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The second day. Well, parts of it!

Maps that hide, maps that show.

Space that unites, space that separates.

Geographies that create communities, geographies that segregate.

That was what we talk about during most of the morning, as we all presented our work, our questions, and our expectations regarding the outcomes of the Institute.

As I was listen to everyone I keep thinking about these dichotomies, present in almost every presentation, was it about the MAPPING of modernist literature on Paris, the preservation of oral histories/stories in Cleveland, the EVOLUTION through space and time of the Catholicism in Philadelphia, the ethnic and religious CLUSTERING in London, or the SPATIAL CORRELATION of daily life in London (the other London, the Canadian one). This last one I actually don’t hear it, but read it. The same about the analysis of SOCIAL SPACE in slavery’s end in the South (the United States South, cause I think every country has it’s own South, and I don’t want anyone to be confused). Of course, not everyone talked about segregation, someone wants to deal with millions and millions of PLACE-NAMES in Britain, another talked about “curation” of heritage and MEMORY in Minnesota, someone said something about “dead cemeteries” near the Mississippi (along with other stuff, of course), another wants to “annihilate” TIME and space in the West (again this annihilation will take PLACE in the United States West, not in any other West; just trying to avoid FUZZINESS), and there was even one that presented a dog’s Facebook page to talk about republicanism in Lisbon, Portugal (how weird!). Finally someone was talking about “CROWDSOURCING London”. I think it was the old London again; I’m not sure, because I’m not only “lost in translation” (great movie!) I’m lost in SPACE too.

And it’s no wonder, because I took breakfast in Indianapolis and end up taking lunch in Ancient Rome, courtesy of some people from Los Angeles. Coffee, or should I said tea, was served by a fellow from Lancaster that told us that to deal with the COMPLEXITY of the real world we must integrate “theme, space and time”, mapping texts using “SEMANTIC tagging and collocation” as a way to give meaning to the SPATIAL NARRATIVES we all trying to build here in an INTERDISCIPLINARY way. Finally, a nice lady that came from Oklahoma talked about the production of KNOWLEDGE trough narratives that must integrate multimedia, quantitative and qualitative data, must be participatory and negotiated, and should result not only in visualizations, but also on interpretations, on answering RESEARCH QUESTIONS. Of course, GIS is one of the tools/methods to deliver this, to try to convert “atomic events” into DEEP MAPS and spatial narratives (something that I have been trying to do here).

- Daniel Alves