Apr 3-Jun 27, 2008

National Research Council, Canada

Are you interested in seeing science from above? Curious to see what impact one single person or invention can have? Keen to find pockets of innovation? Desperate for better tools to manage the information flood? Or are you simply fascinated by maps? Then visit the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit at on display at the NRC, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, April 3rd - June 27th, 2008.

The exhibit aims to demonstrate the power of maps to navigate and make sense of physical places and abstract topic spaces. The display at NRC features the first three of ten iterations of the Places & Spaces exhibit entitled 'The Power of Maps', 'The Power of Reference Systems', and 'The Power of Forecasts'. Also shown are Illuminated Diagram displays by W. Bradford Paley, Kevin Boyack, John Burgoon, Peter Kennard, and Richard Klavans and Worldprocessor globes by Ingo Günther, and hands-on science maps for kids with paintings by Fileve Palmer.

Scientists will be stimulated, students and teachers encouraged, and the general public fascinated by this multi-layered accessible approach to the worlds of modern scientific thought.

Exhibit Curators

Dr. Katy Börner <katy@indiana.edu> and Elisha Hardy <efhardy@indiana.edu>
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Local Exhibit Curators

Jamie Gregoire <Jamie.Gregoire@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca>

Address

National Research Council -
Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information
South Foyer of M-55 Building
1200 Montreal Road
Ottawa, ON
Canada

Maps On Display

Additional Elements

Related Press

Special Events

April 3rd, 1PM - Opening by Director of NRC, talk & tour by Russell Duhon, Indiana University and Ingo Günther, creator of Worldprocessor Globes
Join Ingo Günther for a half hour sit-down talk after the opening
Rusell Duhon
Russell Duhon designs, programs, parses, researches, and visualizes at Dr. Katy Borner's Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at Indiana University. He likes making the little algorithms that fit between the big ones. Among his areas of interest are economics-inspired modelling of scientific activity, statistical methods for understanding data, and unusual data sets. He attended the School of Informatics of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, which is also his home town.

Ingo Gunther
Gunther's early sculptural works with video led him to more journalistically oriented projects, which he pursued in TV, print, and the art field. Based in New York, he played a crucial role in the evaluation
and interpretation of satellite data gathered from political and military crisis zones. On an artistic level, the work with satellite data and mapping them for TV led to Gunther's contribution to documenta 8 (1987), the installation K4 (C3i). Since 1989, Gunther has used globes as a medium for his artistic and journalistic interests (see WorldProcessor.com ). In 1989, he founded the first independent and non-commercial TV station in Eastern Europe, Channel X, Leipzig. He has contributed his work to numerous institutions, conferences, conventions and museums around the world, notably to the Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1983 and 1985; Venice Biennale, 1984; documenta, Kassel, 1987; P3 Art and Environment, Tokyo, 1990, 1992, 1996 and 1997; Ars Electronica, Linz, 1991; Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, 1995; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, 1995; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996; Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, 1998; Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen, 1999; World Economic Forum, Davos, 2000; V2 Rotterdam,2003; Yokohama Triennale 2005; Kunstverein Ruhr, Essen , Germany, 2005; IFC/World Bank, Washington DC; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA, 2006; Siggraph, San Diego, CA, 2007.

From 1990 to 1994, he was a professor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne; from 2001 to
2003 professor at the University for Media, Art, and Design in Zurich, and from 2006 to 2007 he was a visiting professor at the Tokyo National University for Fine Arts and Music.

Public and corporate collections include Obayashi Gumi, Tokyo, Japan; World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland; Volkswagen Corporation, Germany; Town of Hoi An, Quang Nam, Vietnam; Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan and others.
April 4th, Lunch & Learn talk by Russell Duhon (PDF)
Special Exhibits:

NRC Laboratories Connections Across the World visualization by Yves Gingras (Data Provider), Russell Duhon (Layout), Elisha Hardy (Graphic Design)

Download printable version

NRC Research Press Journals, by Jeffrey Demaine, Researcher, NRC
This map shows how 15 scientific journals published by the National Research Council of Canada’s Research Press (represented as red dots) tie in with 1135 other journals (blue dots).

The data for this map is derived from the collection of the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information. CISTI is the library of the NRC, and its digital collection can be used to characterize the patterns of communication in science.

The citations between a pair of journals indicates that ideas from one journal are used in the other. This measure was used by the VxInsight application to arrange journals based on their relatedness. The 4.6 million citations themselves are not displayed, as this would obscure the journals.

It is interesting to note that the “Canadian Geotechnical Journal” and the “Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering” are located on the periphery of the map far from other journals in mining and engineering. This indicates that these two journals are cited infrequently by the core literature of those fields. On the other hand, many of the other Research Press journals are tightly linked with large clusters representing research such fields as genomics and pharmacology. Articles published in these Research Press journals influence the direction of research in their fields.

Such a high-level view of scientific publications is not suited to answering specific research questions. Instead, it offers a global view of how science is structured.

Acknowledgements

Places & Spaces is curated by Dr. Katy Börner and Elisha Hardy, School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University. Places & Spaces also receives input from the Advisory Board listed on the website.

Thanks to the National Research Council, Canada for all their support.

Places & Spaces at NRC is sponsored by National Science Foundation awards IIS-0238261, CHE-0524661, IIS-0737783 and IIS-0715303; Thomson Scientific; the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, University Information Technology Services, and the School of Library and Information Science, all three at Indiana University. Much of the data used to generate the science maps is from Thomson Scientific.

See More Pictures