On May 12, Wesleyan held its first student exhibition to showcase examples of visual knowledge and data visualization across disciplines. To be included, students needed to showcase how they conveyed or established information in a mainly non-verbal form. Cail Daley ’18 presented his project titled “Orbital Motion of Gas in Planetary System HD 100546.” He presented an animation that shows the orbital velocity of matter around a star changing depending on its distance from the star. If close to the star, matter is predicted to move faster, while lower orbital velocities are expected at a larger radii.
Examples of data visualization include infographics; photographs; microscopy, or spectroscopy; illustrations; GIS mapping; 2-D image maps; digital renderings; digital 3-D visualizations, 3-D printing or sculpture; and interactive displays or programs. Pictured is a presentation on the situation of Chinese labor titled “Work In Action: A Graphic Novel” by Haenah Kwon ’17.Sarah Schechter ’17 created a painting titled The Mandrake. Her painting examines the magical and medicinal uses of mandrakes, one of the most frequently mentioned plants in folklore, preserved in literature from the Mediterranean basin from antiquity to the modern era. When pulled from the ground, the mandrake’s forked root is believed to resemble the human form and utter a shriek that killed or drove mad anyone who heard it. Once pulled, the mandrake has been used as an aphrodisiac, purgative and narcotic. “My painting depicts the anthropomorphic mandrake root residing in a medieval manuscript,” she explains. “The sparkly canvas suggest the plant’s supposed magical properties.”Caroline Diemer ’18, Lydia Tonkonow ’17 and Harrison Carter ’17 presented “Games and Gender in Ancient Rome.” They used a 3-D printer to create a Roman articulated doll from the 4th century; a laser wood cut to recreate a dice tower or pyrgus, also from the 4th century; and a 3-D printer to create a model of Knucklebones, a common gaming item used in ancient Greece and Egypt. Knucklebones were originally the anklebone of either a sheep, goat or cow.Francis Starr, professor of physics, professor and Director of the College of Integrative Sciences, examines the 3-D print of the Roman articulated doll. The original doll is carved from ivory and displays the body type, hair styles and boots similar to those seen in Italian dolls of that same time period.Matt Shelley-Reade ’17 and Louisa Winchell ’18 presented “Redevelopment and Relocation in Middletown’s Historic Waterfront.” In the aftermath of Middletown’s 1959 waterfront redevelopment, 35 African American families were displaced from their homes in the downtown area. In 1961, the City of Middletown created an emergency tent city to temporarily shelter these individuals, but it was taken down the following day by protesters. This project, which includes multiple photographs, touches on Middletown’s evolving history from trade port to tenement housing. (Photos by Olivia Drake)
The exhibition was sponsored by the Digital and Computational Knowledge Initiative, the Digital Design Studio, and the College of Integrative Sciences.
Prize recipients included:
1st Prize: “Work In Action: A Graphic Novel” by Haenah Kwon ’17.
2nd Prize: “Games and Gender in Ancient Rome” by Caroline Diemer ’18, Lydia Tonkonow ’17 and Harrison Carter ’17
3rd Prize: “Orbital Motion of Gas in Planetary System HD 100546” by Cail Daley ’18 and “The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project: Mapping Relocation” by Sam Raby ‘17
Olivia Drake
Mike Mavredakis
Jeff Harder