Greenbush, N.Y., for Zahavi’s 394Z history class, Readings and Practicum in Oral and Video History, in the fall of 2001. D’Elia, the son of Professor of Biology Chris D’Elia, is now pursuing a career in the media in New York City, Zahavi said.

Aaron Wunderlich, another of Zahavi’s students, produced a Web site and documentary on the Modern School of Stelton, N.J., which was part of the anarchist movement in early 20th-century America. Wunderlich went on to win the President’s Undergraduate Research Award last year.

Every Thursday from 10 to 11 a.m., Zahavi and McCormick take to the airwaves with “Talking History” on WRPI, 91.5 FM, a 10,000-watt college radio station. The program is simulcast, archived on the Web (talkinghistory.org), and used by some middle and high school teachers. “‘Talking History’ showcases our work and the work of independent producers around the nation,” Zahavi said. It features documentaries, interviews, speeches, and a popular segment showcasing archival and heritage audio organized around a movie ticket giveaway contest. Recently, the two played an interview with Alice Paul recalling a 1913 march for suffrage. Another segment featured a 1926 BBC recording of author Virginia Woolf. “Talking History” is more than a radio show; it functions as an informal center, too. “We conduct training, bring in outside speakers, producers, and offer workshops to promote skills in radio and audio production for students and the community,” Zahavi said.

The two are always on the lookout for new material. In January, Zahavi went to the Smithsonian and the National Archives to obtain recordings from the World War II era.

The second public event for Capital Voices brings the two historians’ efforts directly to the community; a symposium and workshop “Capital Voices ~ Capital Lives: Discovering, Recording, and Preserving the Stories of Our Past,” will take place Saturday, May 31, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Milne 200, 135 Western Ave. Speakers will discuss the importance of gathering the sound treasures of Albany’s history in order to compose an oral and aural history. Workshop participants will explore recording and interviewing techniques, show the use of antique and modern recording technologies, explain how to preserve old recordings, and offer detailed instruction on how to produce historical documentaries from found and created sound. The April 22 and May 31 events are free and open to the public. Both of these events are also part of the University’s Spring 2003 Humanitech Semester -- a series of programs that explore the intersections of technology and the humanities.

X-Ray Optics Research Has Commercial Promise
By Greta Petry

Seated, physicist Susanne Lee, with, from left, physicist Carolyn MacDonald, and doctoral students Danhong Li and Sarah Formica./Photo by Mark Schmidt

University scientists Susanne Lee and Carolyn MacDonald apply physics in ways that could save lives through early cancer detection, prevention, and treatment. Their research also has unusually broad commercial potential as they develop new equipment, not only for their cancer research, but also for improving materials manufacturing in the semiconductor industry.

Lee, director of the UAlbany Metastable Materials Manufacturing Laboratory and associate director of UAlbany’s Center for X-ray Optics, works with plant-derived molecules called flavonoids to develop estrogen alternatives for preventing and treating hormonally-related cancers, such as breast and prostate. As director of the UAlbany Center for X-ray Optics, MacDonald researches ways to detect those same types of cancers at earlier stages than is currently possible.

MacDonald noted that young women are more susceptible to developing the most virulent forms of breast cancer and, if they have a mammogram (generally advised only for women older than 40), the results may not be accurate. “Mammography is most problematic with young women. The thicker and denser the breast, the more X-rays are scattered,” MacDonald said. This scattering creates background fog and poor contrast, making the mammogram difficult to read. “Additionally, four out of five mammograms which read as apparently positive for breast cancer are false positives, leading to unnecessary biopsies,” MacDonald said. If the image resolution and contrast could be increased, the accuracy of the mammogram would improve considerably. Polycapillary X-ray optics - which work like fiber optics for X-rays - have enabled MacDonald to manipulate X-ray images to significantly improve imaging.

This research has used broad spectrum X-ray beams, such as those produced in typical clinical machines. Other research has shown that single wavelength, monochromatic X-ray beams give better contrast, but, up until now, only synchrotrons could produce high enough intensities at a single energy. Since there are only a half-dozen synchrotrons in the U.S., they are neither easily accessible nor practical for routine testing.

However, the optics have allowed MacDonald’s group to create intense enough monochromatic X-ray beams to explore monochromatic mammography with very positive preliminary results. Working with MacDonald on the mammography projects are second-year Chinese doctoral student Danhong Li and Noor Mail, a fourth-year doctoral student originally from an area of Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. MacDonald added that “our work in improving mammographic imaging equipment, particularly to enhance the resolution for the imaging of radioactive materials used in nuclear medicine, can also be applied to prostate cancer,” another area being explored in the Center for X-ray Optics. With FDA approval, these new techniques have substantial commercial prospects, as they can potentially impact the health of a large part of the population.

Lee uses the same X-ray fiber-optic technology to study the molecular structures of plant-derived biological materials that could be used to prevent and treat breast and prostate cancers. Lee noted, “the incidence of breast and prostate cancers in the U.S. is markedly higher than in Asia, where their diet is rich in flavonoids.” These flavonoids are roughly the same size and shape as the estrogen and testosterone molecules and can replace these hormones in the body. When the flavonoids enter cells, they attract - and carry away, when the flavonoids are excreted - free radicals that cause cancer. However, the details of how these flavonoids work on the cellular level is still unclear, partially because their structures are hard to measure.

The three-dimensional molecular structures are determined with X-ray diffraction, which for large biological molecules can take upwards of 24 hours to collect enough data for accurate structure determinations. In that time, though, the X-rays can damage the molecular structures. Lee uses the polycapillary X-ray optics to produce intense X-ray beams that are being incorporated into a new type of X-ray diffraction system, which will allow biological molecular structures to be measured in seconds to minutes. “This will hopefully allow us to accurately determine molecular structures before they have been affected by the X-ray beam. This has the added commercial benefit that if you cut the time it takes to collect the data, you can reduce the development time of new drugs quite dramatically,” Lee said.

Commercial applications can also be seen in the work of fourth-year doctoral student Sarah Formica, originally from New Paltz, N.Y., who works with Lee and MacDonald. “I have used the optics to improve X-ray fluorescence measurements, so that semiconductor devices like solar cells can be made more cost effectively,” Formica said. The chemical composition of semiconductor devices is critical to how they work; changes as small as parts per billion can destroy the device. Yet currently, the compositions are tested only after the device has been made, leading to great waste and high costs. “With the greater intensity and geometrical design flexibility provided by the optics, X-ray fluorescence can now be performed while the products are being manufactured,” Formica noted, leading to obvious commercial applications in the semiconductor industry that could produce significant manufacturing savings.

UAlbany Team Wins Kudos for Saratoga Project
By Lisa James Goldsberry
A plan developed by 17 University at Albany students to improve the West Side Neighborhood of Saratoga Springs was honored by the American Institute of Certified Planners. The team competed with 70 accredited universities and will receive the Best Student Project award March 31 at the American Planning Association’s (APA) national conference in Denver.

Five of the 17 students from the UAlbany Graduate Planning Program team that won the National Student Project Award for their design plan on the West Side Neighborhood of Saratoga Springs. From left, students J-D Wood; Kate Maynard (in white); Hannah Blake (in black); Lori Shirley; Saratoga Springs Mayor Kenneth Klotz; Community Development Director Bradley Birge; and student Blaine Yatabe./Photo by Ray Bromley.

The award-winning project, “Planning and Design Recommendations for the West Side Neighborhood of Saratoga Springs, N.Y.,” is featured in the March issue of Planning Magazine. It was prepared by the students as part of the Fall 2001 Graduate Planning Studio Project for the West Side Neighborhood Association and the City of Saratoga Springs Office of Community Develop-ment.

The project team produced a highly-illustrated 130-page report with recommendations that are already being implemented by the City of Saratoga Springs in collaboration with Mayor Kenneth Klotz, Community Development Director Bradley S. Birge, and other city officials. Proposed changes included improving streets and public spaces, building neighborhood identity, developing neighborhood commercial activity, and improving the housing stock.

“The University at Albany Planning Studio was thorough in its study analysis, sensitive to neighborhood input and participation, and presented a professional-quality document that reflects a high level of expertise and commitment by the students,” Klotz wrote. “This document will provide the city with a valuable resource for alternatives and implications for future investment in this area.”

The project also won the 2002 APA Upstate New York Chapter Outstanding Student Project Award. The master’s program in planning was established in the Department of Geography and Planning at UAlbany in 1982 and currently has more than 200 graduates.

Gary Schneider & David Shapiro
By Corinna Ripps Schaming
Two new exhibitions, Gary Schneider: Genetic Self-Portrait and David Shapiro: Nickel Bags, are on display at the University Art Museum through April 14. The museum’s main galleries are featuring Genetic Self-Portrait, an internationally acclaimed photographic installation in which New York-based artist Gary Schneider employs various medical-imaging techniques to depict his entire physical makeup from the inside out.

Photo from the Gary Schneider exhibit Genetic Self-Portrait

By making art that reveals the invisible world of his own cells, chromosomes, and DNA sequencing, Schneider contributes to the larger discourse that surrounds the impact of genetics on our daily lives. Aided by doctors and geneticists, Schneider has created a poetic and highly personal approach to visualizing the elemental depths of his own identity. The portrait that emerges is at once singular and universal in its powerful portrayal of what it means to be human.

The museum’s West Gallery will feature Nickel Bags, an installation by New York-based artist David Shapiro. Nickel Bags is an ongoing project centered on a simple ac-tion. Every day, for the last 10 years, Shapiro has picked up three things off the street. Each plucked piece is sealed in a tiny plastic bag and pinned to the wall, forming a grid of thousands of disjointed scraps. A plastic toy, a lollipop wrapper, a lipstick-smeared cigarette butt, teeth marks on a piece of gum - Shapiro claims them all.

David Shapiro, Nickel Bags (detail), 2003, installation

Together they form a colorful and expansive mosaic of discarded consumption. Shapiro sees these vestiges of strangers’ lives as “points of departure for reconstructing narratives and speculating on motives,” where, like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse, “the picture is fit to the pieces.” In 2000, he exhibited Nickel Bags in a solo show in Barcelona. Shapiro is a UAlbany graduate with a B.A. in English.

The exhibits were held in conjunction with Art and Culture Talks (ACT), a new program at the University Art Museum that brings together artists, critics, writers, poets, and scholars to address key issues in contemporary art and culture through talks, debates, seminars, screenings, and readings in an informal setting. The spring ACT series included March talks by Shapiro and others.

As an integral part of the University Art Museum’s outreach effort, ACT strives to bring the University community and the people of the Capital Region into closer engagement with each other and with the important cultural issues of our time. The program is also part of the University’s HumaniTech Semester.

For more information about ACT programs in April, see www. albany.edu/museum.