Professor Dan Montello had just finalized his PowerPoint presentation for his talk at a conference in Istanbul, but was concerned that his slide backgrounds might contrast too much with his text. He’d wanted the graphic background to complement his theme of cognition and the complexity of architectural layout, so he used one depicting an Italian Renaissance labyrinth. He thought it looked cool and kind of “old world.” On a whim, he asked his wife what she thought. Violet, a talented cartographer with an aesthetic eye, examined the graphic and responded, “not on your life.”
Fast forward to Dan in a Turkish jail In Turkey. “Insulting” the Turkish Republic can land you in jail for several years (see ), and you can even face time in a Turkish jail for “denigrating” Turkey by mentioning its genocide of Armenians in 1915. But back to the Monty. Violet had taken four years of Latin, and she immediately recognized that there was Latin script around the border. Guess what – the script around the border of Dan’s PowerPoint graphic was a celebration of the Western defeat of the Turks in battle! The odds of someone in the Turkish audience noticing the same thing doesn’t bear thinking about—picture 200 academics from around the world, many from Turkey, watching a series of slides with Latin script around the edges for 45 minutes. Well, I’m not a statistician, but I think Dan had a narrow escape! So a liberal arts education has its advantages, after all. And, apparently. so does being married to Violet…
Oh yes, the conference in question was the Sixth International Space Syntax Symposium, held June 12-15, and Dan was a keynote speaker. His paper was titled “The Contribution of Space Syntax to a Comprehensive Theory of Environmental Psychology.”
