Coffee & Viz returns Jan. 18

Exploring Data with Musical Sound.

The NCSU Libraries presents five free talks this spring as part of its popular Coffee & Viz series. Held in our high-tech spaces at the Hunt Library, the series provides a showcase for the unique ways that researchers at NC State and elsewhere are using visualization to enhance their work.

All Coffee & Viz programs are free and open to the public. Coffee and light refreshments from locally owned Anisette Sweet Shop will be available in an adjacent space beginning at 9:15 a.m. To increase the sustainability of this program, please consider bringing your own reusable coffee mug.

The Coffee & Viz spring 2019 season is as follows:

Up Close and Entomological: Visualizing Arthropod Diversity through Macro PhotographyUp Close and Entomological: Visualizing Arthropod Diversity through Macro Photography
Friday, Jan. 18, 9:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m., Hunt Library Teaching and Visualization Lab
Insects, spiders, and mites—aka arthropods—are all around us, yet often go unnoticed. With eye-opening macro photography techniques, Dr. Matt Bertone, entomologist at NC State’s Plant Disease & Insect Clinic, shows how traditional and advanced imagery captures and communicates more about arthropods than our eyes can see.

Using Digital Humanities Tools to Explore Medieval Literature, Art, and MediaUsing Digital Humanities Tools to Explore Medieval Literature, Art, and Media
Friday, Feb. 8, 9:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m., Hunt Library Teaching and Visualization Lab
Europe comes to Raleigh for a day as Martin Foys, professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses how he has used the Digital Mappa resource to make a digital Bayeux Tapestry, and to the recent work at the NC State University Libraries on a life-sized digital verasion of the Tapestry. Foys is an expert on the Bayeux Tapestry, a medieval embroidered cloth which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England. Foys will discuss Digital Mappa, a powerful tool used by digital humanities scholars to transform their work.  

Seeing with Your Ears: Exploring Data with Musical SoundSeeing with Your Ears: Exploring Data with Musical Sound
Friday, Feb. 22, 9:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m., Hunt Library Teaching and Visualization Lab
How do you look at a dataset if you are visually impaired? Sonification is an emerging area of informatics making datasets available to visually impaired researchers. Offering new insights due to the ear’s strength at pattern recognition, sonification is gaining traction in the field. In this talk, Mark Ballora, professor of Music Technology at Penn State, will go over principles of how to represent information with sound, as well as give examples of work that he has done with researchers in a variety of areas, including cosmology, cardiology, meteorology, and marine biology.

Immersive ScholarsImmersive Scholars
Friday, April 5, 9:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m., Hunt Library Teaching and Visualization Lab
The artistic duo Caitlin & Misha—Caitlin Foley and Misha Rabinovich—Immersive Scholar Creative Residents at the NC State University Libraries, will discuss their use of climate data and water policy news to create generative artworks based on fluid simulations. The resulting data-driven visualizations will focus on the human relationship to water. This residence is funded through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Visualization for Educational OutreachVisualization for Educational Outreach
Friday, April 12, 9:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m., Hunt Library Teaching and Visualization Lab
Virtual fossils onscreen! Dr. Christopher Walker, assistant professor of Anatomy in NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, will discuss the use of visualization for educational outreach, specifically focused on the creation and use of 3D models of hominin and animal fossils.