These grants of up to $1,000 provide undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, support for individual and collaborative projects. All six colleges with on-campus students are represented among the primary proposers, with collaborators ranging from registered student organizations and faculty mentors to Atlanta-based artists.

College of Design

Anthony Cammarota, a musician and Ph.D. candidate in music technology (School of Music), received funding for Guitar Picking Device: Technique as Embodiment of Performance Practice. The project designs a musician-focused guitar performance technology to improve technique through techno-mediated learning, reducing physical strain and inefficient gestural habits.

Rafael Collado, a graduate student in music technology (School of Music), received funding for Bravo, Director. This staged one-man musical showcase uses generative AI to satirically comment on the role of AI in music creation and contemporary creative expression. The performance will take place April 20 in the Black Box Theatre.

Aleksandra Ma, a graduate student in music technology (School of Music), in collaboration with Anthony Cammarota and Jeff Albert, received funding for Human to Human Jazz Improv. The project explores how musicians communicate during improvisation and how those insights can inform new forms of artistic collaboration between human performers and AI.

TeAiris Majors, a Ph.D. candidate in music technology (School of Music), in collaboration with Thais Alvarenga, will create Just Chill, a portable interactive installation inviting students to explore emotional well-being through sound and visual design.

John Parrack, a third-year architecture student (School of Architecture), in collaboration with Molly Pentecost and Nour Khalifa, received funding to support Sandbox, an emerging student-run publication. Exhibitions are scheduled for late April and early May.

Ryan Yin, a third-year architecture student (School of Architecture), will produce two installations: What Makes Something Home and Informality, both designed for high-traffic campus spaces to encourage interaction and reflection on housing disparity and community-driven architecture.

Peyman Salimi, a graduate student in music technology (School of Music), will present Self + Apolide: A Multilingual Spatial Audio Performance, an immersive show using a 12-speaker ambisonics setup.

Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

Inha Cha, a Ph.D. candidate in digital media (School of Literature, Media, and Communication), will lead AI-Non Use Tool Kit, a tangible resource for creative professionals exploring the social and ethical implications of AI usage and non-usage.

Chelsi Cocking, a Ph.D. candidate in digital media (School of Literature, Media, and Communication), in collaboration with Raianna Brown, Ta Nycia Wooden and Okorie Johnson, will create Everything Sings, an audio-reactive sculpture visualizing ambient vibrations in performance space.

Olamma Oparah, a Ph.D. candidate in digital media (School of Literature, Media, and Communication), received support for Anyanwu Patterns. The film and textile installation adapts Octavia E. Butler’s Wild Seed and will be showcased at the Butler Symposium at Atlanta Contemporary on Feb. 26.

Allie Riggs, a Ph.D. candidate in digital media (School of Literature, Media, and Communication), in collaboration with Shelly Boehm, received funding for Lichen Meditations: Materializing Queer Entanglements in Sonic Environments. Riggs will present the work at the Atlanta Science Festival on March 14 and Georgia Tech’s Digital Media Demo Day.

Cecile Zhang, a Ph.D. candidate in digital media (School of Literature, Media, and Communication), leads Feminist Mixed Media Photography: Counter Archive x Algorithm, examining the patriarchal history of photography and how emerging technologies can challenge established norms.

College of Computing

Sylvia Janicki, a postdoctoral researcher in interactive computing, will produce Rest Against the Machine, a sonic-textile installation examining AI data centers through a critical disability lens. The work will be featured June 5 and 6 at the Atlanta Public Art Futures Lab.

Catherine Wieczorek-Berkes, a Ph.D. candidate in human-centered computing, leads Materializing Critical Temporalities, which will be presented at the SPARK Lab in TSRB in April.

Ethan Zhao, a graduate student in human-computer interaction, in collaboration with Allen Cai and Emily Zhou, received funding for Sustainability in the DIY Music Community, a community-engaged research initiative supporting Atlanta’s DIY music spaces.

College of Sciences

Ryan Clark, a third-year neuroscience student, received support for Collective Effervescence, an interactive light installation using DMX and motion capture equipment. Clark plans to showcase the work at the Atlanta Science Festival and ImmerseGT.

Scheller College of Business

Srihitha Joginapally, a third-year business administration student, received support for GT AfroDance’s Unity Dey. The grant will fund materials for a tie-dye workshop allowing dancers to design their own costumes.

College of Engineering

Lukas Kassatly, a mechanical engineering student and vice president of DramaTech Theatre (School of Mechanical Engineering), will use funds to support DramaTech’s production of Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. The performance runs Feb. 20–28 in the Black Box Theatre.

Alexandra Wnuk, a Ph.D. candidate in materials science and engineering (School of Materials Science and Engineering), in collaboration with Ashley Burton and Lucia Lammers, received support for the Textiles Team’s Fashion of the Future on April 17 in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building.

Naugle Writing and Communication Center

Jenessa Kenway, a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, in collaboration with Jacqueline Kari, will lead Tender Buttons, Moving Pictures, a course integrating modernism, visual literacy and experimental filmmaking.

For more information about these programs, contact Kailey Albus, student support specialist for Georgia Tech Arts.

Boykin’s work explores themes of identity, spirituality, vulnerability, and human connection. Her seven-song cycle, 26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man, appears alongside works by William Grant Still, creating a cross-generational dialogue through music. Additional compositions appear on In This Short Life, featuring selections from her Maya Angelou-inspired song cycle Moments in Sonder.

Boykin’s national recognition highlights the impact of creative scholarship at Georgia Tech and reflects the Institute’s mission to improve the human condition through the arts.

Read the full story on the School of Music website.

Created by 14 senior studio undergraduate students in the School of Architecture, Exhibitionist Storage is curated and by architect and educator Hyojin Kwon. It brings together speculative architectural projects that ask an unlikely but urgent question: What if storage — one of the most ubiquitous, yet invisible building types in the contemporary American city — were treated as a civic architecture?

Developed over the course of the Fall 2025 semester, the projects take self-storage facilities — often dismissed as banal, anonymous containers of excess — as a serious architectural and cultural subject.

ABOUT EXHIBITIONIST STORAGE

Self-storage is among the fastest-growing architectural typologies in the United States, expanding rapidly along highways, suburban corridors, and urban edges. Despite their prevalence, these facilities are typically designed to disappear from public consciousness: blank façades, inward-facing logics, and tightly controlled access. 

They quietly absorb the material residue of contemporary life — objects displaced by mobility, precarity, inheritance, and accumulation — while remaining architecturally mute. 

Exhibitionist Storage challenges that muteness. The projects on view reframe self-storage as a civic architectural typology, asking what happens when storage is made visible, legible, and public. Rather than treating storage as a purely private utility, the students imagine it as a spatial, cultural, and urban instrument — one that negotiates tensions between accumulation and access, privacy and exposure, memory and value.

Each project proposes a large-scale architectural intervention sited in Atlanta, hybridizing storage with public programs such as archives, exhibition spaces, markets, libraries, and civic platforms. In many of the proposals, the façade becomes a critical interface: not a neutral envelope, but an active mediator between the hidden logics of storage and the public realm. Through sectional cuts, porous skins, and performative envelopes, storage is exposed, curated, and staged.

The physical exhibition pairs meticulously crafted models with drawings and digital media displayed across the IMZ’s integrated screens. Visitors encounter not only formal explorations, but also arguments about time, care, and surplus embedded in architectural form. Storage is revealed as an architecture of deferral — spaces designed to hold things temporarily, often indefinitely — and as a system that reflects broader social and economic conditions.

What distinguishes the exhibition is its insistence that storage is never neutral. The projects collectively argue that storage participates in shaping civic life, even when it claims not to. By making storage exhibitionist, the work proposes architecture as a tool for rethinking how societies manage excess, visibility, and value.

Situated within the Georgia Tech Library, the exhibition benefits from its setting. As visitors move through the IMZ, the projects are encountered not as isolated objects but as part of a living public environment, inviting casual engagement alongside sustained study. The Library becomes an apt host for work that treats storage as a form of cultural memory and civic infrastructure.

Exhibitionist Storage offers a compelling glimpse into how architectural education can critically engage everyday building types and reimagine them as sites of public imagination. In doing so, the exhibition asks viewers to reconsider the spaces that quietly hold our lives — and what it might mean to bring them into view.

SPECIAL THANKS

Student participants: Amelia Barnard, Krishna Bhanderi, Delaney Bourg, Evelyn Bravo, Violet Cerbone, Doris Deng, Amy Cha, Alexis Lamar, Shain McHatton, Luca Maalouli, Mais Mehyar, Louise Richens, Yasmeen Smeirat and Carson Will.

With support from: Julie Ju-Youn Kim, School Chair, School of Architecture, College of Design

Beginning this March in Perry, Georgia, EI² will launch the Georgia Arts Innovation Network (GAIN), a six-month pilot program that supports arts-related nonprofits and businesses through capacity building, technology adoption, business strategy, and placemaking. Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the program is open to arts organizations and creative businesses in Perry, Houston County, and surrounding Middle Georgia counties.

GAIN is the first EI² program dedicated specifically to the arts and reflects Georgia Tech’s broader commitment to serving communities statewide through creativity, innovation, and economic development. According to Jason Freeman, the initiative also creates opportunities to strengthen arts-based partnerships across Georgia and inform future collaborations, including work connected to Georgia Tech Arts and the Creative Quarter.

The pilot is supported in partnership with the Georgia Council for the Arts and aims to develop a model that could be expanded to other regions of the state.

Recruitment for the inaugural GAIN cohort begins in February.

Read the full Enterprise Innovation Institute article.
 

The annual grants advance Georgia Tech’s commitment to creativity as a driver of innovation, bringing together faculty, staff, students, and community partners from across disciplines.

Catalyst Grant Awardees

The 2025–26 Catalyst Grant recipients represent a wide range of academic units and professional areas, reflecting the many ways the arts intersect with teaching, research, and everyday campus life.

Victoria Chang (Poetry@Tech) received funding for Poetry Everywhere, an initiative expanding access to poetry through translation-focused programming and public engagement. Building on collaborations with Modern Languages and Atlanta Global Studies, the project will bring poets and translators to campus and explore placing poetry in public spaces, inviting moments of reflection amid daily routines.

At the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, Anna Doll will lead Paper and Nature Dye Exhibition, establishing a dedicated garden space that allows students and faculty to engage directly with the raw materials used in papermaking and natural dyes. The project integrates plant cultivation with artistic practice, bridging scientific inquiry and creative exploration.

Jennifer Lux (Scheller College of Business) and Danielle Willkens (School of Architecture) received support for Penn Center Alternative Spring Break, a multidisciplinary arts initiative rooted in community engagement. In partnership with the Gullah/Geechee Nation, participants will travel to the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District in South Carolina, creating artistic responses while learning from a site central to African American history.

Biophilia, led by Belinda Person (Administrative Services Center) in collaboration with Krystian Ramlogan, is an immersive installation exploring human relationships with the natural world through painting, sound, and spatial design. Inspired by Indigenous ecological knowledge, the project emphasizes reflection, sensory experience, and reconnection with place.

Ramlogan, a faculty member in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, also leads Spaces: A Pilot Sensory Arts Installation in collaboration with Jillann Hertel. The project explores how light, sound, and media can function as forms of care, offering moments of presence and regulation within the intensity of campus life.

Stephanie Selvick (Belonging and Student Support), in collaboration with Alexandra Teixeira Riggs, received funding for Photovoice for Graduate Student Belonging. The arts-based research project engages graduate students as co-researchers, using photography and storytelling to examine experiences of belonging and to inform future student support initiatives through public exhibition and dialogue.

In the School of Music, Alexandria Smith, in collaboration with Full Radius Dance, Douglas Scott, and Noah Posner will lead Resonant Bodies, a community-based learning project connecting music technology and industrial design students with the Atlanta-based Full Radius Dance. Through collaborative design and experimentation, students will create compositions and wearable technologies while engaging with accessibility, disability, and performance.

Alexander Vlahos (Department of Biomedical Engineering), in collaboration with Mark Wentzel, received funding for Bridging Art and Engineering: An Artist-Led Creativity Intervention for Biomedical Engineering Education. The project integrates drawing and sculptural practices into engineering coursework to strengthen spatial reasoning, creativity, and conceptual understanding.

Einstein Grant Awardees

Georgia Tech Arts also announced the recipients of its 2025–26 Einstein Grants, which support experimental projects connecting artistic inquiry with research, technology, and public imagination.

Hyojin Kwon, assistant professor in the School of Architecture, received funding for From Campus Waste to Civic Architecture. The project builds on Kwon’s research into computational media, advanced fabrication, and material reuse, transforming campus waste into architectural prototypes and civic-scale installations. Through cross-campus collaboration, the work examines sustainability, sensory perception, and material agency while reimagining discarded materials as public-facing design artifacts.

A second Einstein Grant was awarded to Joel Silverman, an Atlanta-based community artist, for Albert Einstein Ghostphone. The interactive sound installation imagines a conversation between present-day Georgia Tech scholars and the voice of Albert Einstein as he might have sounded in 1955. The work will invite participants to reflect on scientific discovery, ethics, and the evolving relationship between human knowledge and artificial intelligence.

Using an AI-driven speech model trained within the limits of Einstein’s lifetime knowledge, the project blends history, technology, and performance to provoke curiosity about physics, democracy, and the responsibilities that accompany innovation.

Together, the 2025–26 Catalyst and Einstein Grant projects advance Georgia Tech’s Transforming Tomorrow vision by leveraging creativity as a catalyst for innovation, connection, and public impact. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and community-engaged work, these projects demonstrate how the arts help solve complex challenges, enrich campus life, and shape a more inclusive and imaginative future.

For more information about these programs, contact Director of Arts Integration and Innovation Avital Shira for Georgia Tech Arts.

Read the full article on Georgia Tech News

Supported by Georgia Tech’s Transformative Teaching and Learning Innovation Incubator, the course brings together students and community artists from three Atlanta arts organizations — Fly on a Wall, The Pollinator Art Space, and Callanwolde Fine Arts Center. Artists co-teach alongside faculty, leading hands-on studios in drawing, painting, collage, movement, and other creative practices alongside instruction in artificial intelligence fundamentals.

The course culminates in AnthropogenIc, a student exhibition featuring AI-generated artworks created using original data and custom-built algorithms. The exhibition emphasizes student authorship and human agency in human–machine collaboration.

 Read the full article

Stradley collaborated with artist and producer Katie Soule and a team of Georgia Tech architecture students to construct the Western Red Cedar structure on site. The project offered students hands-on exposure to fabrication and highlighted the physical labor often hidden within architectural practice.

School of Architecture leadership noted that the installation reflects the program’s commitment to creativity, material exploration, and community engagement. Situated alongside dance, music, and visual art at the Goat Farm, Cedar Stack expands public awareness of architecture’s role within Atlanta’s broader arts ecosystem.

Read the full article on the School of Architecture website.
 

Georgia Tech Arts and WABE celebrated Tech’s 140th anniversary with comedy, storytelling and music at the Ferst Center.

As part of Georgia Tech’s 140th anniversary and Homecoming celebrations, Georgia Tech Arts and WABE joined forces to present What’s Good GT?, a special live edition of the hit podcast What’s Good Atlanta. The event highlighted the creative side of Georgia Tech through an evening of comedy, storytelling and live music that brought together students, alumni and Atlanta’s arts community in one shared space. 

A Film Industry Summit at Trilith Studios | October 23, 2025 

The evening, presented by Georgia Tech Arts, featured two shows at 6:30 and 9 p.m. with nationally recognized comedian Josh Johnson. Before the headliner took the stage, the spotlight belonged to two Georgia Tech students, Sankalp Chandesh and Lucy Scott, who performed stand-up routines that had their peers laughing and cheering.

Drawing on themes of dating, campus life, and the quirks of social media, the student comedians offered relatable, witty perspectives that connected deeply with the audience. Performing in front of hundreds of classmates is no small feat, and their presence on stage demonstrated the bravery and creative drive that Georgia Tech students bring to artistic expression. Events like this show how students can find meaningful platforms to explore their talents while building confidence in their craft.

Johnson, a writer for The Daily Show and a rising star in the national comedy scene, rounded out the evening with sharp commentary on current events, sports, and social media trends. His performance amplified the energy in the room and helped shine a light on creative industries while underscoring the Ferst Center’s role as more than just a theater. It has become a gathering place where students, alumni, and the Atlanta community can connect through the arts, whether they share a common interest or are simply curious to learn more.

The success of the night reinforced Georgia Tech Arts’ mission to inspire and support students who are interested in pursuing creative careers. By pairing student talent with world-class performers, the program continues to highlight the role of the arts at Georgia Tech and its importance as a mainstay for cultural and creative experiences. Ultimately, the night showed how Georgia Tech Arts serves as a pathway for students to follow their creative passions, build new skills, and imagine futures where innovation and artistry go hand in hand.

On Sunday, Sept. 28, Georgia Tech Arts hosted a panel discussion moderated by Birney Robert, External Engagement Strategist and Curator for Georgia Tech Arts, that explored the intersections of art, technology, and the future of creative industries. Panelists addressed wide-ranging topics, from industry strikes to building ethical frameworks around AI and its use in creative writing.

The panel featured Floyd Hall, Arts Leader and Curator; Kathleen Brown, Public Art Education Coordinator at Fulton County Arts & Culture; Lisa Marks, Associate Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial Design; and Orlando Kenny, musician, technologist, and master’s student in music technology at Georgia Tech. Together, they explored how artists and institutions are using advanced technologies to create immersive experiences and how these innovations are redefining education, accessibility, and community engagement in the arts.

Audience members asked who inspired the panelists, sparking reflections on both historical and contemporary figures. Names ranged from poet and painter William Blake to influential cultural leaders such as Pharrell Williams, Virgil Abloh, Fab 5 Freddy, and Tabita Rezaire. Panelists also highlighted inspiration from earlier movements and organizations, including New York-based artists involved with Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) and Los Angeles’ now-defunct Machine Project workshops.

Speakers emphasized that Atlanta is uniquely positioned to lead in art and technology innovation, describing the city as the ideal home for a “Creative Quarter.” They also noted the launch of Georgia Tech’s new Bachelor of Science in Arts, Entertainment, and Creative Technologies program as an example of how education and diverse disciplines can drive forward the future of creative industries.

During Atlanta Art Fair week, the Goat Farm, a cultural partner of the Atlanta Art Fair, hosted SITE on Sept. 27—an installation featuring Georgia Tech affiliates Michael Stradley, Katie Soule, Ryan Clark, Hyojin Kwon, Olamma Oparah, Heidi Biggs, and Alexandria Smith. The event also included Dr. Francesco Fedele, Associate Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and his artistic team presenting The Missing Algorithm, a multimedia dance performance and art exhibition exploring the tension between artificial intelligence and embodied human experience. The SITE installation highlighted the collaborative and citywide spirit of Atlanta Art Fair week.

Another highlight was BIKES, a collaborative project funded by a Catalyst grant and presented by Henrik von Coler, Laura Sofia Call Gomez, Shirin Sathe, Jayson Faupel, Jacob Westerstahl, Ishaan Jagyasi, and Orlando Kenny.

From AI ethics to creative legacies, this year’s Atlanta Art Fair reflected how technology and artistry continue to converge.

An innovative exploration of technological interventions into the human brain.

In what Georgia Tech Arts and Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre (TMBT) have dubbed the “Neuroethics Grand Challenge,” the two companies along with acclaimed choreographer Troy Schumacher and internationally revered new media artist Sergio Mora-Diaz explore neuroscience and the ethics of intervention with AI and other technologies.

Our brain is the path to human experience. Interacting with the adaptive brain has the potential to challenge our self-understanding, arguably more than any other scientific discipline. John Welker, TMBT’s artistic director, says “In any collaboration, there are surprises that are part of my joy for discovery, but this particular process has made me so much more aware and appreciative of the intimate connection between our minds' intention and how that is carried out through the movement of our bodies.”

The artists’ collaborative partnership extends to a team of researchers led by Christopher Rozell, professor in the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Karen Rommelfanger, president and founder of the Institute of Neuroethics Think and Do Tank. Other faculty who engaged with the artists by discussing their research include: Chethan Pandarinath, assistant professor, Annabelle Singer, assistant professor, Garrett Stanley, professor, and Lena Ting, professor, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University; and Doby Rahnev, associate professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech.

Rozell, who has been with the project since its inception, states:

“Science and technology research is pushing us to the boundaries of what we know about the human brain, and that forces us to wrestle with ideas that are insufficiently described by our current language. The arts can help us process this emerging understanding in new ways that go beyond language and can do it by creating something beautiful that we can celebrate as a uniquely human experience. I couldn’t be prouder of the way that this project has fulfilled the potential of integrating science and the arts.”

Creativity plays an important role at Georgia Tech

The premiere of Step the Brain Along a Path comes as the final phase of a three-year project that included two work-in-progress showings in 2021 presented by Georgia Tech Arts. Adding to the opportunities for outreach and engagement will be a video installation in the Ferst Center lobby displayed in tandem with the performances of the ballet, offering insight into neuroscience at Georgia Tech. For this installation Georgia Tech Arts connected Atlanta-based creative artist Kimberly Binns with a Georgia Tech team led by Rozell with graduate student lead Abby Paulson, BMED, Kyle Johnsen, BMED, and GT alumnus Timothy Min, M.S. Music Technology 2022.

“We had no idea what would happen when we brought together these scientists and artists,” says Aaron Shackelford, the director of Georgia Tech Arts. “What we did know was innovation happens in these creative spaces where arts intersect with research. Throughout this three-year journey we have had the opportunity to see artists, faculty, and graduate students learn from each other and inspire each other, and been able to invite our campus and community to join in this process. The arts provide these unique experiences, these encounters that nurture new ideas and new ways to understand cutting edge research and the human condition. This is why the arts play such a critical role at Georgia Tech, and why this project embodies the possibilities for arts and research across our campus.”

Step the Brain Along a Path was commissioned in part with support from the Charles Loridans Foundation.

• 8:00 p.m., Friday, September 9, 2022
• 3:00 p.m., Sunday, September 11, 2022
• Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center for the Arts - 349 Ferst Dr NW, Atlanta, GA, 30332
• Ticket Price: $5 GT students, $10.00 public; general admission
• Direct Purchase Link: artsgatech.universitytickets.com
• Box Office Contact Information: 404.894.9600, tickets@arts.gatech.edu 

Design image (c) Sergio Mora Diaz

Dancer photo Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre (c) Felipe Barral

The ACCelerate Festival, a celebration of creative exploration and innovative research happening at the intersection of science, engineering, arts, and design, this year featured 12 teams from universities and colleges across the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). 31,527 people attended this year’s event, held April 8 – 10, 2022 at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Votes were cast for all 26 projects, and a remarkable 48% of the votes supported this Georgia Tech project.

Walking in the Footsteps of History

The multidisciplinary team, led by Danielle Willkens, assistant professor at the School of Architecture, included graduate and undergraduate students in Architecture and Urban Design. The team developed a unique approach to understanding the import and impact of what came to be known as Bloody Sunday, when, on March 7, 1965, armed Alabama State Troopers attacked peaceful civil rights activists. To achieve their mission of developing physical context and an experiential timeline, the team created an installation that introduces patrons to the vast landscape of the people and places who were pivotal (and until now, often unknown) in this historical event.

Team member Patricia J. Rangel, a graduate student in Architecture, noted the remarkable connections that emerged when sharing the exhibition in the Smithsonian. “The entire experience, from being selected to the team, to working alongside such talented people, to engaging with people of all ages and backgrounds, was a privilege. The ultimate audience member we had in mind while designing our pieces were the descendants of the foot soldiers and participants of the marches. The highlight of the entire weekend was the visit from Tracey Todd-Coleman and her two boys, Tyson and Todd. The twins are the great-great-great grandsons of David Hall, a Black farmer in Dallas Country, AL who offered his land to the movement as the first campsite of the Selma-Montgomery march. When Tracey, who is not a crier, got emotional when she saw her grandfather's image at the Smithsonian and photographed the monitor to send to her grandmother, Mr. Hall's daughter, there was a sense we may have done something right. Places and people's stories are significant. The Smithsonian and the experience of exhibiting there reinforced that people of all ages are eager to learn and be inspired by others who made sacrifices for future generations.”

Heart Sense: Reflections on Physiology and Embodiment

The second Georgia Tech team that was invited to present at the 2022 ACCelerate Festival was led by Nassim Parvin, associate professor, School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC). Participating faculty included Lewis Wheaton, associate professor, Biological Sciences, Georgia Tech, and Anne Pollock, previously associate professor, LMC, Georgia Tech, now at King’s College London. Student researchers included a postdoctoral fellow at LMC along with Digital Media graduate students.

Upon the team’s return from D.C., Parvin reflected on how the experience had moved the project forward. She noted that the current installations reflect how our bodies are in and of the environment. After the team’s interactions with patrons at the ACCelerate Festival, they began to consider how to expand and extend the project. She said, “In our future installations we would like to explore creative ways that we might collectively shape the environment through reflection upon and reorientation of our bodies. For example, what if you could enter a dance floor and be able to change the light and music together with other dancers by changing the intensity of your movements and your breath? What can we learn from feeling our heartbeats alongside others?”

These were just some of the questions that arose from the team’s observations of, and conversations with, the students, teachers, school administrators, and general public who enjoyed the installation. The experience led Parvin to also consider the educational potentials of the project, and ways that it can be made accessible to educators, researchers, and artists.

The ACCelerate Festival of Creativity and Innovation is programmed by Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology and the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

March 11, 2022

Georgia Institute of Technology students, faculty, and staff are proudly taking part in the 2022 ACCelerate Festival, a celebration of creative exploration and innovative research happening at the intersection of science, engineering, arts, and design. Featuring teams from universities and colleges across the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and the Smithsonian Institution, the Festival promotes cutting-edge creative work from a new generation of thinkers. This year’s event, to be held April 8 – 10, 2022, will be the third time the ACC institutions have gathered in DC, and Georgia Tech is honored to have been represented at each Festival to date.

“The ACCelerate Festival is an opportunity to showcase the incredible possibilities that await us at the intersection of art and technology,” said Georgia Tech Provost Steve McLaughlin. “We are proud to once again send teams from Georgia Tech and participate alongside our ACC peers. The arts have an undeniable power to teach, heal, and transform us, and this festival gives great visibility and a new way to experience the innovative and impactful education and research that is taking place on our campuses each day.”

The two Georgia Tech teams participating in the 2022 ACCelerate Festival come from the School of Architecture at the College of Design, and the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Georgia Tech’s participation in ACCelerate is managed by Georgia Tech Arts, a department in the Division of Student Engagement and Well-Being.

Walking in the Footsteps of History

On March 7, 1965, at the south side of Edmund Pettus Bridge, armed State Troopers attacked peaceful civil rights activists attempting to march to the state capital of Montgomery in an incident that became known as Bloody Sunday. Despite access to vivid archival material, little interpretation addresses the physical context and experiential timeline. To digitally record this significant civil rights site and to make the specific context of the event more experientially engaging to the public, this project’s multidisciplinary team of designers, architectural historians, civil rights historians, cultural resource managers, and construction technology specialists are pairing collected 3D digital data of Selma’s extant structures with digital reconstructions to recreate the site.

By melding the physical and virtual, Walking in the Footsteps of History presents a broader understanding of the events of 1965 in and around Selma through enhanced historic interpretation by animating famous photographs through immersive visualization, creating interactive digital platforms for exploring fragile archival content such as the Good Samaritan Hospital logbook, and affording virtual tours where visitors can safely explore the Bloody Sunday conflict site that is bordered by a busy highway.

The team is led by Danielle Willkens, assistant professor, School of Architecture, who commented “This project has encompassed more than 6 years’ work with civil rights foot soldiers and their descendants with the intention of enabling visitors to translate the visceral experience to an understanding of the tenets of what was being advocated for - voting rights and civil rights – in the 1960’s through present time.”

Participating staff include Aaron Shackleford, director of Georgia Tech Arts. Georgia Tech student researchers include Simran Bajaj, Thomas Bray, Sydnee Henry, Carly Langsdorf, Sean Li, Sakshi Nanda, So Min Park, Patricia J. Rangel, Aishwarya Somasundaram, Christian Waweru, and Eden Wright. This project is the result of an ongoing collaboration with Junshan Liu, associate professor at Auburn University's McWhorter School of Building Science and Georgia Tech Visiting Scholar and the Auburn University team including faculty (R. Burt, K. Hébert, and E. Gaddis) and students (C. Brown, A. Davis, M. Gibbs, and S. Page). The team is currently completing a Historic Structures Report on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, sponsored by a National Park Service African American Civil Rights Grant.

Visit the ACCelerate website for more information about the team’s work and exhibition.

Heart Sense

“How can the very creation, rendering, and experiencing of biological data contribute to a more nuanced understanding of our bodies?” This is the question at the heart of this project. Heart Sense is a series of installations that visualize biometric data such as heart rate and breath as participants engage in a variety of listening and viewing activities. Our bodies are often conceived as separate autonomous entities, disjoint from the physical and social environments that they inhabit while in fact we are deeply connected with the material and social world around us.

The first installation tracks a participant’s heart rate, galvanic skin response, and breathing as they watch a short, emotionally engaging video. This data input produces flower-like visualizations that illustrate the physiological responses. The second installation engages the social dimension of embodiment through the mediation of the physical environment. Participants are invited to sit around a table and are given headphones to listen to music.

A floral visualization representing the collective heart rates of the participants will be projected onto the table, the size and the colors of each petal shifting with changes in each participant’s body. The visualization showcases how our bodies come into relation with each other and are in and of the environment, as they respond to our surrounding conditions even when we are not aware of it.

The team is led by Nassim Parvin, associate professor, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, who states “This project has catalyzed interdisciplinary collaboration across natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and it has been a privilege to work with talented students in imaginative world-building.”

Participating faculty include Lewis Wheaton, associate professor, Biological Sciences, Georgia Tech, and Anne Pollock, previously associate professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech and now professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King's College London. The interdisciplinary team includes post-doctoral researcher Aditya Anupam alongside Georgia Tech student researchers Pooja Casula, Shubhangi Gupta, Sylvia Janicki, Michelle Ramirez, and Mohsin Yousufi.

Visit the ACCelerate website for more information about the team’s work and exhibition.

Visit the LMC website for detailed Heart Sense documentation and Heart Sense demonstration.

Working at the Intersection of Art, Learning, and Research

“The faculty and students at Georgia Tech have embraced the role of art and creativity as a way to engage with people and share their research with a wide audience,” said Georgia Tech Arts Director Aaron Shackelford. He explains that Georgia Tech Arts selected each project because of the way they bring together art, learning and research. “Both projects show what happens when you bring art and creativity into every step of the process,” he notes, “and the results are these innovative approaches to conducting important work that can be experienced by anyone visiting the Smithsonian.” Each project also supports the well-being of the community. “Heart Sense invites us to have a better understanding of our own bodies, while Walking in the Footsteps of History pushes us to have a better understanding of our nation’s history. Both are important for cultivating the well-being of our community, which is a central goal for Georgia Tech as a whole and one of the most important benefits of the arts.”

ACCelerate is programmed by Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology and the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. Hosted at the National Museum of American History, the multi-day festival is free and open to the public. The 2022 Festival features 24 projects from 12 ACC schools; the most recent Festival drew public attendance of more than 30,000.

For more information about the 2022 ACCelerate Festival, visit their website.

The three-day festival serves as a gathering of all institutions included in the Atlantic Coast Conference to celebrate creativity and innovation with a specific focus on science, engineering, art, and design. The festival will be held at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History; in 2019 the Festival drew more than 34,000 visitors. The 2022 event will mark the third time the ACC institutions have gathered for the ACCelerate Festival, and each of the previous events have featured Georgia Tech projects.

Georgia Tech seeks to showcase innovative, trans-disciplinary projects at the intersection of science, engineering, art, design, and technology. Faculty, staff, and students should submit engaging and compelling projects with supportive media that demonstrate research and/or teaching impacts and have the potential to attract visitors. Projects can include cutting-edge technologies, innovative businesses or ideas, social innovation projects, or interactive installations.

Applications will be evaluated based on completion/readiness for large-scale public presentation, suitability for the venue, and potential to actively engage the festival audience. Participating in this national festival is free and provides the opportunity to meet investors, potential collaborators, and interact with a diverse international audience. 

The deadline for project consideration for the upcoming festival is Friday, May 21, 2021.  The top Georgia Tech projects will then be submitted for ACC and Smithsonian review and evaluation, with notification of project acceptance in August 2021. 

Projects should be submitted online at

https://gatech.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dd3kxfsOZV0a1cF

For information on the ACCelerate Festival and to view projects from previous festivals, please visit http://acceleratefestival.com/. 

Adous said she hopes the mural will be a reflection of the diversity and spirit of Georgia Tech, reinvigorating students’ love and excitement for Georgia Tech after a year that has felt very distanced. The mural will be painted on the low brick wall in front of the Skiles building across from the Starbucks in Clough.  She said students are eager to see more art like this on campus.

Adous first got the idea for an on-campus mural after working with Living Walls Atlanta, an organization that creates public art displays across the metro area, during her second year at Tech. She then met with Georgia Tech Arts, obtained approval for the project from Georgia Tech administration and various departments, and secured funding from the Mental Health Joint Allocation Committee in the Student Government Association.

She and a student design group, which includes Lisa Medford, Alivia Rukmana, Sara Pierson, Adam Lederer, and Jathan Caldwell, have met with the artist this year to present the results of the student surveys and bring together ideas for the piece.

Fabian Williams has created many well-known murals across the city of Atlanta, including murals that feature iconic civil right figures such as Hosea Williams, Coretta Scott King, Colin Kaepernick, and many others.

Comprised of four intertwined structures made entirely of sustainably harvested sticks, branches, and sweetgum saplings, the sculpture has a footprint of approximately 35 feet by 50 feet with a maximum height of 14 feet. The volunteer effort to harvest and build the piece was enormous, and Dougherty was assisted by over 60 volunteers, including 29 Georgia Tech students. The project totaled 500 volunteer hours across 18 days, with 4-10 volunteers working 8 hours a day.

The work is featured as part of the Georgia Tech Earth Day celebration April 19-23 and is included in a virtual tour of the new EcoCommons on Tuesday, April 20 at 12 noon. Register at earthday.gatech.edu.

Artist Patrick Dougherty is known across the United States and internationally for his stickwork installations built from plant materials, which celebrate nature through both the materials and visually flowing lines. In designing "Chip Off the Ole Block,” he explained that he thought of it as shrubbery parading as architecture, and wanted to reflect the cityscape of Atlanta with its stair-stepping design.

The materials used to build the sculpture are mostly sweetgum that was sourced by volunteers at Serenbe, a community located in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia. Dougherty said these sweetgum saplings were regrowth occurring in a field under larger pines. Flexibility and sustainability are both important factors in his selection of building materials, and he notes that these saplings will grow again once cut. The sculpture is expected to last one to two years before the materials start to decompose.

This project was made possible by the Kendeda Fund and was sponsored by Georgia Tech Arts, the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, and Serenbe. To see more whimsical stickwork art installations by Patrick Dougherty visit his website at www.stickwork.net.

Photo courtesy the Kendeda Building

The Georgia Tech Arts Skyline Series began its six-week program of music, dance, theater, and conversation with two exceptional concerts. We vibed with student musicians at Chill on the Hill on Friday, March 26, and reveled in the energy and style of Mwenso & the Shakes on Sunday, March 28.

The music continues with recitals by a range of ensembles from the Georgia Tech School of Music as well as concerts by local pop-rock band, Koyal, the ATL Collective presenting Dolly Parton's Jolene, and the phenomenal guitarist, Kaki King.

The School of Music concerts, April 16-20, are FREE! There’s something for everyone that week, from the Laptop Orchestra and New Music Ensembles to the Jazz Combos and Chamber Choir!

Georgia Tech Arts Skyline Series will continue through May 18 with performances that will also include theater, contemporary dance,and ballet and feature a mix of Georgia Tech groups, Atlanta arts companies, and internationally recognized artists from outside of Georgia.

Celebrate spring and the arts in an inviting outdoor space that is safe for all!

For more information on the Skyline Series, visit arts.gatech.edu/Skyline-Series. Reserve your seats, in pods of two or four, and enjoy live performances at the Skyline Stage on the Georgia Tech campus.

(Updated 4/1/2021)

In keeping with the Institute’s mission to make students a top priority, the project will provide Georgia Tech students with discounted tickets, subsidized by a generous BuzzFunds grant, to all performances. All Skyline Series events are open to members of the Georgia Tech community and the general public.

Tickets are now on sale at arts.gatech.edu/skyline-series.

School of Music shows are free but require a reservation. A limited number of student tickets are available for purchase to all other Skyline Series performances. Student pricing is $10 per person, sold in pods of two or four. GT students can use promo code BUZZ10to access their discount and then show their BuzzCards at the entrance to the venue. Use promo code BUZZ5 to access $5 tickets, sold in pods of two or four, to the April 14 event with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and Immerse ATL. Register as general public and do not log in as student or staff at this time.

Public prices start at $20 for double-pod seating and $40 for 4-person pod seating. Pod sizes, configurations, and public pricing all vary by performance. Georgia Tech Arts Box Office staff are available by phone (404-894-9600) or email (tickets@arts.gatech.edu) Monday through Friday, noon until 5:00 p.m., to answer questions and offer additional assistance. Full details on Georgia Tech Arts’ safety protocols and ticketing policies are also available on the website.

With the campus nestled in the heart of Midtown Atlanta and in full view of the stunning cityscape, the spring program is aptly titled, Georgia Tech Arts Skyline Series. It will offer Georgia Tech Arts the opportunity to present artists like composer and guitarist Kaki King and global music artists Mwenso & the Shakes in an inviting outdoor space that is safe for patrons, artists, and staff. In building the outdoor stage and plans for the series, Georgia Tech Arts’ director Aaron Shackelford also saw an opportunity to connect with local arts groups who have had limited opportunities to perform over the past 12 months and put live performances back in front of audiences.

Says Shackelford, “We embraced the Georgia Tech mindset of innovation and creativity in finding a way to bring live performance back to our campus and share these experiences with our city. We know students want to see art and share their own talents and that artists want to perform. We found a way to make it happen by working with so many partners on and off campus. The Skyline Series lets us strengthen the arts on campus and also support the arts organizations that make Atlanta such a vibrant and exciting home for Georgia Tech.”

Physically Distanced Pods Create a Safe Environment Fostering Community

Georgia Tech Arts has built an extensive plan to provide a safe and enjoyable experience for guests, which includes contactless e-ticketing, physically distanced private pod seating, and 6-foot single direction walkways.

The Skyline Series will offer 105 audience pods designed to hold up to 4 individuals on the W21 parking lot at the intersection of Ferst Drive and State Street. The 8-foot square spaces include chair seating on top of green turf donated by Shaw Industries and Shaw Sports Turf, all of which adds to the festival-like outdoor experience. The sponsorship offers the perfect connection for a company that prides itself on products that are “more than playing surfaces but are also centerpieces and rallying points for schools and communities.”

Series Snapshot

The series will feature Mwenso & the Shakes led by artist and social commentator Michael Mwenso. In Hope, Resist & Heal, the international group of artists create an energizing concert that brings Mwenso’s unique and ancestral perspective on Black music and its ability to heal us through original compositions and arrangements to Atlanta. The public concert will complement a listening party and artist discussion for Georgia Tech students, faculty, and staff.

Invited guests include internationally acclaimed guitarist and composer Kaki King, who’s been hailed by Rolling Stone as “a genre unto herself.” The Atlanta native - and recent Golden Globe nominee (Best Original Score) - has become known for her integration of technology into her performances. The Skyline Series will mark her first performance in front of a live audience since the pandemic started. Bringing along a few of her finest and most interesting guitars, King will play a selection of songs from her 20+-plus year career as well as new material from her most recent album, Modern Yesterdays. "I am excited for the future of live music and performance as we slowly and safely find our way out of these dark days. I'm infinitely grateful to Georgia Tech for supporting me in so many ways during this time, and I'm thrilled to be returning to do a LIVE performance for the Skyline Series," says King.

ATL Collective will bring local musical voices together to faithfully relive Dolly Parton’s timeless album, “Jolene,” curated by bassist Robby Handley.

After Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company’s October 2020 premiere of What Problem? was postponed due to COVID-19, Georgia Tech Arts is excited to announce that company dancer and Georgia-native Chanel Howard will work with ImmerseATL artists to present Continuous Replay: Come Together​, a work that’s part of the DNA of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. Howard and fellow company members will then return in January 2022 to present What Problem? as part of Georgia Tech Arts’ 21-22 Series.

The Skyline Series also provides an opportunity to announce Georgia Tech Arts’ partnership with Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre, which has been part of choreographer Troy Schumacher’s residency with Georgia Tech Arts over the past year. Terminus will present an excerpt of a work in progress developed with Schumacher, an Atlanta-native who is now based in New York City, that explores topics around neurobiology and neuroethics. The showing will be immediately followed by a panel discussion with the choreographer and some of the scientists who have contributed to his research. The full work by Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre will premiere during the Georgia Tech Arts 2021-2022 Series.

Other participating organizations include Atlanta Ballet, Atlanta Ballet 2, and Dance Canvas with plans to announce more partners in the coming weeks.

Visit arts.gatech.edu/skyline-series for the full list of performances and event details.

About Georgia Tech Arts: Part of the Division of Student Life, Georgia Tech Arts serves as a home for artists, students and faculty working at the innovative and inspiring intersection of art, science and technology. Georgia Tech Arts weaves art into the learning and research of students and faculty across the Institute and invites the entire community to join in these encounters. Through a blend of professional performances, exhibitions, installations, residencies, and support for student and faculty ideas, Georgia Tech Arts places art at the epicenter of supporting the Strategic Objectives of the entire Institute. arts.gatech.edu

About Georgia Tech: The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion dollars in research annually for government, industry, and society.

This work is the fifteenth in the artist’s “OSHA/ANSI” series, which has featured varied mediums such as stitched canvas, clay, paint, and digital media. In using the Mighty Line Safety Tape on wood panels, Dean chose to highlight the function of the building and “a device [used by GTPD] to demarcate zones, create order, assist in navigation, alert us to potential hazards and ultimately maintain safety.”

It is the largest project that the University of Hertfordshire and SCAD Atlanta-trained artist has undertaken in his career to date. According to Dean, “The composition staggers up or down depending on which way you enter the building. There are stairs that connect two levels, and I wanted the artwork to engage with this architectural detail - as you move through the space… the composition changes.”

In explaining his choice of motif, Dean explains, “This heavy-duty safety tape is commonly utilized as a device to demarcate zones, create order, assist in navigation, alert us to potential hazards, and, ultimately, maintain safety. But now, through my artistic intervention and in the context of The Georgia Tech Police Campus Safety building, there is a duality of existence in which the bold colors and diagonal pattern not only function as a sign of safety, but also as a work of art.”

Interactive Virtual and In-person Events

Visit the Georgia Tech Police Department (@gtpd) highlight reel for the Christopher Paul Dean project on Instagram to enjoy a series of interactive posts about “OSHA/ANSI no. 15: Safety Tape on Panel.” Take your guess at what safety message each series of multi-color stripes represents and learn more about the artist behind the one of the latest public art installations on campus.

“OSHA/ANSI no. 15: Safety Tape on Panel” (2020) is up now and open for everyone to experience and enjoy. The GTPD and Georgia Tech Arts’ team will be hosting a special Tech community day in spring 2021, where you are invited to see the new work, learn about art on campus, meet your GTPD officers, and take a break between classes to enjoy a cup of coffee and donuts!

About the Artist

Christopher Paul Dean is a British artist currently based in Dallas, Texas. He earned an undergraduate degree in Contemporary Applied Arts from the University of Hertfordshire (England) and a master’s degree in Sculpture from Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. Since 2010, Dean has worked as an artist assistant in Denmark (Folk Art School, Holbæk), Detroit (Cranbrook Academy of Art), Atlanta (artist Bojana Ginn), and Mexico (U.S Consulate, Monterrey). He currently serves as lead studio assistant to multimedia artist Gabriel Dawe.

Dean has exhibited internationally, including in London, New York City, Dallas, and multiple locations in Georgia. In 2017, he showed work at UNTITLED during Art Basel Miami Beach. Dean was awarded the commission for “OSHA/ANSI no. 15: Safety Tape on Panel,” the large-scale installation for permanent display at Georgia Tech, in 2020.

Dean has a keen interest in the potential of readymade items as materials for creating art. This focus encourages him to explore objects and scenarios in our everyday lives, and it is through this investigation that the subject of ontology - the philosophical study of being, becoming, or existence - enters his practice. Along with the potential of the readymade, there is also an interest in the potential of process. Dean’s engagement with multiple processes is not only evidence of an artist challenging personal creative boundaries, but also an approach that allows him to explore the levels of material manipulation each readymade requires for transformation into a piece of art.  Whether through needle and thread, painting, parking blocks placed side-by-side, his Digital Intervention series, or large-scale installations, the deconstructive/reconstructive nature of Dean’s work is a method to question, disrupt, and ultimately expand the experience we have with the familiar.

About Georgia Tech Arts

Part of the Division of Student Life, Georgia Tech Arts serves as a home for artists, students and faculty working at the innovative and inspiring intersection of art, science and technology. Georgia Tech Arts weaves art into the learning and research of students and faculty across the Institute and invites the entire community to join in these encounters. Through a blend of professional performances, exhibitions, installations, residencies, and support for student and faculty ideas, Georgia Tech Arts places art at the epicenter of supporting the Strategic Objectives of the entire Institute. arts.gatech.edu

About Georgia Tech Police Department

The Georgia Tech Police Department is a full service campus law enforcement agency in Atlanta, Georgia consisting of more than 100 full time employees, sworn and civilian, dedicated to the safety and security of the campus. Primarily responsible for protecting the life and property of people on the Georgia Tech campus, GTPD officers patrol 24/7 and provide a full range of public safety services including:

• Providing first response to emergencies.

• Enforcing laws and Institute regulations.

• Investigating criminal incidents and traffic accidents.

• Reporting crimes and traffic accidents.

• Conducting crime awareness and prevention programs.

The Georgia Tech Police Department has been accredited under the Law Enforcement Agency Program by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) since 2013. CALEA is the only national credentialing authority for law enforcement agencies in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

Directly to the left of the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, on top of a low hill and framed by oak trees, stands a sculpture made entirely of tree branches and other natural materials woven and bent around each other to form a graceful sculpture that looks like it grew there. The piece is the latest by internationally-acclaimed artist Patrick Dougherty, whose 300+ pieces have appeared all over the world.

Dougherty, who is known for his “stickwork,” describes this piece as an “architectural shrubbery” that reflects structural elements from around Atlanta. When completed, it will be entirely free-standing. The sculpture is visible from Ferst Drive, one of the campus’s main thoroughfares.

Dougherty himself has constructed the piece with a team of volunteers that include Tech students, faculty and staff as well as participants from the Atlanta area. Community installation began Jan. 7 and will wrap up on Jan. 22.

The construction process began with gathering the materials — the sticks themselves — from Serenbe, a New Urbanism community just outside of Atlanta. Once the saplings arrived at the site, Dougherty drilled holes for the largest sticks along the perimeter of the design, following a footprint that he had drafted in advance.

Once the piece has this structural core, the team goes back for an “aesthetic phase”, which Dougherty describes as “using sticks as lines to draw with.” Finally, they put the finishing touches on the piece in the “fix-up stage.”

Ian Buckalew, a second-year ME student, got involved with the installation over the winter break, when he helped gather materials at Serenbe. When he moved back to campus, he volunteered to assist with building the piece on campus.

“I like the natural vibe he’s going for,” said Buckalew, who describes himself as an outdoorsy person, “You don’t see much wilderness in Atlanta.”

Amy Senn, herself a nature artist, volunteered to assist with the project at the recommendation of a friend. She has followed Dougherty’s work for a few years.

“It’s a really cool opportunity to experience nature in a very unexpected way,” said Senn, “like you’re not going to expect to find this natural architectural structure in the middle of a college campus, so to happen upon it and be able to interact with it is pretty special.”

Dougherty’s installation on Georgia Tech’s campus is part of the EcoCommons reclamation project to establish 80 acres of greenspace across campus, and will be the newest section of the EcoCommons to open.

Sponsored by the Kendeda Foundation and in partnership with Serenbe and Georgia Tech Arts, Dougherty’s work reflects Tech’s larger commitment to sustainability.

“Patrick’s art sits at the intersection of creativity, environmental sustainability and collaborative work,” said Aaron Shackelford, director of Georgia Tech Arts.

“All of these are important values for us at Georgia Tech, and I hope the campus and city can join him in creating this remarkable and unique new addition to our home.”

“A good sculpture,” said Dougherty himself, “is one that causes people to have a lot of personal associations.”

His goal for the piece is not to make an environmental statement as much as it is to remind people of the importance of nature and to build those positive associations with the environment.

“Anything that moves in the vein of capturing your imagination and is also a bit natural tends to further that end…reminding people of sustainability, environment, ecology,” Dougherty said.

“You kind of need to be able to go look at a tree once in a while.”

Dougherty’s sculpture is sited near the Kendeda building located on Ferst Drive near West Campus.

Photo by Diana Duarte

Emma Ryan on December 18, 2020 in Entertainment

In partnership with Georgia Tech Arts, Tech’s LGBTQIA Resource Center, and Tech’s Women’s Resource Center, Shilo Shiv Suleman will lead the Georgia Tech community in a series of immersive workshops beginning in January 2021. 

The Fearless Futures series will bring Tech graduate and undergraduate students together virtually to imagine new possibilities for a socially just world, with topics such as Health, Care, and Healing and Earth, Economy, and Resources. The series will culminate with a community-inspired project in the Spring of 2021. 

In addition to being a social justice activist, artist, and speaker, Suleman is the founder of the Fearless Collective, a public arts project based in Southeast Asia that strives to “move from fear to love using participative art.” The Fearless Collective has co-created 40 murals in 10 countries across the world, including India, Canada, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Pakistan.

Below, Suleman explains her vision for her work at Tech and beyond, in her own words. This interview has been edited for clarity. 

..

ER: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your story? How did you come to be involved in the arts and what led you to found Fearless Collective? 

SS: Beauty is my mother tongue. But we didn’t always speak in Beauty.

My mother married young, outside of her religious upbringing. She moved to Singapore, cut off family ties, had two children, and took up mapmaking as a hobby to fill her time. She used to recreate old maps with a single-hair brush and a diamond cutter’s eyeglass in the smallest room in our house, barely big enough to fit her drafting table.

Here was a woman who could make a world.

Beauty became both the financial and emotional backbone of our family. My father was a magician (best known for his disappearing acts, and one night he vanished). My mother found herself responsible for two children, so she began to teach art. At 14, I used to carry her basket of crayons and assist her. During the day she worked two jobs to sustain us, at night we painted. At first, we poured the pain out of our bodies, one bottle of ink at a time – our work back then was full of abandonment and pain.

But here’s the marvellous thing about pain: if you stay with it long enough- it begins to shapeshift.

Beauty saved me.

At 16, I started to illustrate stories of my own life in thick red handbound journals.

I started to tell my own story and found I could tell other stories too, which led to me illustrating books for children, with many published books by the time I was 18.

In December of 2012 I was in Delhi when the Nirbhaya rape happened. At the protests following this incident, people came with candles and banners, but they also came with invisible things like fear that sometimes caused them to buckle. There were thousands of us there. Our fists were clenched, but our eyes were full of water.

Fists clenched, banners high: “Hang the rapist.”

Girls whispering: “It could have been me. It could have been me. It could have been me.”

In my lifetime, this was the greatest flood I had witnessed. We were grieving, we were fire, this was a battle we had raged in our bodies long enough. This is a battle that we shouldn’t have to fight anymore.  As we sat on the streets, there was much nuance and healing in the way we told each other our stories, and revealed our scars to each other.

All the images in the media perpetuated the problem. They fetishised, fixated on details we never needed to know. They sensationalized the stories, but didn’t (let me) heal. These stories in the media were very different from the stories we were telling each other on the pavements.

Fear was absolutely counterproductive to the seismic shifts we needed to see: what we need/ed was more women out in public space, claiming space, in the day and in the night. Moreover, even the imagery in the protests reinforced our oppression- images of women being attacked, images of shadows and silhouette hands reaching for help, women screaming painted in black.  In subtle ways these images only fetishized the violence that we wanted to step away from.

I made another kind of image. It was an image of a woman with her arms crossed over her chest, the word “fearless” scrawled at the bottom. No matter what I am wearing, where I am, what time of night, I never (ever) ask to be raped.

I put this poster online, along with a call for others to affirm what being fearless meant to them, and ended up instigating a flood of hundreds of posters designed by artists across South Asia and the world. This was the beginning of Fearless. 

ER: What does Fearless Collective do? What does it mean to “move from fear to love using participative art?” 

SS: Fearless is a South Asia based public arts project that is led by women based in the Global South. We have worked in over 10 countries, co-creating 40 murals, reclaiming spaces, carving out public depictions of women and queer people, and their significance in societies around the world. Fearless’ work is to show up in spaces of fear, isolation, and trauma and support communities as they reclaim these public spaces with the images and affirmations they choose.

We believe fear is a complete misuse of the imagination. We use participative art to create the (healing) space for people to transform their fears into beauty and love; to imagine into existence their safe and sacred futures. 

In conflict and moments of trauma, we use art to create empathy between people, between communities. In Shaheen Bagh, as we painted images of Muslim women in the midst of anti-CAA protestors, a policeman stopped at our mural and told us how beautiful it was. Art makes us visible to each other. 

ER: What have been some of the highlights of your time leading Fearless Collective? 

SS: Early this year we painted a mural in Shaheen Bagh – revolution heartland, in the midst of anti-CAA protests led by Musllim women. After years of painting all over the world, this was a homecoming for me, as I found myself deeply involved and deeply moved by an issue that spoke to my very identity. 

The Fearless Yathra we’ve just completed has been another huge highlight. As soon as the lockdowns in India eased up, we set out on a 3 city tour – Lucknow, Delhi and Jaipur to work with different communities. We ended up with 3 beautiful murals in the three cities – which spoke to women’s desire, queer love and essential life and labour. In each of these spaces we painted, danced and occupied space joyfully – an act of reclaiming the streets as our own after long months of isolation. 

ER: What do you envision for the Fearless Collective Workshop Series at Georgia Tech? What can prospective participants look forward to in the series?

SS: In this series we are using the imagination as an antidote. Through different themed workshops, we will guide students through a process of creating their own Fearless Future – reimagining the new futures we want to emerge into. After the initial workshop, I will work closely with groups of students to bring to life what they have imagined.  

ER: What about Tech that suits this series specifically?

SS: We are excited to work with students with a tech background. Some of my biggest installations have been technology-based. I have made art installations out in the desert that beat with your heart. Installations that react to the tidal data from oceans and channel them into light. Installations that react to breath. 

Georgia Tech students will have the skill sets to create innovative solutions – this workshop will be a space where I guide you to put those skills to use through a process of imagining new possibilities in a socially just world. 

..

Learn more about the Fearless Futures series here. Find Suleman on Instagram and Facebook, and watch her TED talk here. 

Victor Rogers

Institute Communications

The coronavirus pandemic has touched practically every industry, changing how people work, dine, shop, and travel. The pandemic also changed the entertainment field, bringing a halt to in-person performances from local theaters to Broadway. Aaron Shackelford, director of Georgia Tech Arts, saw the change coming.

“I have colleagues who work in Hong Kong and on the West Coast, so I saw it coming at us as things started to shut down,” Shackelford said, sitting in the Ferst Center for the Arts’ Westbrook Lobby, which now serves as an asymptomatic Covid-19 testing site on Mondays and Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. “In early February my team started creating checklists of procedures in case we had to cancel events — how we were going to update websites, how to contact patrons, and how to handle refunds. We were as prepared as we could be for having these things happen.”

Shackelford recalls being at the annual Clough Student Art Crawl in March talking to students whose work was on display when he received the email from President Cabrera announcing that students, faculty, and staff would not return to campus the following week.

“I remember the very quick walk from Clough back to the office, to execute the plan we had in place,” he said. Georgia Tech Arts canceled its final two performances of the spring season. The Ferst Center remained closed to outside events from March to August, while the Georgia Tech Arts staff worked remotely developing free, virtual content for campus and public audiences.

“We went back to our core values. The reason why there is an arts organization on Georgia Tech’s campus is to foster creativity and innovation, and bring people together to understand the importance of art,” Shackelford said. The staff used their production expertise and tapped into the technological expertise of colleagues across campus to figure out how to create a radically different mode of presentation.

“We’re in the midst of a transition in Georgia Tech Arts of shifting from simply being a place where art happens to being a place that is the hub of the intersections of technology and media. We are still building up the resources and the collaborations needed in order to be on the vanguard, the way in which the strategic plan imagines Georgia Tech in the next 10 years,” Shackelford said. “So, we are really on month six of our 10-year journey. But the pandemic made us do in three months what I originally thought was going to take three years. There is nothing like an emergency to make you get up and get things done. In a strange way it has been beneficial for us as an organization.”

Moving Forward

Georgia Tech Arts has been working with the Recovery Task Force developing a plan to safely invite students, artists, and audiences back to campus. This includes turning the theater into an academic space for hybrid lecture classes for Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 and serving as an asymptomatic Covid-19 testing site.

“The value of being at a place like Georgia Tech is being able to collaborate with various experts across campus who were all thinking about this problem,” said Shackelford, who was a member of a Recovery Task Force subgroup specifically focused on external and public facing events. “My team has been incredible, spending hours doing research and literally measuring the distance between seats.”

Other steps taken to ensure the health and safety of audiences include moving to a virtual box office format allowing for exclusively contactless payment online or by phone. Seat maps and procedures have been developed in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines limiting the number of people in the Ferst Center and allowing for physical distancing in the lobby, restrooms, backstage, and auditorium.

“We are exceedingly fortunate because of Georgia Tech’s surveillance testing system,” Shackelford said. “It allows us to feel confident that we can bring live experiences to our students more quickly and more confidently than a number of our colleagues around the country.”

In September Georgia Tech Arts presented a hybrid performance by Dad’s Garage and hosted by the Student Center Programs Council, using the Ferst Center stage with an audience spaced according to CDC physical distancing guidelines. Georgia Tech Arts facilitated a livestream of the program for remote viewers.

Last month Georgia Tech Arts hosted its first artist on campus since the spring. Composer and guitarist Kaki King performed the world premiere concert of Modern Yesterdays, her latest album, at the Ferst Center. The live performance was closed to the public, but Georgia Tech Arts recorded the show and then streamed it via Facebook Live and YouTube.

On Saturday, Nov. 7, students can take a study break and enjoy classic Looney Tunes cartoons with Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, and more at the Ferst Center. Doors open at 11:30 a.m. and cartoons will start at noon. The event is free, but a BuzzCard is required to be admitted.

“We are being very intentional and incremental in our bringing people together,” Shackelford said. “As we go through each milestone we feel more confident that we can do this. The fall has been our experimental learning semester, and we feel that we are going to be very well positioned for next spring to be even more beneficial. We all have a much greater understanding of what needs to be done to support our students.”

“I have colleagues who work in Hong Kong and on the West Coast, so I saw it coming at us as things started to shut down,” Shackelford said, sitting in the Ferst Center for the Arts’ Westbrook Lobby, which now serves as an asymptomatic Covid-19 testing site on Mondays and Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. “In early February my team started creating checklists of procedures in case we had to cancel events — how we were going to update websites, how to contact patrons, and how to handle refunds. We were as prepared as we could be for having these things happen.”

Shackelford recalls being at the annual Clough Student Art Crawl in March talking to students whose work was on display when he received the email from President Cabrera announcing that students, faculty, and staff would not return to campus the following week.

“I remember the very quick walk from Clough back to the office, to execute the plan we had in place,” he said. Georgia Tech Arts canceled its final two performances of the spring season. The Ferst Center remained closed to outside events from March to August, while the Georgia Tech Arts staff worked remotely developing free, virtual content for campus and public audiences.

“We went back to our core values. The reason why there is an arts organization on Georgia Tech’s campus is to foster creativity and innovation, and bring people together to understand the importance of art,” Shackelford said. The staff used their production expertise and tapped into the technological expertise of colleagues across campus to figure out how to create a radically different mode of presentation.

“We’re in the midst of a transition in Georgia Tech Arts of shifting from simply being a place where art happens to being a place that is the hub of the intersections of technology and media. We are still building up the resources and the collaborations needed in order to be on the vanguard, the way in which the strategic plan imagines Georgia Tech in the next 10 years,” Shackelford said. “So, we are really on month six of our 10-year journey. But the pandemic made us do in three months what I originally thought was going to take three years. There is nothing like an emergency to make you get up and get things done. In a strange way it has been beneficial for us as an organization.”

Moving Forward

Georgia Tech Arts has been working with the Recovery Task Force developing a plan to safely invite students, artists, and audiences back to campus. This includes turning the theater into an academic space for hybrid lecture classes for Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 and serving as an asymptomatic Covid-19 testing site.

“The value of being at a place like Georgia Tech is being able to collaborate with various experts across campus who were all thinking about this problem,” said Shackelford, who was a member of a Recovery Task Force subgroup specifically focused on external and public facing events. “My team has been incredible, spending hours doing research and literally measuring the distance between seats.”

Other steps taken to ensure the health and safety of audiences include moving to a virtual box office format allowing for exclusively contactless payment online or by phone. Seat maps and procedures have been developed in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines limiting the number of people in the Ferst Center and allowing for physical distancing in the lobby, restrooms, backstage, and auditorium.

“We are exceedingly fortunate because of Georgia Tech’s surveillance testing system,” Shackelford said. “It allows us to feel confident that we can bring live experiences to our students more quickly and more confidently than a number of our colleagues around the country.”

In September Georgia Tech Arts presented a hybrid performance by Dad’s Garage and hosted by the Student Center Programs Council, using the Ferst Center stage with an audience spaced according to CDC physical distancing guidelines. Georgia Tech Arts facilitated a livestream of the program for remote viewers.

Last month Georgia Tech Arts hosted its first artist on campus since the spring. Composer and guitarist Kaki King performed the world premiere concert of Modern Yesterdays, her latest album, at the Ferst Center. The live performance was closed to the public, but Georgia Tech Arts recorded the show and then streamed it via Facebook Live and YouTube.

On Saturday, Nov. 7, students can take a study break and enjoy classic Looney Tunes cartoons with Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, and more at the Ferst Center. Doors open at 11:30 a.m. and cartoons will start at noon. The event is free, but a BuzzCard is required to be admitted.

“We are being very intentional and incremental in our bringing people together,” Shackelford said. “As we go through each milestone we feel more confident that we can do this. The fall has been our experimental learning semester, and we feel that we are going to be very well positioned for next spring to be even more beneficial. We all have a much greater understanding of what needs to be done to support our students.”

• "Working Creatively with Machines" - October 14, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. (composition and writing). 
• "Performances with Machines" - October 15, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. (performance).

This event is organized by IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) and the STMS lab (a collective including IRCAM, The French National Centre for Scientific Research, the Ministry of Culture, and Sorbonne University), in collaboration with Georgia Tech’s School of Music, NYU Steinhardt – Music Education, the UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, and the Atlanta Office of the Cultural Services of the Embassy of France in the United States.

Learn more about these events and access the streaming link.

Read this news story to learn about all of the virtual programming offered by Georgia Tech as part of the 2020 France Atlanta Festival.

Register for #NB40 Art Unveiling

Support Nu Beta Endowment*
*Please include "Nu Beta Endowment" under "Other Designations."

Georgia Tech Arts is excited to support Georgia Tech’s Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated^®, Nu Beta Chapter as a marketing and event streaming partner.

About #NB40 Art Commission
In 1979, the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated^®, Nu Beta Chapter was chartered at Georgia Tech and became the first black sorority recognized by the Georgia Tech Pan Hellenic Council. In honor of the organization's 40th anniversary, alumna Maria Bailey Benson, IE 1992 and MSIE 1994, led the commission of two artworks to recognize all of the contributions of Nu Beta Chapter and Alumnae to the Tech community over the past four decades and as a tribute to all Black women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). The two pieces, Sister and Her Mind is Open, will be displayed prominently in Crosland Tower, Georgia Tech's library, for all to enjoy for years to come. Tracy Murrell is the artist selected for the project and is a prominent Atlanta-based artist and curator who describes her work as "a celebration of the beauty and grace that I see in all women of color."

“The members of Nu Beta have always been campus leaders. As a continuation of that leadership, alumnae of Nu Beta commissioned a prominent black female artist, Tracy Murrell, to create two pieces of artwork to celebrate Black women in STEM. These artworks are the first commissioned artworks located in the new Georgia Tech library, as well as the first artworks commissioned by a Georgia Tech Black Greek organization,” said Benson.

Support the Nu Beta Endowment Scholarship
The #NB40 Art Commission also coincides with the launch of a new campaign supporting the Nu Beta Endowment Scholarship previously established by AKA alumnae.

According to Benson, “Nu Beta alumnae’s philanthropic leadership at Georgia Tech will now include a named endowed scholarship, annual donations to Roll Call to support the undergrads, and permanent commissioned artwork in the library where we ALL spent countless hours persevering. Nu Beta has had less than 250 members over the past 40-some years but has an indelible legacy of being ‘small, but mighty!’”  

To support the Nu Beta Endowment Scholarship, please click below and include "Nu Beta Endowment" under "Other Designations."

Donate Today

Here is a letter (digitized to share) from American composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane to Aaron Shackelford, director of Georgia Tech Arts. Simply put, Gabriel has some questions for you. Here’s just a taste of the concepts he's exploring:

• I've been thinking a lot about technology. How it can be at once dazzling and destructive. I wonder: do you ever feel imprisoned by having too many choices?

• Can an algorithm be neutral? Can the people who write algorithms be neutral? Should they be neutral?

Will you write back to Gabriel?

Gabriel’s creative process begins with deep research that leads to wildly innovative compositions (check out his Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and Spotify pages). Georgia Tech Arts is partnering with Gabriel on a year’s worth of residency activities and discussions to prepare for his performance in a future season, and he’d like to know what you think.

Read his letter and respond with your thoughts on technology, efficiency, and the sacrifices we're willing to make for convenience and access to information. Gabriel prefers snail mail, but if you’re unable to manage it, please email your letter to info@arts.gatech.edu. We can print and mail it for you. We hope you enjoy this opportunity to connect personally with Gabriel Kahane and his work!

There's no need to register to get started with MURAL. Below are the upcoming prompts with a new MURAL space launching each week through the end of the semester.

Week 1: What does self-care mean to you and what are some methods you are currently utilizing to promote self-care?

Visit Self-care MURAL

Week 2: What is your favorite quote or power words that keep you motivated in adversity?

Visit Motivation MURAL

Week 3: Please share any tips that you have found beneficial in managing your stress before finals.

Visit Finals MURAL

All three MURAL spaces will remain open through May 5, 2020.

Here's a little tutorial video with some tricks for unlocking the different features of MURAL.

*We remind students that they must adhere to Georgia Tech policies for student conduct when creating and sharing content. Also, please think of this as a public space and be careful about not sharing any personally identifiable information.

Submit your project for consideration by May 1, 2020 to be considered.

LEARN MORE & APPLY

VIEW GALLERY

Just as varied as the artwork on display are the majors of the participating students who represent the departments of Architecture, Computer Science, Industrial Design, Neuroscience, Materials Science Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Psychology, and beyond. Georgia Tech Arts is thrilled to share the talents and creativity of these students in addition to their work in the classroom and research labs and hope you will immerse yourself in the incredible art.

To learn more about the biannual Clough Student Art Crawl and view the People’s Choice Award winner(s) after March 15, 2020, visit arts.gatech.edu/content/clough-art-crawl.

Get your comfy pants on, check your snack stockpile, and enjoy!

1.    Los Angeles Plays Itself

“A fascinating video essay about how Hollywood uses the architecture of Los Angeles, and the love/hate relationship it has with landmarks throughout the city. I would love for a sequel to be made about Atlanta.” 

2.    Singin’ In the Rain
“The iconic story of how new technology creates a shift in art, as Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds dance and sing their way to stardom with the invention of sound in movies.”

3.    World on a Wire Parts 1 & 2
“Before there was Westworld, there was this two-part German TV serial that questions how technology shifts our perception of reality and experience.”

4.    The Conversation
“Francis Ford Coppola asks questions about surveillance, technology, and ethics in this film starting Gene Hackman and featuring a very young Harrison Ford.”

5.    Diamantino
“If you believe that all film is art, then this campy Portuguese film is for you. Genetic engineering, fluffy puppies, and a conspiracy for Portugal to leave the EU via the greatest soccer player in the world all collide in a surreal experience.”

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash.

Georgia Tech Arts newly vested director, Dr. Aaron Shackelford, explains the focus on contemporary dance programming in future seasons: “The cultivation of contemporary dance at Georgia Tech can make a uniquely strong contribution to the field in terms of both audience and artistic development. Contemporary dance companies and choreographers are also on the forefront of pressing issues that face the lives of students and many members of the community. These include the deep collaboration inherent to their creative process, the exploration of social issues, reconsideration of physicality, and abstract thinking. Given that these topics are not easily taught or established in the classroom, Georgia Tech Arts, along with the selected dance companies, is committed to providing meaningful engagement experiences for students and beyond.”

The two-year grant supported the sold-out performance of VIVA MOMIX on March 1, 2020, a work that Georgia Tech Arts Dr. Shackelford added to the 2019-2020 season programming after his arrival to the department this past summer. It represents Georgia Tech Arts’ commitment to establishing itself as a hub for innovative dance work that invites the entire community to share in these encounters.

With the funding of the Loridans Foundation, Georgia Tech Arts will also present three additional, yet to be announced contemporary dance ensembles in fall 2020, spring 2021, and fall 2021.

“The Trustees of the Charles Loridans Foundation are so pleased that Dr. Aaron Shackelford and his team at Georgia Tech Arts want to bring the best national and local contemporary dance companies to the Ferst Center,” says Bob Edge, Chair of the Charles Loridans Foundation. “This dance initiative can be artistically important not only to the Tech community but all of Metropolitan Atlanta.  Recent enhancements at the Ferst make it an ideal venue for the ambitious dance presentations Dr. Shackelford has in mind; and the Loridans Trustees are very pleased to support this important program with a multi-year grant.”

Georgia Tech Arts will announce its full 2020-2021 season on May 6, 2020.

Sixteen individuals from across campus submitted 27 entries for consideration. One piece from each applicant was then selected, including paintings, photography, and multimedia pieces.

Previously held in the fall, the art exhibit was moved to spring semester to give faculty and staff more time to create works that fit this year’s “Welcome Home” theme.

“There is a lot of ‘newness’ within the university — a new president, some new leadership at the college level, and our department has a lot of new people,” said Ben Dostal, operations manager for the Office of the Arts. “The theme of ‘home’ kept coming up, and we decided to tie it to the show. Home isn’t necessarily meant as a physical house, but as what makes you feel welcome, included, and part of the community. It allows the artists to go in whatever direction they want.”

Kelly Pierce, marketing manager with the Office of the Arts, said it is interesting to see everyone’s interpretation of home.

“We wanted the artists’ works to be personal, and not tied specifically to their work at Georgia Tech,” Pierce said. “It was nice to see them take that step.”

Entries came from all over campus including the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech Professional Education, the Department of Housing and Resident Life, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Institute Communications, and the School of Literature, Media, and Communication.

“It is interesting to see the creativity on campus — people who are technical by profession but also have this awesome creative side,” Dostal said. “As we talk about the future of Georgia Tech Arts and the plan to further integrate art across campus, it’s nice to see there’s already a foundation that leads to the spark we’re trying to create.”

The Faculty and Staff Art Exhibit is free and open during normal building hours of the Ferst Center for the Arts (Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. and during performances). An artists’ reception will be held Thursday, Feb. 20, from 11 a.m. to noon in the Richards Gallery.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 5:30 p.m.
Ferst Center for the Arts Lobby
This event is FREE - Space is limited, so we encourage you to RSVP to secure your spot.

Registration Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScXmoN87-E5-mi-VuRDQL216Dh-bzsZyDsg9dSWM81eLFIOiw/viewform

Then, don't forget to join us for the Atlanta premiere of DESCENT at the Ferst Center on November 23. Learn more at https://arts.gatech.edu/content/kinetic-light-descent

Image description: Alice is a light skinned multi-racial woman with brown, yellow and copper streaks in her curly hair. She smiles and gazes at the camera. A necklace of Autumn colored beads sits around her neck. Photo by Beverlie Lord.

The performance holds true to the mission of Georgia Tech Arts by highlighting the role technology played in shaping an altogether new artform of the time, while also raising up the artistic pursuits of our students alongside world-renowned talent.

The best part is that Georgia Tech students are free at the door - just plan to arrive early with your BuzzCard in hand. Faculty and staff enjoy a 20% discount when tickets are purchased in advance or the day of the performance from the Ferst Center Box Office (open Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.).

Pre-show festivities also include a free VIP photo booth fit for a movie star in the plaza directly in front of the Ferst Center. Make sure to bring your friends to capture some buzzworthy pics for social! Special guest host and film buff Lee Tsiantis, who previously worked with Turner Classic Movies and introduced Max Ophuls' 1949 film CAUGHT on air with host Robert Osborne in 2011, will host the festivities and introduce each film excerpt with fun, behind-the-scenes details.

Visit https://arts.gatech.edu/content/changing-score-classic-films-reimagined to learn more.

Departments across campus will sponsor seminars, workshops, round tables, and performances until November 15. Visit https://france-atlanta.org/ for full details.

Welcome to Erewhon Film Screening with Creators Pierre Cassou-Noguès & Gwenola Wagon
Co-organized by the Cultural services of the French Embassy in the United States and Georgia Tech's Office of the Arts

Thursday, September 26, 2019 at 7 p.m.
Ferst Center for the Arts
RSVP online

Africa & New Technologies: Oulimata Gueye, Critic & Curator from France/Senegal
Co-organized by the Cultural services of the French Embassy in the United States, Georgia Tech School of Modern Languages, Georgia Tech School of Literature, Media and Communication, Georgia State University – World Languages & Cultures, CFFS- Center for French and Francophone Studies at Duke University, and Xam Xam African Digital Perspectives.

Q&A with Georgia Tech Students
Tuesday, October 8, 11 a.m.-12 p.m.
Swann 115

Interview on WREK Radio 91.1 FM
Tuesday, October 8, 1 p.m.-2 p.m.

Non-Aligned Utopias: A Round Table Discussion
Wednesday, October 9, 6 p.m.
Clary Theater, Bill Moore Student Success Center

Composer’s Residency & Recording Session in the City: French Composer Loïc Guénin & NOORG
Co-organized by the Cultural services of the French Embassy in the United States, Georgia Tech School of Music, with the support of the Face Foundation, Spedidam, Sacem, Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs – Atlanta, Dad’s Garage, Fire House, and Le Phare à Lucioles.

Public Outdoor Performance
Wednesday, October 16, 12 p.m.
Georgia Tech Campanile

Collaborative Performance with NOORG & Students
Friday, October 18, 7 p.m.
Stubbins Gallery, College of Design

Workshop with Georgia Tech Students
October 10, 17 & 18, 3 p.m.
West Village

Music & Technology | LABOFACTORY: Jean-Marc Chomaz, Filippo Fabbri, Laurent Karst & Greg Louis
Co-organized by Cultural Services of the Embassy of France in the United States, Office of Science and Technology at the Embassy of France in the United States, the Georgia Tech School of Music, L’X – École polytechnique, La Chaire arts & sciences de l’École polytechnique, l’École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs – PSL and the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation.

Water Drums Installation
October 16-18, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Stubbins Gallery, College of Design

Concert
Wednesday, October 16, 7:30 p.m-9:00 p.m.
Stubbins Gallery, College of Design

Workshop for Scientists of Georgia Tech
Thursday, October 17, 10 a.m.
Stubbins Gallery, College of Design

Workshop for Musicians of Georgia Tech
Friday, October 18, 3:00 p.m.
Stubbins Gallery, College of Design

“Time is not distant when I shall show an automaton, which left to itself, will act as though possessed of reason and without any willful control from the outside,” he wrote.

A sketch of this boat is on display at Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center for the Arts as part of a new exhibition History of AI, curated by Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) student Edwardo Martinez. The 18 pieces chronicle the progress of artificial intelligence (AI) from 1770 through today. Martinez pairs actual advancements in AI, like Tesla’s boat, with pop culture’s understanding of it, including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mickey Mouse comics, and HBO drama West World.

“AI is starting to impact a lot of individuals' lives, so using art as the medium and choosing commonplace science fiction tropes is a good way to draw people into the exhibition,” Martinez said.

Ultimately, he hopes the exhibition illustrates how AI hasn’t always been seen as a problem but a possibility.

“A lot of what we hear about AI can highlight negative outcomes, with the extreme case of humanity being destroyed, but people like Tesla saw it as the future in a very matter-of-fact way.”

Finding motivation through OMSCS

Martinez, who works as a software engineer, has always been interested in AI and used his OMSCS studies to develop that passion. In one of his first classes, he thought it would be fun to create a timeline of the field, but the idea didn’t become a reality until his final semester when he took OMSCS Associate Director of Student Experience David Joyner’s Educational Technology course, which teaches students how to put together educational research projects.

“It helps students figure out an intended audience, what research should be done, choose a delivery structure, and develop a plan to get a project done,” Martinez said. “It was a really good way of forcing myself to do research on something I thought was interesting.”

Using Google Scholar, Martinez was able to find a narrative of AI’s evolution, but he needed to find a way to present it compellingly because one of his goals was to make the research accessible to people who didn’t work in computing. Soon, he realized art would be the most approachable medium.

Around the same time, Martinez heard of the Ferst Center’s Creative Curricular Initiatives grant program and applied. With a match from the College of Computing, Martinez won the grant and used it to laser cut and 3-D print different pieces for the exhibition at maker-spaces near where he lives in San Francisco.

Perhaps his most ambitious yet is “Theseus.” It’s a piece that combines neon-yellow florescent acrylic and 3-D printing to tell the story of Claude Shannon’s intelligent mouse that could solve a maze on its own.

The exhibition will be on display in the lobby of the Ferst Center until April 25, but Martinez hopes to expand and send the exhibition to other AI research centers. In the meantime, the entire exhibition can be viewed on its website with detailed descriptions of Martinez’s artistic process.

The Georgia Institute of Technology heads to Washington, DC this spring for ACCelerate: ACC Smithsonian Creativity and Innovation Festival. Four Georgia Tech projects will be featured in the festival held at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History April 5-7, 2019. The festival, a gathering of the 15 Atlantic Coast Conference institutions, celebrates creative exploration and research at the nexus of science, engineering, art, and design.

The festival features performances and interactive installations from the 15 ACC schools. The Georgia Tech projects are created by students, faculty, and researchers who are crossing traditional boundaries to develop new possibilities for exploration, expression, and creativity. These four projects were selected from among 14 Georgia Tech submissions juried by the ACC Festival Committee:

FaceSynth - an interactive audio exhibit that allows visitors to “play” an analog synthesizer with their facial expressions. FaceSynth eliminates the learning curve for visitors by intuitively translating a visitor’s facial expressions into beautiful analog synthesis. Project Members: Carter Culwell, Daniel Kuntz

Psi and Delta - a collaborative classroom video game that enables students to experience the world of the very small. Players control robots in a virtual quantum world that transforms the standard mathematical results of quantum mechanics to rule systems that are easy to learn and master. Project Members:  Aditya Anupam, Colin Stricklin, Charlie Denton, Shubhangi Gupta, Pragati Singh, Nassim Parvin, Azad Naeemi.

Light Orchard - over two dozen light stations allow for both touch input and visual output. As visitors walk through the system, the stations work together to present visuals, run simulations, and play games. Project Members: Noah Posner, Matt Swarts, Heydn Ericson, James Hallam, Ellen Do, and Clement Zheng.

Sound Happening - in this playful music-making installation, participants interact with balls while standing underneath a webcam that tracks the motion of the balls. The installation acts as an invisible keyboard where participants trigger tones depending on where they stand and the color of the ball, creating unique soundscapes. Project Members: Richard Savery, Duri Long, Brian Magerko

For more information about the Tech teams please contact the Georgia Tech Office of the Arts.

The 2019 ACCelerate festival is programmed by Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

For more information about the ACC and to view a full schedule of events, please visit: www.acceleratefestival.com.

More than 150 works by Georgia Tech graduate and undergraduate students will be on display at Clough Commons starting at 4 pm, and then the evening continues at 6 pm at the Ferst Center for the Arts with performances by student groups including GT Salsa Club, Taal Tadka, Infinite Harmony and more, with a light reception.

As an added bonus, the opening night at the Ferst Center will feature demonstrations by four innovative Georgia Tech student project teams as they prepare to take part in the 2019 ACCelerate: ACC Smithsonian Creativity and Innovation Festival in Washington, DC this April.

The visual, digital, structural, and literary art works will be exhibited through July at Clough Commons and feature works of art that are inspired by the connection between artistic expression and the world of science.  In addition to the artwork created independently by students, included in this year’s Art Crawl are artworks developed as part of three programmatic initiatives at Tech:

• International Year of the Periodic Table: In conjunction with the Georgia Tech College of Sciences and the year-long celebration of the International Year of the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements, a special section of the CAC will be devoted to art inspired by the periodic table or a chemical element.
• S.A.W.: Science.Art.Wonder is a Georgia Tech student organization that develops art projects based on research currently conducted at Tech and at Emory University. S.A.W. recruits artists (Tech students, faculty, or staff) to create art based on a paired research lab's work.
• Creative Curricular Initiatives: Creative Curricular Initiatives is a program of the Georgia Tech Office of the Arts dedicated to the idea that nurturing students' artistic sensibilities and exposing students to artistic process is essential to developing creativity and innovation. The Art Crawl will include works from three projects that received CCI funding: 1)  “Interpretations of Sustainable Business” is a collaborative art project under the direction of Dr. Jennifer Lux, writer and editor for the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business. Created by 23 Georgia Tech faculty, staff, students, and alumni., each piece in the 4’ x 5’ artwork relates to environmental sustainability or social dimensions of sustainability; 2) “Like Picasso and Einstein: lines, forms and dimensions” is a gallery exhibition that takes you to the intersection of art and science through student artwork from the Georgia Tech course CEE 8813. A graduate class developed by Dr. Francesco Fedele, this course introduced students to the geometry of space and manifolds, and how these concepts influenced modern arts and sciences; 3) “Shape Machine” is an exhibition of modular printed mylar pieces created by the students of Shape Grammars, the ARCH 4508 class developed by Dr. Athanassios Economou. Students explored fundamentals of spatial and visual composition through a new interactive software, Shape Machine, developed at the Shape Computation Lab at the School of Architecture.

After review by a jury of faculty and staff, winners will receive prizes in each of the categories of visual, digital, structural, literary and performance art; the College of Sciences will also present awards for the top submissions in the special section on the periodic table. Those who view the exhibit at Clough can also vote on a People’s Choice Award. Winners will be announced on March 25. 

The annual Art Crawl now runs in the Spring and Fall semesters.  Each Art Crawl will have a new theme to inspire student artists and to shape the exhibition.  The next Art Crawl will be open for submissions in early fall 2019.

The Clough Art Crawl is coordinated by the Georgia Tech Office of the Arts in partnership with the Georgia Tech Library. For more information please contact info@arts.gatech.edu.

Apply by February 8 to be a part of the annual Clough Commons Art Crawl, a juried, multi-media exhibition of student art work that opens on March 8.

The theme of the Spring 2019 exhibition is Art Meets Science, with a special section focused on art inspired by the periodic table or a chemical element. Each student may submit one piece for consideration; works can be visual, digital, structural, literary or performance art. Prizes will be awarded in all categories.

Friday, February 8 is the deadline to apply – don’t miss out!

Complete the application form at http://arts.gatech.edu/artwork-submission-form

Turner Classic Movies interviewed Chenzira on December 12 during a screening of Hair Piece as part of an evening dedicated to the 2018 selections.

Chenzira is an independent African-American producer, director, animator, writer, and experimental film and transmedia storyteller. She was among the earliest African-American woman animators and black experimental filmmakers, and the first African-American to earn a PhD in Digital Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The 10-minute Hair Piece (1984) is “a satirical short film incorporating mixed media and animation to describe the emotional connection of black women and their hair. Chenzira says the film was inspired by the question, ‘Why is kinky hair seen as broken?’”

The recipient of numerous prestigious awards, the film has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum and others, and is considered by many as essential for discussions of racism, African-American cinema, and empowerment.

One of the first African-Americans to teach film production in higher education, Chenzira is a professor of Women Studies, Film and Video at Spelman College.

Congratulations Dr. Chenzira!

Foster comes to Georgia Tech after serving as Managing Director of Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta, where she helped rebrand the theater company and dramatically increased both audiences and earned income. Prior to that, Foster was the Artistic and Executive Producing Director for 16 years at Hillbarn Theatre in Foster City, California.

“We are very pleased to welcome Lee as part of our Office of the Arts team. As we bring together the best in the arts with innovative technologies, her leadership and experience will be integral to the success of the program,” states Madison Cario, Director of the Office of the Arts.

Foster is noted for her creative management and thoughtful partnerships that provided “economies of scale” for Hillbarn Theatre simultaneously with two other professional California companies, Diablo Ballet and the Fremont Symphony Orchestra. She holds an MFA in Musical Theatre from Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, and an MBA in Business from the University of San Francisco. She began her career at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco after graduating in Chinese Studies from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.  She serves as a 2018 Impact Area Advisor to the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. She is married to musician Greg Sudmeier and lives in Serenbe.

As Assistant Director, Foster will oversee the financial and business operations of the Office of the Arts.  The Office manages the Arts@Tech professional performance series, the campus public art program, student engagement programs, the operation of the Ferst Center for the Arts, and works with the Georgia Tech Arts Advisory Board and the Georgia Tech Arts Council on the strategic direction, collaboration, and promotion of campus arts experiences. 

The call for artwork is open to all active staff and faculty employees at Georgia Tech through October 19. Entries can be submitted at http://arts.gatech.edu/content/faculty-and-staff-art-exhibit-0.

There is no fee to submit your work for consideration, or to participate if selected, but all  artwork must be display-ready (framed, mounted, etc) when received by the Office of the Arts prior to the opening.  Visual art in a variety of media will be considered, although space is limited.

A reception honoring participating artists will be held November 13, at the opening of the exhibit. Visitors will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite piece of artwork on display for the "People's Choice Award."

All submissions will be reviewed and juried. Each staff or faculty member may submit up to two pieces. Please note that undergraduate and graduate students can submit artwork to the Clough Art Crawl which takes place during Spring semester. Information on the Clough Art Crawl will be announced in December.

Submit artwork at: http://arts.gatech.edu/content/faculty-and-staff-art-exhibit-0

Professor Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former USSR, and arrived in the United States in 1993 when his family was granted asylum. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press), Deaf Republic (forthcoming from Graywolf) and several other books, including Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, which he co-translated with Jean Valentine (Alice James Books). He has edited many collections of poems and essays, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins) which has been called “a modern classic.”

In 2018, Professor Kaminsky was awarded the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Poetry. His poems have been translated into numerous languages around the globe and his books have been published in Turkey, Netherlands, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain, and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize.

His other awards include the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, The Whiting Writers Award, Ruth Lilly Fellowship, Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize, Pushcart Prize, and others. Recently, he was on the shortlist for the Neusdadt International Literature Prize. His essays appear in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian (UK), and Boston Review.

He has previously served as the director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute at Poetry Foundation, and as a professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. He is an award-winning teacher who is committed to building science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) — integrating the arts into the STEM fields.

“Dr. Kaminsky’s international focus puts him squarely within our strategic plans for expanding Georgia Tech’s global footprint,” said Ivan Allen College Dean Jacqueline J. Royster. “His international profile in the world of poetry and his multi-dimensional experience working and teaching poetry within a technological context hold the promise not only of sustaining the momentum of Poetry@Tech, but also of creating the next vanguard for poetry within the 21st century technological university.”

Dr. Kaminsky will begin at Georgia Tech on August 1, 2018.

Royster added, “We are thrilled to have him with us as he continues his remarkable record as a poet, and as we carry forward Georgia Tech’s trajectory as a place for excellence in poetry, for the articulation of its relevance and importance in our contemporary world, and for how poetry can be taught in our technological age.”

The renovation of the Ferst Center will include the installation of new theater seating, lighting, carpeting, and upgrades to the accessible seating areas. The building will remain open during the fall for events and exhibitions scheduled in the Ferst lobby, although the theater itself closed on Aug. 19. When completed, the theater will have all new seats, two center section aisles instead of the existing single aisle in the lower level, a wheelchair lift, and more accessible seating.

The fall semester features “Fun and Free” programs that are exclusive to campus audiences, including the return of three events from last year: the popular RATS Hunt puzzle game, the Faculty and Staff Art Exhibition, and performer Dahlak Brathwaite who was a guest at the 2017 Georgia Tech Diversity Symposium. Fun and Free events will also include performances by Cardell Dance and Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel, events for Family Weekend, and Out of Hand Theater’s Zombie Outbreak.

Art and technology take center stage when performances resume in the fully refurbished Ferst Center in January. Office of the Arts Director Madison Cario has charted a new direction for the Arts@Tech Season of professional arts programming. Audiences will see music, dance, and theater in a range of presentation styles, all selected for both their artistic quality and implementation of new and innovative technologies on stage.

“Audiences will experience a hologram concert with Maria Callas, and another with virtual pop star Maya Kodes, performers with 3D-printed costumes, and a beautiful video game played live to live music — these experiences and more will combine for a season carefully curated at the intersection of art and technology,” said Cario. “We believe Georgia Tech is unique in the nation in presenting a performing arts season exclusively at this intersection.”

Each presentation will feature engagement activities that offer a deeper look into the themes, technology, and artistry of the work. Engagement activities are free and open to students, faculty, and staff, and can be arranged for a class or group. Visit arts.gatech.edu/engagement for more information.

All free events in the fall will require tickets. Admission is charged for the Arts@Tech season performances starting in January, and discounted tickets for those events are available for Georgia Tech students, faculty, and staff. All tickets will be available beginning August 20 at the Ferst Center Box Office at 404-894-9600. Information is also available at www.arts.gatech.edu. All programs are subject to change.

FUN AND FREE
Great events across campus

Out of Hand Theater: The RATS Hunt
Sept. 13-14, 6 p.m.
George P. Burdell has been sighted on campus and you have one hour to find him before he disappears again! Assemble your team, follow the clues, and solve the puzzles to beat the clock. Uncovering Georgia Tech's hidden treasures has never been so fun. Recommended for new and returning students, up to five per team, who did not play last year. Sign up at tickets.arts.gatech.edu.

The RATS Hunt begins in the Ferst Center Lobby. https://vimeo.com/280963592

Dahlak Brathwaite: Spiritrials
Sept. 24, noon and 6 p.m.
Addiction, religion, and the law intersect in a court-ordered drug rehabilitation program. A timely exploration of the American criminal justice system, this multidimensional play blurs the line between hip-hop and dramatic performance. Dahlak Brathwaite weaves through the autobiographical and the fictional, music and monologue, to examine his place in what appears to be a cultural rite of passage as a young black male. Tickets are available at tickets.arts.gatech.edu.

The Garage at Technology Square
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=VxNN1RX-M5Q

BANDALOOP
Sept. 26-30
The Georgia Tech Office of the Arts begins a two-year program with the internationally acclaimed vertical dance company BANDALOOP. The company founded by Amelia Rudolph will be in residence in late September to begin working on #ATLPublicCanvas, a major event that will encompass participation from all segments of the campus and community leading to performances in Spring 2020. The campus community will interact with the company at artist discussions, rehearsals performed on the outside wall of the historic Biltmore Hotel, and Family Weekend events. Call 404-894-2787 for more information. https://www.bandaloop.org/urbanmodern

Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel
Oct. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel is Scott Burland (theremin) and Frank Schultz (lap steel guitar). One critic has described this music as “evolving eddies of sound, vapors of tones that develop and transform gracefully. Hypnotic pulses and dreamy drones weave together to form a kaleidoscope of sounds and moods, ambient clouds and swooning collages that are as much about texture as they are timbre, like a long-lost soundtrack to a deep-sea documentary." Presented in conjunction with the Georgia Tech School of Music. Tickets are available at tickets.arts.gatech.edu.

West Village Performance Space, Room 175

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OOtROaFeBo

Out of Hand Theater: Zombie Outbreak
Oct. 30, 5 p.m.
A zombie epidemic has taken over! You are humanity’s last chance to survive, and health officials have left you materials to stop the outbreak. From microscope discovery to zombie quarantine, this is another fun Out of Hand Theater participatory experience for all Georgia Tech students, up to six per team. Sign up at tickets.arts.gatech.edu.

http://outofhandtheater.com/

Cardell Dance: Supper, People on the Move
November 6-7, 7:30 p.m.
This piece by choreographer Silvana Cardell is an examination of the human experience of all people on the move, looking for new horizons. Inspired by themes of migration, it explores the complex experience of dislocation. Cardell creates evocative forms of movement — abstract, personal, universal — performed with unrelenting physicality and striking moments of beauty. The full experience of this event includes a pre-show photography installation curated by artist Jennifer Baker that chronicles the stories of immigrants who came to the United States from around the world, and a talk with the artists after the performance.

Ferst Stage with all seating onstage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4XPURWHXbY

Georgia Tech Faculty and Staff Art Exhibit
Opening reception: November 13, 4-6 p.m.
Exhibit dates: Nov. 13 – Jan. 31
The Office of the Arts presents the second annual Arts@Tech Faculty and Staff Art Exhibit. This exhibit serves as a unique opportunity for Georgia Tech faculty and staff to display their artwork in the Ferst Center for the Arts. At the opening reception and for the first week of the exhibit, visitors can vote for their favorite piece of art. 

Ferst Center Lobby

Arts@Tech Season
In the newly renovated Ferst Theater

Manual Cinema: The End of TV
Jan. 12, 2019, 8 p.m.
Set in a postindustrial Rust Belt city in the 1990s, The End of TV explores the quest to find meaning amid a constant barrage of commercial images. The presentation features cinematic shadow puppetry and lo-fi live video, with music performed live by a five-piece band.

vimeo.com/218085970

Komansé Dance Theater: Skid
Jan. 25-26, 2019, 8 p.m.
Skid is a celebration of the vulnerability and strength of humanity. Komansé Dance Theater, led by Georgia Tech student Raianna Brown, takes a provocative look at homelessness and gentrification in the metro Atlanta area and beyond. Using an innovative set design and featuring 3D-printed costuming, this production brings together dance and technological innovation to embody the human connection between art and social justice.

www.komansedance.org

Fifth House Ensemble: Journey Live
Feb. 9, 2019, 8 p.m.
The video game Journey, described by critics as “the most beautiful game of its time,” takes center stage as Chicago-based Fifth House Ensemble teams up with composer Austin Wintory to present an original, interactive live performance of his Grammy-nominated score. Fifth House Ensemble performs the game's soundtrack as audience members play the game on stage. The calming, beautiful, and emotional video game comes to life in an immersive, interactive environment.
youtube.com/watch?v=9iOPp9ARXbI

Mark Nizer 4D Comedy Juggler
Feb. 16, 2019, 8 p.m.
World champion juggler, award-winning comedian, and inventor Mark Nizer brings his live 3D show to the stage, juggling laser beams, glowing red balls, and just about any new invention he can imagine. Nizer is constantly incorporating new technology into his hilarious performances.

youtube.com/watch?v=LVJFvDDPvS0

Callas in Concert: The Hologram Tour
Feb. 23, 2019, 8 p.m.
An Atlanta premiere, Callas in Concert brings the beloved opera star Maria Callas (1923–1977), considered by many as the best opera singer of all time, back to the stage as a hologram, accompanied by the Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra. State-of-the-art digital and laser projection creates a full concert experience featuring original recordings that are digitally remastered.

youtube.com/watch?v=XrZEEUXYUgE&feature=youtu.be

Robbie Lynn Hunsinger: Music Technologist in Concert
March 8, 2019, 8 p.m.
A classical oboist turned technologist, composer, and interactive art installation and multimedia concert artist, Atlanta native and Nashville resident Robbie Lynn Hunsinger performs original multimedia works with live sampling and sound reactive projections. The audience will participate in this interactive installation in an intimate setting on the Ferst stage.

vimeo.com/181519562

Maya Kodes: The Virtual Singer
March 29, 2019, 8 p.m.
Maya Kodes is a singer who has released a dance pop song on iTunes, recorded an EP, performed over 30 concerts and amassed over 5,500 Facebook followers . . . all as a hologram! The world’s first interactive, real-time virtual pop star, Kodes is the creation of Neweb Labs in Montreal. Local dancers will join Maya onstage for this performance.

youtube.com/watch?v=E3EKg7SOPb0

For More Information:

Stephanie Lee at 404-894-9196 or stephanie.lee@arts.gatech.edu

Now in its second year, CCI projects discover and share the connections between art and academics.  “Across the wide spectrum of CCI projects, we find that although they are different in content, the processes of innovation, design, and creativity are shared between the arts and Georgia Tech’s core academic disciplines,” states Madison Cario, Director of the Office of the Arts. 

Creative Curricular Initiatives is dedicated to the idea that nurturing students' artistic sensibilities and exposing students to artistic process is essential to developing creativity and innovation.  In the past year, projects have spanned classrooms, research labs, and studios, and resulted in real and virtual exhibitions, a film festival, musical recordings, Capstone projects, radio podcasts, and more.

The Fall 2018 projects were selected from among 29 proposals and include:

• ARCH 4508: Shape Grammars, Athanassios Economou - Students explore fundamentals of spatial and visual composition through a new mediated environment and software, Shape Machine, developed at the Shape Computation Lab at the School of Architecture.
• ARCH 8866: Structural Folds, Daniel Baerlecken - Structural Folds explores concepts of folding as a form-generator for structural and architectural systems that allow the ability to respond to diverse social and climatic time-based scenarios. The project will research the embedded kinetic possibilities of folded structures.
• ECE 4011: Off the Grid, Thomas Collins – Students will install projects fusing art and technology in a ceiling grid designed as a gallery space located in the Digital Design Laboratory. Projects may make sound, create visual effects, or invite user interaction.
• LMC 4602: Performance Practicum, “The Safety Show,” Melissa Foulger - A Devised Theatre piece created by Georgia Tech students will explore how we are looking for moments of safety in an age of divisiveness, and will use cards collected from students as part of the Georgia Tech Office of the Arts’ I Feel Safe When campaign.
• MUSI 3611 and MUSI 3771: Seven Bridges of Königsberg – Science, Music, and Movement Project, Chaowen Ting – The School of Music and School of Mathematics collaborate to present a live performance around the campus installation of the model of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra musicians will perform a new composition by composer Marshall Coats, written in response to the mathematic theory involved in the Seven Bridges, with dancers demonstrating the graph theory as choreographed by artist Kristel Tedesco.
• Independent Study & PhD Doctoral Coursework: Mixed Media Instrument Collaboration, Brian Magerko - Students across Digital Media, Music Technology, Computational Media, and Industrial Design will collaborate with local artists on the creation of new mixed media musical instruments.  The project will combine questions of design, computational music, and media theory with material practice and performance.
• Leucine Zipper and the Zinc Fingers Music Video Production, Jennifer Leavey – Georgia Tech students and faculty will work with a filmmaker to produce a music video for a song about science. The video will be used as a template for student video projects in upcoming courses.
• Electronic Artrium, Mary Ann Weitnauer - Programming integrating arts, crafts, and electronics will be featured in the new ECE Maker Space, opening in early Fall 2018, including a jewelry-making workshop for alumni and students.
• Fast Film Fest (F³), Jerushia Graham – The Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking and Georgia Tech Libraries will host a film festival featuring Paper Animation using origami or cut-out animation techniques. The event will include a free campus stop-motion film competition.
• Papermaking Collaboration, Art Matters -  Art Matters, a student collective that advocates, connects students, and organizes programming for art at Georgia Tech, will host a student event with the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking designed to introduce students to the work of the museum.
• Pass The Aux, Art Matters - Art Matters, a student collective that advocates, connects students, and organizes programming for art at Georgia Tech, will hold a monthly showcase to connect and expand the music production community at Georgia Tech, which will feature a music production boot camp and lecture series with established music creators.  
• Skid, Raianna Brown – Skid, a dance piece presented by Georgia Tech student Raianna Brown and Komansé Dance Theater in the Arts@Tech Series, will feature 3D-printed costuming in both the performance and a fashion show event.  Skid takes a provocative look at homelessness in the metro Atlanta area and beyond.
• Exploring the Science of Art in Glassmaking, Materials Innovation and Learning Laboratory Science of Art Team - A one-day workshop where students will learn about the thermodynamics and kinetics behind glass fusing while making their own piece of fused glass art.
• Historical View of AI, Edwardo Martinez - This historical view of artificial intelligence (AI) will be presented as both a website and an exhibit, and will use an interactive timeline and a physical exhibit to demonstrate the reality of AI versus what has been presented in science fiction.

The Strategic Plan Advisory Group provided the initial support for Creative Curricular Initiatives.

For more information on the program please contact Es Famojure in the Office of the Arts at esther.famojure@arts.gatech.edu.

As with robotics or rocketry, musicianship is ever-present at Tech. Two students, one president of the Georgia Tech Chamber Choir and the other a member of the Chamber Orchestra, highlight the ways in which music affects them personally and the Tech community at large.

Students can experience music’s impact first-hand at two upcoming performances. Chamber Choir will perform its semi-annual Pitch-a-Piece concert on Friday, March 9, at 8 p.m. in West Village, Room 175. On Sunday, March 11, Chamber Orchestra is hosting Beethoven Series III: Spring Series at 3 p.m. in the Ferst Center for the Arts.

Giuliana Stovall is a third-year civil engineering major with a minor in music. She joined the Georgia Tech Chamber Choir her freshman year and now serves as its president.

Many of her favorite performances have been Chamber Choir’s Pitch-a-Piece concerts.

“It’s called ‘Pitch-a-Piece’ because members actually pitch their ideas to the choir,” said Stovall. “There are no limits to what we can sing. The upcoming performance will feature pieces ranging from Disney to classical to Rihanna.”

Joining Chamber Choir was a natural step for Stovall, who grew up in Savannah, Georgia. She joined the Savannah Children’s Choir when she was just six years old.

“It was a huge catalyst for me. Their mission was to ‘unite children through the power of song,’ and it really influenced me to continue as a vocalist,” she said.

Stovall plans to keep music in her life. She wants to be an acoustic engineer, and says she intends to continue participating in choirs after she graduates.

“It’s not just about the music itself, but creating music with others,” she said. “Music is something that is universal, something that everyone can share in. People experience music in different ways, but you’re sharing in that same experience. When you perform in a group, you are sharing a connection both with the other members of the choir and the audience.”

Lovelyn Wirian is a second-year materials science and engineering major and a member of the Georgia Tech Chamber Orchestra. She said she chose to go to Tech because she knew she wanted to study STEM, and she liked that Tech put an emphasis on undergraduate research.

She got her start in musical performance playing the piano. Like Stovall, she started her craft when she was six at the urging of her parents. Wirian’s high school made it mandatory that every student take a music class, but piano wasn’t offered. So Wirian joined the school orchestra and decided to pick up a new instrument – the violin.

“My cousin was a violin player, and I really loved the sound it made,” said Wirian. “It’s a graceful instrument and easy to play in a group setting. People say that the violin is the instrument most closely related to the human soul.”

She took to the violin instantly. By the time Wirian arrived at Tech, she knew that she wanted to keep the instrument in her life. Before her first semester, someone posted a link about orchestras at Tech on Facebook. Wirian contacted Chaowen. Ting, the conductor of Chamber Orchestra, and asked about auditions.

Now, Wirian says Chamber Orchestra gives her an outlet to perform with like-minded students who share her passion for music.

“It’s a really tight-knit community,” said Wirian.

The Chamber Orchestra’s upcoming concert will feature a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6.

“It is different from a lot of his other symphonies,” said Wirian. “Each movement has a name and you can tell that it is really telling a story. The whole piece gives you a sensation of spring and new life.”

The concert will also feature Polovetsian Dance by Borodin, which will be performed with the Georgia Tech Chorale, and the first and third movement of Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E minor, which Wirian says has a sound that is fun and playful. Wirian hopes that students who may not have listened to much classical music will attend.

“If you’ve never really been to the orchestra before, I really would encourage you to come,” she said. She noted that her love of the violin began with regularly attending the orchestra as a child. “You never know what you will discover.”

Stovall and Wirian’s stories underscore the important role music plays in the lives of many in the Tech community. All around Tech, students are experiencing and creating music. And good thing, too: College life can be stressful, and music is linked to lower rates of stress, better overall health, and higher creativity.

“When doing homework or studying for exams, I can sometimes get anxious,” said Wirian. “Since classical music often has regular rhythm and flow, it can help me remain calm as I work.”

Both Stovall and Wirian noted the many ways that students can get involved, or re-involved, with musical expression at Georgia Tech. A list of organizations that create, promote, or discuss music can be found on the student organizations page.

“There are so many opportunities to do music if you want to,” said Stovall. “There are a cappella groups, orchestras, Chorale, Glee Club, Women’s Choir, and so many other opportunities.”

In Human is a celebration and examination of Black culture through the lens of spoken word, contemporary trap music, jazz, and hip hop. The dance company partners with the Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design to create a new experience in which an engineered set, designed to evoke the Krog Street Tunnel, transforms the stage. The physical, high-energy movement of the RDT dancers juxtaposed with the familiar Atlanta cityscape embodies the human connection between art and social justice, all set to a score of classical and contemporary sounds of the Black experience.

Choreographing and producing a new dance piece while enrolled in industrial engineering at Georgia Tech is a major undertaking for fifth-year student Raianna Brown. "This would not be possible without the work of so many people and the help of our sponsors," she says. She credits several Georgia Tech students working on the production: dancers DeLauryn Brown and Justyn Baker, costume designer Skylar Royal, sound engineer Kevin Jones, technical/projection mapping by Chelsi Cocking, and musician Matt Jinks. Georgia Tech students Ta Nycia Wooden and Camille Atere-Roberts work as part of the RAIIN administrative team.

In Human is one of several works in the Arts@Tech performance series this year that showcase the convergence of great art and great technology, and help accomplish the Office of the Arts' mission of Activate, Engage, and Produce.

For more information please contact the Office of the Arts at info@arts.gatech.edu. 

Works by artist William Tucker can be found in galleries and at outdoor sites around the world. Born in 1935 of British parents in Cairo, he became an American citizen in 1985, around the same time that he created The Rim. The piece was on view in several American museums before being placed at the Bank of America Plaza on Peachtree Street in 2004.  

In the early 1960s Tucker was among a group of young sculptors in England whose work made a radical break with tradition: their sculpture was abstract, constructed in modern industrial materials and placed directly on the ground, in contrast to the figurative bronzes on pedestals more common in the 1950s and earlier. His works are often made of steel and wood, though he has worked more in plaster that is then cast in bronze in his later years.

Among many awards, in 2010 Tucker received the International Sculpture Center's Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. He is a modern art scholar and writer. His work is held in many collections, including the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

Following the exhibition dates at Georgia Tech, the Atlanta Contemporary will host the bicycles November 12-19.

Creative Curricular Initiatives offers funding for two new opportunities. The Arts Curricular Innovations program is open to faculty, staff, and teaching assistants who want to explore the connections between a specific academic course and the arts. The Arts Council Fellows program is open to faculty, staff, and students who want to explore the connections between an academic discipline and the arts. Fellows will serve a two-year term on the Georgia Tech Arts Council.

Creative Curricular Initiatives is based on the belief that nurturing students' artistic sensibilities and exposing students to artistic process is essential to developing creativity and innovation:

• Arts Curricular Innovations (ACI) will encourage and support the integration of content into courses that connect the arts and artistic processes to existing course learning objectives and broader strategic objectives for creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Each semester, faculty, staff, and teaching assistants can apply for support ranging from visiting speakers and field trips to teaching collaborations with visiting artists and the redesign of a course component. The Georgia Tech Arts Council and Office of the Arts provide mentoring and support for awardees in designing, evaluating, and sustaining each innovation, as well as in promoting the courses to Georgia Tech students.  Apply at https://goo.gl/forms/94iyI51mpRr56zcC3
• Arts Council Fellows (ACF) will encourage faculty, staff, and students to envision projects that combine arts and academics in ways that impact broader campus culture. Applicants propose a project that will impact their own unit or community or reach across several. For example, projects could include a visiting speaker series on mathematics and music, a thematic art exhibition on biologically inspired design, or a panel discussion on arts-infused teaching practices. Awardees also serve two-year terms as Arts Council Fellows on the Georgia Tech Arts Council so that they can connect, mentor, and collaborate with other fellows as well as the Office of the Arts. Apply at  https://goo.gl/forms/qJEPJJ0V1p1TTV573

The deadline for applications is October 20, 2017.  The Office of the Arts and the Arts Council will support all Creative Curricular Initiative work with planning, marketing, mentorship, artist matching, and implementation. 

For information on ACI and ACF please contact Es Famojure in the Office of the Arts at esther.famojure@arts.gatech.edu.

Based on the belief that nurturing students' artistic sensibilities and exposing students to artistic process is essential to developing creativity and innovation, the project supports Georgia Tech’s strategic goals: making innovation and creative thinking fundamental characteristics of its graduates; preparing students to excel, lead, and innovate in 21st-century careers; and enabling students to bridge diverse perspectives, disciplines, and practices.

The Creative Curricular Initiatives project consists of two components:

• Arts Curricular Innovations (ACI) will encourage and support the integration of content into courses that connect the arts and artistic processes to existing course learning objectives and broader strategic objectives for creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Each semester, faculty, staff, and teaching assistants can apply for support ranging from visiting speakers and field trips to teaching collaborations with visiting artists and the redesign of a course component. The Georgia Tech Arts Council and Office of the Arts provide mentoring and support for awardees in designing, evaluating, and sustaining each innovation, as well as in promoting the courses to Georgia Tech students.
• Arts Council Fellows (ACF) will encourage faculty, staff, and students to envision projects that combine arts and academics in ways that impact broader campus culture. Applicants propose a project that will impact their own unit or community or reach across several. For example, projects could include a visiting speaker series on mathematics and music, a thematic art exhibition on biologically inspired design, or a panel discussion on arts-infused teaching practices. In addition to realizing their projects, awardees serve two-year terms as Arts Council Fellows on the Georgia Tech Arts Council so that they can connect, mentor, and collaborate with other fellows as well as the Office of the Arts.

The Office of the Arts and the Arts Council will issue a call for proposals, review submissions, and assist awardees with planning, marketing, mentorship, artist matching, and implementation.  The Creative Curricular Initiative also includes implementation of a multi-faceted communications plan, evaluation and assessment, and fundraising to support these initiatives beyond the two-year grant period.

For information on ACI and ACF please contact Es Famojure in the Office of the Arts at esther.famojure@arts.gatech.edu.

The festival features performances, conversational talks, and 48 interactive installations from the 15 ACC schools. Georgia Tech will send four projects created by students, faculty, and researchers who are crossing traditional boundaries to develop new possibilities for exploration, expression, and creativity. These projects were selected from among 35 Georgia Tech submissions juried by the ACC Festival Committee:

LuminAI: LuminAI is a dome-based art installation in which participants can engage in collaborative movement improvisation with each other and virtual AI-based dance partners. Rather than focus on the human as master creator and the computer as the traditional “support tool” - LuminAI examines how humans and machines can co-create experiences together. As a result, the LuminAI installation is a movement-based play space where participants can freely dance with AI-based characters. The virtual agents analyze participant movements and improvise responses; in other words, the agents learn how to dance by dancing with us.  For space considerations, the interactive experience at the festival will utilize a large shadow screen. Participants: Brian Magerko, Duri Long, and Mikhail Jacob. https://youtu.be/_lI0_4HBkAU

Electrocet: The Electrocet project started with the idea that you shouldn't have to buy a sports car or an electric vehicle or a commuter car - there should be a car that can excel in all driving scenarios, just by selecting the right drive mode. The Electrocet is a proof-of-concept vehicle for a super-versatile electric powertrain system that can deliver electric-only commuting, superb fuel economy, and thrilling acceleration. Students made everything: the frame, suspension, and drivetrain. The car is a bold concept for the future of automotive powertrain design. Participants: Ben Horst, Josh Preissle, and Alex Gray https://youtu.be/7T6-09yak7U

Creative Collisions: Georgia Tech technologists collaborated with artist Katherine H. Fisher to build an interactive garment that engages audience participation in her performance piece Characters. The garment “Le Monstre” is a fun “fraggle rock” type creation that includes touch sensors, stretch sensors, distance sensors, and accelerometers. The creation of this project offered opportunities for artists to learn about engineering and technology creative processes, while also allowing experts in engineering and technology to see first-hand what artists need to relate to broad audiences in site-specific locations in their process and practice. At the festival, the garment will be on display with interactive capabilities. Participant: Clint Zeagler, Laura Levy, Katherine Helen Fisher, and Shimmy Boyle https://youtu.be/lOB7ilVVZXg 

https://youtu.be/1YAICeLR5_8

RIB CAGE: RIB CAGE is an electro-acoustic instrument that incorporates elements of robotics. This instrument is designed to explore the relationship between human and robot co-performing in a single instrument. Through the use of robotics, the interactive aspect of the instrument is made physical and visible. The metaphor for this instrument is a rib cage (3D printed plastic ribs) with spines (aluminum bars) and a heart (solenoid and red LED). The human musician performs on the 3D printed rib cage as well as the aluminum bars while the robotic component hits the aluminum bars. The human’s performance on the instrument affects how the robotic components interact, and this robotic interaction is intended to affect and inspire the performer. The instrument is designed for performing experimental percussive music as well as drone and noise music. Participant: Takumi Ogata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9BPFXZ2TL8

The campus community can see the Georgia Tech projects this fall before they head to Washington. The GVU Center Brown Bag Seminar Series will feature each project at 11:30 am at the start of the following Brown Bag events at the Technology Square Research Building:

September 14: Electrocet
September 21: LuminAI
September 28: Creative Collisions
October 5: RIB CAGE

See more information about the GVU Brown Bag Seminar Series here.

Funding for Georgia Tech's participation in the ACCelerate Festival is generously provided by the Georgia Tech Division of Student Life and the Office of the Arts, the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, the Georgia Tech Parents Fund, and Marion and Gail Glover.

Georgia Tech’s participation in the festival is coordinated by the Office of the Arts. For more information please contact Es Famojure at 404-385-4845.

There is no fee to submit your work for consideration or to participate if selected, but all selected artwork must be display-ready (framed, mounted, etc) when received by the Office of the Arts.

A reception honoring participating artists will be held September 14, at the opening of the exhibition. Visitors of the display have the opportunity to vote for their favorite piece of artwork on display for the "People's Choice Award".

For more information please visit arts.gatech.edu.

Selected for its artistry, the way that it reflects the landscape and hardscape of the environment, and the research and study that is performed in the facility, the piece is made of rectangular steel tubing with a polyurethane protective coating.  It measures 19’H x 10’D x 9.5’W.

Sculptor Robert Winkler has exhibited his work in eight solo shows in New York and North Carolina. He studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Ohio State University, the Art Institute of Boston, and the School of Visual Arts, New York. Public art collections featuring his work include Carolina Square, Chapel Hill, NC; City of Durham, NC; City of Charleston, SC; Queens University, Charlotte, NC and Cleveland Institute of Art Permanent Collection, Cleveland, OH.

In speaking about his work Winkler states, "My works begin as ideas, based on mathematics, movement and repetition. Realizing them reflects the interaction of imagination and precise engineering, combined with the skill of the human hand. As a sculptor, my goal is to manipulate volume, mass and balance to create a sense of movement."

The site-specific outdoor sculpture was recommended by the Public Art Committee of the Georgia Tech Arts Advisory Board. 

Sculptor Mike Roig lives and works in Carrboro, NC, where he and his wife, author/illustrator Clay Carmichael, maintain Heartworks Studio. His award-winning work is exhibited across the country in public art settings and is frequently shown in East Coast sculpture exhibitions.The Public Art Committee of the Georgia Tech Arts Advisory Board  selected the privately funded piece for campus. 

"I've been making art since I was small, it's what I came in hard-wired to do. Working with steel satisfies me in a way that no other medium has. It is tough and durable, yet maleable and open to infinite suggestion. It is heavy and obdurate, and yet can be made to express delicate movements of balance and grace. It can appear earthen and solid, or be polished to light-refracting brilliance," Roig explains. As a kinetic piece, Watchtower moves with the wind, shifting and creating different compositions.

More pieces of public art by various artists are slated for installation in coming weeks at the Engineered Biosystems Building and the Howey Physics Building.

Three hundred Georgia Tech students will participate as visual or performing artists this year. For some, it's a chance to share their artistry with campus, while others hope to win one of seven cash awards, including a People's Choice Award.  The performances and live readings will begin at 5 pm. The entire event is free and open to the public, and is held in the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons.

The Art Crawl is juried by professional artists working in the metro Atlanta area who select the top work in each category.  Those attending also vote on their favorite works, and will receive a free item from the food trucks on hand for the event: Nectar and Mac the Cheese. 

All visual art will remain on display throughout four floors of Clough Commons until March 13, 2017.

This event is sponsored by the Office of the Arts, the Georgia Tech Library, and the Office of the Provost.

For more information visit the Art Crawl website.

All media will be considered, including drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, architecture, craft arts, graphic design, code-based art, music, poetry/prose, performance, film, and video. The event will also include live readings and special performances put on by artistic student groups, spoken word, and open mic opportunities. Refreshments will be available.

The deadline for project consideration is Jan. 25, 2017. Submissions are now being accepted through the following link. ACC Submission Form

The arts can be an effective showcase to demonstrate the potential of cutting-edge and advanced technologies, but barriers often exist in access, communication, and collaboration between artists and technologists. Led by Georgia Tech's Laura Levy (IMTC), Maribeth Gandy (IMTC), and Clint Zeagler (WCC), the experts in engineering and technology will see firsthand what artists need to relate to broad audiences in site specific locations in their process and practice.

This collaboraton is not only unique to Georgia Tech, but offers artists an exclusive opportunity to view technology prototypes not yet on the market, and to brainstorm ways this can be incorporated in their work.  The collaboration concludes with Fisher's performance of Characters at the Ferst Center on March 5, 2017.

Partners on the project include the Georgia Tech Wearable Computing Center, the Interactive Media Technology Center, and the Office of the Arts.  The Collision of Creatives project is funded by GVU and IPAT.

The GT Piano Project started with an idea of placing a piano in an an accessible location and adding a second element of interactivity so that piano players and non players alike could enjoy the piece. Several students took on the task of painting the piano in a chalk-board-like paint and placing a static design over the paint that student can color in with chalk. 

The exhibit will open Friday, September 11 with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. and will run through Nov. 20.

Five artists will be featured sharing anecdotes, histories, observations and yarns woven using paper as their medium. Those participating are Douglas Baulos, Denise Bookwalter, Kerri Cushman, Lauren Faulkenberry and Lee Emma Running.

Suzanne Sawyer, guest curator, said the artists use paper as a medium, not to dictate who they are as artists, but because it engages them, and, in their incredibly talented hands, the paper begins to tell its story.

"Each artist recounts ideas uniquely, yet their work is united through the use of sculptural paper to communicate narratives as well as their pursuit of knowledge, meaning, and beauty. Whether using handmade or machine-made paper, by twisting, printing, cutting, or folding the paper among other techniques, the artists manipulate their narratives into fruition," she said. "The processes of creation become part of the narrative as the mark of the artists’ hands can be seen in these marvelous works. The exhibition includes artist’s books, installation, relief sculpture, sculpture in the round, and prints."

Ms. Running, one of the featured artist, was trained as a papermaker and sculptor. She now makes drawings and site-specific installations.

"I fell in love with handmade paper for it’s humility, it’s process, and it’s chameleon nature. The same fiber with different treatment can behave like fabric or leather, silk or fiberglass. This material opened a way of thinking for me as an artist," she said. "Papermaking taught me to innovate, and to pay close attention with all of my senses. I carry these ideas into my drawings and installations now." 

For more information visit Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking online or contact Virginia Howell at 404.894.5726 or virginia.howell@rbi.gatech.edu.

The project began in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, with Georgia Tech students recording the sounds of the neighborhood.  KY Engineerin’ will demo the work to date at the A3C Hip Hop Festival, which also hosts The Era of the Engineer, a panel discussion on the relationship between audio engineers and computer engineers on Friday, Oct. 10 from 3-4PM on the #PAEmainstage at the festival in Atlanta.

Initiated by the Office of the Arts at Georgia Tech, the "Sound of Atlanta" project will be a lasting legacy piece encompassing sound, visual art, technology and the soul of the Old Fourth Ward.  The "Sound of Atlanta" project will continue throughout the year with sound and visual art from other Atlanta neighborhoods. Students from other local schools, as well as local professional artists, will also participate in the project, which will culminate with a professionally produced sound and visual art installation in the spring of 2015. The final project will incorporate sound, technology, visual art and the soul of the communities it represents.

For more information on the Sound of Atlanta Project, please contact the Office of the Arts at Georgia Tech at 404-894-2787.

The grant, which is funded entirely by personally meaningful contributions from a wide variety of community members, is to encourage experimentation and investigation by giving artists permission to pursue new ideas. Emerging artists, as well as established artists and cultural workers, are encouraged to apply for these funds.

Applications are available online at http://www.ideacapitalatlanta.org/application.php.

The winning artist will receive $1,000. Additional awards of $500, $250 and certificates of merit are also available. Artwork awarded cash prizes will become the property of the State Botanical Garden and used to create signature items only sold in the garden's gift shop. The competition, in its 10th year, is open to Georgia students in ninth grade through college. The deadline for submissions is Dec. 3 at 5 p.m.

Artwork must be two-dimensional and no larger than 24 inches x 36 inches. Acceptable media includes pencil, pen and ink, pain, photography, collage and computer-enhanced graphics. One-color designs are welcome and needed to create affordable gift shop products. The artwork does not need to be framed, but it should be signed.

Entrants should keep in mind that the goal is to create items for the State Botanical Garden gift shop such as totes, stationery, T-shirts, journals, scarves and more.

Submissions may mailed to Connie Cottingham, 2450 South Milledge Ave., Athens, Ga., 30605. For more information, call 706-542-6014 or see the complete guidelines and entry form at botgarden.uga.edu.

A unit of the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach at the University of Georgia, the State Botanical Garden of Georgia provides the general public as well as UGA faculty, staff and students opportunities for recreation, events, research and learning through its natural areas, display gardens and building spaces.

The 23^rd season is filled with contemporary dance, jazz, other music genres and unique artist residency programs. The season maintains the tradition of presenting popular performances while also introducing new artists to the Atlanta community.  In addition to the regular performance series, the season features three free concerts and artist residency programs that deepen the arts experience with constituent audiences including local artists, Georgia Tech students and  K-12 students at Drew Charter School, Centennial Place Elementary and Grady High School.

In selecting the season, Office of the Arts Interim Director Dedra Gillett states: “For me, the new season is all about bringing in new audiences while serving our existing, long-time patrons. So while audiences will see some new artists grace the Ferst Center stage, the music and dance that we are well known for will still be there.”

Special 2014-15 five-show ticket packages – at a 15 percent discount off individual ticket prices – are now on sale and may be ordered from the Ferst Center Box Office at 404-894-9600. Single tickets go on sale on August 12 and Georgia Tech student tickets go on sale at the Arts Open House on September 11. Information can also be found at www.ferstcenter.gatech.edu.

The 2014-15 Season, listed by genre, includes:**

Jazz:  Robert Glasper Experiment, Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Allen Toussaint, A Charlie

Brown Christmas with David Benoit, Diane Schuur, Earl Klugh: "Jazz and the Movies"

Theatre and Dance:  H.M.S. Pinafore by New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion, Jonah Bokaer

More Music:  A Rockapella Christmas, Arlo Guthrie, Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy, Jake Shimabukuro

Fun:  National Acrobats of China, Mummenschanz

Free Concert Series: Montana Skies, Sybarite5, The Honeycutters

Residency Programs:  Georgia Tech and Young Guru present The Atlanta Sound Project with audio engineer Finis “KY” White, Crowd Source with Jonah Bokaer, HandPicked with Earl Klugh

The 2014-15 Ferst Center Presents Season, listed by date, includes:** 

H.M.S. Pinafore by New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players
Friday, September 12 at 8 p.m.

Her Majesty's Ship Pinafore is setting sail in this faithful production – complete with live orchestra and full sets – by the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players. The story finds the captain's daughter in love with an ordinary sailor, but her father has a more sophisticated suitor in mind. Gilbert and Sullivan's first blockbuster is among the most crowd-pleasing comic musicals in history.

Robert Glasper Experiment
Friday, September 26 at 8 p.m.

American jazz pianist and record producer Robert Glasper won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album in 2013 for Black Radio, in which he explores fusions of jazz and hip hop.  He performs with drummer Mark Colenburg, saxophonist/vocalist Casey Benjamin and bassist Derrick Hodge as an electronic act that defies genre norms from any single discipline.

National Acrobats of China
Sunday, October 12 at 5 p.m.

The National Acrobats of The People’s Republic of China delivers an eye-popping spectacle with its awesome array of acrobats, contortionists, martial artists, drummers and dancers. Using bicycles, tables, chairs, poles and ladders, this unforgettable troupe thrills audiences of all ages with their dazzling showmanship.

Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Allen Toussaint
Friday, November 7 at 8 p.m.

New Orleans music icon Allen Toussaint joins forces with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for an evening of legendary music making.  Named after the music venue located in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, the band has traveled worldwide spreading their mission to nurture the art form of New Orleans Jazz.

Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion
Friday, November 14 at 8 p.m.
MacArthur Fellow and Bessie Award-winning choreographer Kyle Abraham makes his Ferst debut with his new work Pavement. The stage transforms into the abstract metaphor of a basketball court suspended in time and place in this penetrating look at African-American history and culture.

A Charlie Brown Christmas with David Benoit
Friday, December 5 at 8 p.m.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…and what better way to get into the holiday spirit than by enjoying the classic Vince Guaraldi Christmas tunes performed by David Benoit, one of the greatest contemporary jazz pianists.

A Rockapella Christmas
Friday, December 12 at 8 p.m.

Rockapella shares holiday joy with stunning, world-class voices. The group has taken the genre of a cappella music to a new level - Rockapella's astonishing full-band sound seems to be impossible coming from just five guys with microphones.

Diane Schuur
Friday, January 30 at 8 p.m.
In a recording career that spans three decades – and includes two Grammy Awards – jazz vocalist and pianist Diane Schuur has explored nearly every corner of the 20th century American musical landscape, and on her new recording she pays tribute to Frank Sinatra and Stan Getz.

Arlo Guthrie
Saturday, January 31 at 8 p.m.

For the first time in a decade, folk icon Arlo Guthrie brings to the stage the entire blues song Alice’s Restaurant Massacree in honor of its 40^th anniversary, along with many favorites from Guthrie’s song catalog. As a singer, songwriter and lifelong political activist, Guthrie carries on the legacy of his legendary father, Woody Guthrie.

Mummenschanz
Sunday, February 15 at 5 p.m.
Inspiring, captivating and playful, the performers of Mummenschanz create a magical world of possibilities, all without uttering a word. The troupe’s inventive use of forms, shadow, light and the creative manipulation of sculptural, expressive masks result in a visually stunning spectacle of visual theatre that has entertained audiences of all ages for more than 40 years.

Jonah Bokaer
Friday, Feb 20 at 8 p.m.

Jonah Bokaer has cultivated a new form of choreography whose structural supports rely on visual art and design to transform public viewing and understanding of dance. His dance company returns to the Ferst Center in this full evening of performance featuring the pieces “Why Patterns” and “Recess.” 

Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy
Saturday, March 7 at 8 p.m.

Two of the world’s most celebrated fiddlers, this married couple is a whirlwind of Celtic music, dance and song.  Versatile and exciting on both the folk and Celtic music scenes, their performances are delivered with an uplifting energy felt by the musicians and audiences.

Jake Shimabukuro
Saturday, March 28 at 8 p.m.

Jake Shimabukuro has redefined what it means to play the ukulele and returns to the Ferst Center for another amazing show. Renowned for his lightning-fast fingers and revolutionary technique, this young virtuoso is a genre-demolishing artist who plays jazz, blues, funk, classical, bluegrass, folk, flamenco and rock.

Earl Klugh
Saturday, April 18 at 8 p.m.

Grammy-winning jazz guitarist Earl Klugh treats us to one of his favorite subjects, “Jazz and the Movies,” exploring the music that Klugh has performed, recorded and enjoyed in movie soundtracks.  Solo, trio, full band performances and more will be featured in the concert exploring Klugh’s passion for film and its music, which will conclude the second year of his three-year collaboration with Georgia Tech.

Free Concert Series:
Montana Skies
Thursday, September 11 at 12 noon, Amphitheatre
This guitar and cello fusion duo performs eclectic styles combining elements of classical technique, jazz improv and the power and energy of rock n' roll.

Sybarite5
Thursday, October 9 at 7 p.m., Ferst Center Stage
Sybarite5 is a classically trained string quintet whose dynamic onstage style and contemporary set list engages the senses and redefines the rules of chamber music performance. An Atlanta Premiere.

The Honeycutters
Thursday, April 2 at 12 noon, Amphitheatre

The Honeycutters are an original country roots band from Asheville, NC. Organically grown around the songs of lead singer Amanda Anne Platt, the band has gained an audience that has stretched far beyond their mountain home.

Artist Residency Programs:
The Atlanta Sound Project – Georgia Tech and legendary audio engineer Young Guru present The Atlanta Sound Project by recording and sound engineer Finis White, known as KY. The project, described as “for Atlanta, by Atlanta” considers how different ambient sounds from different neighborhoods would fit in their own unique genre of music, and asks the question “What does the culture of a place sound like?” 

Crowd Source - Choreographer and digital media artist Jonah Bokaer continues his two-year residency exploring and engaging the campus and community in the development and testing of a new smart phone app that maps crowd movement as inspiration for the artist, and information and engagement for the audience. The project is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

HandPicked - Grammy-winning jazz artist and Atlanta resident Earl Klugh is in the second year of a three-year residency in which he explores a hand-picked arc of jazz music. Throughout this time Klugh will work with K-12 partner schools and Georgia Tech music students, in addition to presenting a concert each season. Selected students will participate in professional on-stage experiences with his group. 

Keep up with performance and residency activities all year online at www.ferstcenter.org and on Facebook.

**All programs subject to change. 

Located on the Georgia Tech campus in midtown Atlanta
349 Ferst Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0468
Ferst Center Box Office 404-894-9600
www.ferstcenter.gatech.edu

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About the Georgia Tech Office of the Arts

The Office of the Arts is a leader for the Georgia Tech community in the exploration of the arts by advocating, promoting and facilitating arts partnerships that enhance the campus arts experience, providing provocative fine arts choices on campus and creating a bridge to the larger Atlanta community. The Ferst Center Presents artist series, the major public program of the office, is dedicated to bringing world class performances and artist residency programs to the Georgia Tech campus that will enhance the total learning experience of the Georgia Tech student body, serve as a bridge to the surrounding Atlanta community and engage artists in a way that is uniquely Georgia Tech. Funding for the series is provided in part by contributions from individuals, foundations, corporations, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Fulton County Board of Commissioners under the guidance of the Fulton County Arts Council. Major corporate support is provided by the Coca-Cola Company and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For information call 404-894-2787 or visit www.ferstcenter.org.

The series, which began in 1988, has a different guest editor each year and has included such greats as Billy Collins, Adrienne Rich, Robert Creely, and Donald Hall.

• “Daydream” (watercolor painting). Artist: Abhinav Uppal. Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Lux.
• “Directional Madness” (collage). Artist: Stephen Wang. Instructor: Dr. Caitlyn Kelly.
• “Ford Ad Switcheroo” (ad remix). Artists: Maya Goldman, Naveena Karusala, Megan Preston, and Paloma Zavala. Instructor: Dr. John Harkey.
• “Hamlet Inside and Out” (charcoal drawing). Artist: Maya Tome. Instructor: Dr. Caitlyn Kelly.
• “The Hobbit: Eye of Smaug” (poster). Artists: Sukara Abe, Conner Chadwick, Zach Dawson, and Ankita Gupta. Instructor: Dr. Leah Haught.
• “Vanishing of the Bees” (movie poster). Artists: Zujia Huang, Chelsea Silbergleid, and Reagan Weigel. Instructor: Dr. Clint Stivers.
• “Yellowbird” (poster). Artists: Srinidhi Chaganty, Jackie Foreman, Shaswat Jhunjhunwala, Jacob Kim, and Erica Pramer. Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Lux.

Later this spring, an extended version of Student View will be displayed at the Ferst Gallery. Selected pieces from Student View will be added to the Writing and Communication Program’s permanent student collection displayed on a rotating basis in the Stephen C. Hall Building.

The Festival will feature a variety of arts experiences at venues across campus. The work can be independently produced by students, faculty and staff affiliated with Georgia Tech or produced as part of an academic or research project. Projects can showcase the convergence of art and science/technology, or be solely artistic in nature.

Exhibit proposals can be submitted at http://arts.gatech.edu/content/techarts-exhibition and performance proposals at http://arts.gatech.edu/content/techarts-performance. The deadline for submissions is January 10, 2014.

The 2014 Festival coincides with the annual Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. Events already scheduled for the festival include the opening of Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons’ annual student Art Crawl, DramaTech’s Black Box Comedy Festival, concerts by the Georgia Tech School of Music’s jazz ensemble and symphonic band and performances from the Ferst Center Presents professional artist series including Pat Metheny Unity Group and the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

The Festival is sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Council of the Arts and the Office of the Arts.  The annual event is open to the campus and the Atlanta community.

For more information contact the Office of the Arts at 404-894-2787.

Submissions cannot exceed 18” x 18” (including frame size) and must be framed in a professional manner with wire for hanging.  All work must be for sale, and the artist’s price may not exceed $300. Artists may submit as many works as desired, but a maximum of four pieces per artist will be selected for the exhibit. 

To enter:  Email a digital image of your artwork(s), to Jenna Farmer, Marketing Specialist at jenna.farmer@arts.gatech.edu.  Include the artwork’s title, medium, dimensions and list price. 
Entry Deadline: November 15, 2013
Notifications: November 29, 2013
Installation: December 5, 2013

For more information visit www.ferstcenter.gatech.edu.

About the Ferst Center Galleries: The Westbrook and the Richards Galleries feature visual art exhibits that rotate throughout the year, and usually display original artwork or photography by contemporary artists and student artists. The galleries have featured the Hewitt Collection of African-American Art, Raymond Cody, Eric Waugh, the Atlanta Collage Society, Sandra Gottlieb and more.  Exhibits can be viewed before and during performances at the Ferst Center, or by calling 404-894-2787.

Installed over the summer, the exhibition includes a soaring 50-foot steel piece titled La Tour by the internationally acclaimed, Chattanooga-based sculptor John Henry, who also is the curator for the exhibition. Henry is known for his large-scale public sculptures. Since the early 1970s, he has produced monumental works of art for museums, cities, and public institutions across the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Henry’s style has been described as “huge, welded steel drawings.” He arranges linear and rectilinear elements that appear to defy gravity. Many of his works suggest a snapshot of arrested motion, where flying or tumbling elements are frozen.

As the sculptures were being installed, students stopped to ask Henry questions. “A number of students asked ‘what does it do?,’” said Henry. “That’s an interesting question because people usually ask ‘what is it?’”

The location of each sculpture was chosen to complement Georgia Tech’s lush and open green spaces.

The sculpture exhibition is part of Arts@Tech, an initiative to enhance the Georgia Tech community by fostering programs and events spanning the arts spectrum at the intersection of technological innovation and creative expression. The initiative is an outcome of the Institute’s Strategic Plan.

“There is a pent-up desire by students to engage in the arts as evidenced by our tremendously talented musicians and the participation in the recent Art Crawl and Festival. The arts are expressions of creativity and result from the same design processes that our students follow, whether designing policies or instruments. This exhibit will promote conversation, debate, and appreciation of the creative spirit while making our beautiful campus even more interesting.” said Rafael L. Bras, Georgia Tech provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs, who helped bring the exhibit to campus.

The sculpture exhibition is free and open to the public.

Read more about each artist and sculpture below:

• La Tour by John Henry
  
• Mercury, Mars, Venus by Peter Lundberg
• Squirt by John Clement
• Tic by STRETCH
• Untitled by Terrence Karpowicz
• Renegade by Chakaia Booker
• Crown by Doug Schatz
• Cinch by Adam Garey
• Big Red Tumpkin by Verina Baxter
• Oh'd by Bret Price
• Portal by Albert Paley
• Tux by Isaac Duncan III
• King of Flying by Klaus Albert
• Scetch II by Klaus Duschat
• Cross of Steles by Hartmut Stielow