The Shape of Your Life
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The Symposium provides undergraduates from all academic disciplines with an opportunity to share their research with the university community and other guests through conference-style oral presentations. The Symposium represents part of a larger effort of Iowa State University to enhance, support, and celebrate undergraduate research activity.
Though coordinated by the University Honors Program, all undergraduate students are eligible and encouraged to participate in the Symposium. Undergraduates conducting research but not yet ready to present their work are encouraged to attend the Symposium to learn about the presentation process and students not currently involved in research are encouraged to attend the Symposium to learn about the broad range of undergraduate research activities that are taking place at ISU.
The first Symposium was held in April 2007. The 39 students who presented research and their mentors collectively represented all of ISU's Colleges: Agriculture and Life Sciences, Business, Design, Engineering, Human Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, and the Graduate College. The event has grown to regularly include more than 100 students presenting on topics that span the broad range of disciplines studied at ISU.
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This project collected data on the movements, whereabouts, and number of people in the vicinity of six ISU students over the course of one month. The participants answered two questions two times each day. The questions were simple: Where are you now? How many people are around you? The final data was plotted onto an ISU campus map to reveal emergent patterns with the goal of demonstrating the natural beauty of something as banal as our daily routines. The result was several images with a kind of natural beauty akin to the appearance of growth patterns of bacteria observed through a microscope or of circular fields observed from high altitude. It is important to remember that this work is ultimately an artistic one, focused on aesthetic beauty. While the data has not been modified, it has been repeated, and overlain to create visual impact.