{"692530":{"#nid":"692530","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Exploring Place and Space With the Center for Interdisciplinary Media Arts","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe Center for Interdisciplinary Media Arts (IMA) at Georgia Tech recently hosted 13 doctoral students and early-career scholars nationwide for a multi-day, National Science Foundation-funded workshop in spatial scholarship.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESpatial scholarship is a research approach focusing on social and humanistic questions, which foreground place, space, spatial data, and human experience.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHeld at the Georgia Tech Library, the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/sites.gatech.edu\/sts-fieldschool\/fieldschool\u0022\u003ESpatial Scholarship Field School\u003C\/a\u003E brought together researchers from eight top academic institutions, including Carnegie Mellon University, UCLA, NYU, and Georgia Tech, to examine how technology, data, and physical environments shape one another.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EParticipants shared research, joined in panel discussions with Georgia Tech faculty, and learned interdisciplinary methods such as a variation of body-mapping that uses \u0026nbsp;wearable environmental sensors to explore how data shaped their felt experience in place.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aAzGCxUC3Ac\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWatch a video about the Spatial Scholarship Field School on YouTube\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022We\u0027re really proud to host this Spatial Scholarship Field School \u2014 to spend a couple of days together thinking about what it means to take space and place more seriously as part of the scholarship we do,\u0022 said Yanni Loukissas, an associate professor in the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/lmc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003ESchool of Literature, Media, and Communication\u003C\/a\u003E (LMC) and director of \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/media-arts.gatech.edu\/center\u0022\u003EIMA\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECo-led by LMC Assistant Professor \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/iac.gatech.edu\/people\/person\/40abaa84-d467-517c-b604-d2f77da94bf0\u0022\u003ERichmond Wong\u003C\/a\u003E, the event challenged scholars to evaluate how local neighborhoods respond to emerging technologies like self-driving cars and data centers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe invited participants to walk around with wearable sensors tracking sound, temperature, light, CO2, and air quality, interpreting readings through colored LEDs,\u201d said Alexandra Teixeira Riggs, who helped facilitate the event. Riggs is a 2026 Ph.D. Digital Media graduate who now works as an assistant professor at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis activity asked participants to focus on critical and interpretive approaches to bio and environmental data, situating themselves within campus environments,\u201d Riggs said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStephen Yang, a doctoral candidate at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said the event advanced his thinking on how people experience built environments.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI\u2019m grateful for the thought-provoking conversations that pushed me to think hard about the taken-for-granted ways built environments are organized,\u201d Yang said. \u201cI left the Field School with many new ideas that I\u2019ll continue to ruminate on.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIMA is a collaboration between the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/library.gatech.edu\u0022\u003ELibrary\u003C\/a\u003E.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe Center for Interdisciplinary Media Arts at Georgia Tech recently hosted doctoral students and early-career scholars from around the country for a workshop on spatial scholarship.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The Center for Interdisciplinary Media Arts at Georgia Tech recently hosted doctoral students and early-career scholars from around the country for a workshop on spatial scholarship."}],"uid":"34600","created_gmt":"2026-09-10 21:10:43","changed_gmt":"2026-09-11 13:48:04","author":"mpearson34","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2026-09-10T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2026-09-10T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"681135":{"id":"681135","type":"image","title":"Spatial Scholarship Field School","body":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech Associate Professor Yanni Loukissas, right, and collaborators at the Spatial Scholarship Field School lean over a large table workspace marking up a map.\u003C\/p\u003E","created":"1789074658","gmt_created":"2026-09-10 21:10:58","changed":"1789074658","gmt_changed":"2026-09-10 21:10:58","alt":"Attendees at the Spatial Scholarship Field School lean over a large table workspace marking up a map.","file":{"fid":"265495","name":"spacial-scholarship-image.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/09\/10\/spacial-scholarship-image.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/09\/10\/spacial-scholarship-image.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":994708,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2026\/09\/10\/spacial-scholarship-image.jpg?itok=VVIeDfLd"}}},"media_ids":["681135"],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"},{"id":"1283","name":"School of Literature, Media, and Communication"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:michael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EMichael Pearson\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EIvan Allen College of Liberal Arts\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["michael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}