TMI Talk: GPS for the Brain: Networks, Urbanisms, Algorithms

Laura Kurgan will talk about her recent work involving network science and urban theory. She will present work from the Center for Spatial Research on the Urban History of Algorithms: Homophily and Weak Ties, a history which not surprisingly lies dormant in its use in network science. She will also present new work on navigation theory in neuroscience, which revisits and asks questions about the canonical urban theory of Kevin Lynch (1970) and Fred Jameson’s Postmodernism and the Logic of Late Capitalism (1990). Audience Q&A will follow.

Laura Kurgan is a Professor at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, where she directs the Masters of Science in Computational Design Practices and the Center for Spatial Research (CSR). She is the author of Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics (2013) and co-editor of Ways of Knowing Cities (2019).

Kurgan’s work explores the ethics and politics of digital mapping and its technologies; the art, science, and visualization of big and small data; and design environments for public engagement with maps and data. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most recently Chicago Architecture Biennial (2019), at the Biennale Architettura di Venezia 2018, and at the Palais De Tokyo in Paris (2016).

Sponsored by the IHC’s Too Much Information series and the Sara Miller McCune and George D. McCune Endowment

Free to attend; registration required to receive Zoom webinar attendance link

Image courtesy of the Center for Spatial Research, from Homophily, the Urban History of an Algorithm