Electric Artrium is a Georgia Tech Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) team with the goal to design and build an immersive, interactive, interesting and engaging sensor-driven dynamic art installation.
The VIP Model
The Vertically Integrated Projects Program is a transformative approach to enhancing higher education by engaging undergraduate and graduate students in ambitious, long-term, large-scale, multidisciplinary project teams that are led by faculty. The program has been rigorously evaluated and refined over more than two decades.
In VIP, teams of undergraduate students – from various years, disciplines and backgrounds – work with faculty and graduate students in their areas of scholarship and exploration. Undergraduate students earn academic credit for their work and have direct experience with the innovation process, while faculty and graduate students benefit from the extended efforts of their teams.
Electronic Artrium VIP Goals:
Design and build an immersive, interactive, interesting and engaging sensor-driven dynamic art installation. The installation consists of a combination of three kinds of original art — sound, mechatronics, and projected video — that all respond to participant motion in a synchronized way. Key points in participants’ poses, extracted in real time from camera output, are processed and then streamed over Ethernet to control the images, sound, and mechatronic movement. The goal is to give the participants a sense of wonder and intrigue as they experiment with how their body movements change the art.
The first generation of this installation is entitled “Raise Your Hand” and will include an abstract, darker environment alongside a more realistic, brighter environment. The darker environment will have internally lit mechatronic mushrooms and a rear-projected video wall; the mushroom caps will spin and get brighter and the video will show more activity when hand is raised. The highlighted area will be defined by a 5-foot-wide suspended umbrella and directional speaker. The umbrella will be lit with a projected image of looking up at wind-blown trees, sky, and animated birds; the bright area also has mechatronic flowers that move and change color and musical changes in response to raising a hand.