"Enlighten us, but make it quick." That's the theme of the UCSB Center for Spatial Studies' annual Lightning Talks event, which took place last Wednesday, February 25, in the Mosher Alumni House. At the event, students, faculty, staff, and friends were challenged to give engaging and accessible 3-minute talks related to spatially-flavored topics. Among the presenters were graduate students from Geography, Music, and Education, as well as one very fluffy Great Pyranees dog (who, incidentally, is not a graduate student). Read on to find out more about what Chinese calligraphy, geo-linked soundscapes, and experimental game spaces have in common. (Click here to view the full program. All photo credits: Shawn Warner-Garcia.)
Tommy Dickey, assisted by Hot Rod LinkinTommy Dickey (with Hot Rod Linkin)
Professor and Secretary of the Navy/
Chief of Naval Operations Chair in Ocean Sciences
Department of Geography
"Polar Bears and Great Pyrenees Dogs: A Matter of Scale!"
How similar are Great Pyranees dogs and polar bears? They are both large, white, and fluffy. They can both run at top speeds of around 25-30 mph (meaning they could keep up with world-record-setter Usain Bolt who tops out at about 27 mph). And they both rival otters and red pandas in their ability to participate in painfully adorable viral videos.
David Gordon
Graduate Student
Ph.D. in Music/M.S. in Media Arts and Technology
"Linking Sound, Image, and Place"
David Gordon loves to hike. So much so that he created the Open Spaces project, a work-in-progress that will consist of a series of five immersive, interactive audiovisual simulations that combine over 20,000 geo-linked photos to day-long audio recordings of the natural environments in which the photos were taken.
Skona BrittainSkona Brittain
Math Circle Leader
SB Family School
"More Than Four Colors"
Skona Brittain told the story of King Guthrie who had too many sons and not enough creative ideas on how to divide up his kingdom in socially equitable ways. The King’s consultation with the court wizard led to “the four color conjecture,” which maintained that any map in a plane can be colored using four colors in such a way that regions sharing a common boundary (other than a single point) do not share the same color.
Yingjie Hu
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Geography
"Metadata Harmonization in Spatial Data Infrastructures"
How do you solve a problem like too much metadata? With smart technology, of course. Yingjie Hu has developed a learning machine program that is able to take an existing metadata classification system (such as the one used by Data.gov) in order to extrapolate and apply the same standards to other metadata imported into the system. This leads to better metadata harmonization in spatial data infrastructures. And when metadata is harmonized, everybody wins.
Todd Bryan
Senior Developer, Operation McClintock
Marine Science Institute
"Wedding Cake Geoprocessing for Web GIS"
Todd Bryan has a lot in common with grad students: he likes things that are fast, free, and open-source. That’s why he is developing a web app that runs geo-spatial analysis for non-expert users on a platform that circumvents the expensive, unreliable, and slow ArcGIS server system. By creating a series of execution tiers that increase in capability, users can keep their analysis as close as possible to their data source.
Amy Shadkamyan-Talamantes
Environmental Health and Safety
"UCSB Business Continuity"
Amy Shadkamyan-Talamantes' mantra is simple: be prepared. In her work with UCSB’s Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S), she manages the risks to the university posed by adverse disruptive events (such as natural disasters) by developing contingency plans. To date, EH&S has developed 88 contingency plans and will roll out a large enhancement project by the end of 2015. As Amy summed up: Darth Vader didn’t have a contingency plan for the Death Star, and we all know how that turned out.
Selena DalySelena Daly
Fulbright Post-Doctoral Scholar
Department of French and Italian
"Mapping the Italian Avant-Garde: Futurism in Space and Time (1909-1944)"
Futurism was kind of a big deal around the beginning of the 20th century. Begun in Italy and eventually spreading to over 40 countries worldwide, this avant-garde movement celebrated all aspects of advanced technology and urban modernity. Selena Daly wants to track the spatial propagation of futurism using geo-temporal data taken from letters, performances, exhibitions, and publications in order to better understand the growth and change of both the hubs and the peripheries of the movement.
Bernard Comrie
Professor
Department of Linguistics, UCSB and
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig)
"Go West, Young Man: Consistency and Inconsistency
in Cognitive Representations of Cardinal Directions"
If you plop Bernard Comrie down in a strange city and give him cardinal directions, he is pretty confident that he can find his way around. However, when he relocated from the eastern coast of England to the western coast of the United States, he realized that his auxiliary cognitive model of cardinal directions (which equated east as “toward the sea” and west as “away from the sea”) only caused confusion when trying to navigate the highways of Los Angeles.
Keith ClarkeKeith C. Clarke
Professor
Department of Geography
"Why is the U.S. not metric?"
The United States is one of three countries that is not metric-compliant (the other two are Myanmar and Liberia). However, Keith Clarke argues that the U.S. is in fact metric, we are just in denial about it. The metric system is used in science, education, manufacturing, and the military, and even our more common measurement units of feet and yards are defined in terms of their metric counterparts. Keith is currently working to re-establish the U.S. Metric Board to supervise a voluntary transition to the metric system.
Jeremy Douglass
Assistant Professor
Department of English
"Experimental Game Spaces:
Virtual Visions, Architectures, and Dimensions"
Video games aren’t just for entertainment (or annoying your significant other). Many of the game spaces that users immerse themselves in are 3D virtual worlds that creatively manage players’ relationships to the in-game architecture. Jeremy Douglass is studying how experimental game spaces – especially those which create physical impossibilities – are offering new ways of imagining and relating to space and architecture.
William YimWilliam F. Yim
Independent Aviation Consultant
"Chinese Calligraphy"
Calligraphy is one of the highest forms of artistic expression in Chinese culture, and William Yim wants everyone to know about its beauty, complexity, and importance. In a poignant multimodal presentation, William explained about its history and prominent place in modern-day China.
David A. Hallowell
Doctoral Student
Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
"First-Grade Students and Geometric Diagrams: What do they notice?"
Every school year, grade-school children encounter 2D geometric diagrams on posters, worksheets, and textbooks. But what happens when you add 3D geometric shapes into the mix? That’s what David Hallowell wanted to know, so he interviewed 36 first-graders as they participated in a shape-matching task as part of his dissertation research. Not surprisingly, he found that context and structure matter a lot, and students often had trouble with how projected surfaces were represented on 3D objects when they had primarily been exposed to 2D diagrams. As a result, David recommends that teachers slow down conversations in geometry lessons in order to draw attention to less-noticed aspects of geometric shapes.
Kim YasudaKim Yasuda
Professor
Department of Art, Spatial Studies
"Light Works: Isla Vista"
What do you think of when you think of Isla Vista? Kim Yasuda has three words: public research lab. When Kim moved from Santa Barbara to Isla Vista in 2004, she noticed several elements that have given the community its party-hard reputation: streets are poorly lit while liquor stores are well-lit, and staple items (such as eggs and milk) cost more and alcohol costs less compared to other parts of town. So she began the First Fridays project to bring art installations, performances, light works, live music, improvisation and dance to Isla Vista’s Perfect Park as a late-night alternative destination for Friday nights.
Steve Miley
GauchoSpace Lead
College of Letters of Science
"Beyond the Locked Gates"
Locked gates are no deterrent for Steve Miley. He has been going beyond the locked gates of backcountry trails in California, using a geotracking device on his bicycle to track his explorations of hidden locales. By tracking his progress and coverage, he can get a big-picture (and birds-eye) view of the different roads he has traveled.
Videos from all of the Spatial Lightning Talks will be posted to their website in the near future!