Art Research

Shared Experiences Inspire PhD Student’s Book ‘Between Classes’

admin — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 18:38:37 +0000

Shared Experiences Inspire PhD Student’s Book ‘Between Classes’ admin Mon, 07/07/2025 - 14:38

Shamim Shoomali felt as if she were the only graduate student without a sense of community when she arrived at Georgia Tech in 2023 to pursue a Ph.D. in digital media. Now, with the publication of her new book, Between Classes, she wants to help other students see that they aren't alone.

Since she was a child growing up in Iran, Shoomali has expressed herself through art — whether on paper or the walls of her parents' home. At Tech, looking for a way to connect to her new surroundings, Shoomali brought her sketchbook to her favorite campus locations and decided to draw her observations.

Over time, what she saw and heard led her to the realization that shared experiences bond many students at the Institute, even if they don't know it. From the stress of not having a car to finding a place to get a haircut in an unfamiliar city, her illustrations depict the ups and downs of the graduate student experience while providing a resource for future generations.

"My first semester at Georgia Tech was the most challenging one, and if I had this book, I would have felt like I was not alone. I hope the book tells future students that someone has experienced all these things, and it’s going to get better. We can all feel isolated sometimes, but realizing that this is a part of life can help you move forward together," she said.

Since arriving on campus, Shoomali has been involved with Arts, Belonging and Community, where she pitched the book concept and was awarded a grant to complete the project. Between Classes will be available in the Georgia Tech Library and featured at the Grad Welcome and Fall Picnic in August.

"I want to create more opportunities for other students to share their own experiences. This can help them find connections and give everyone a chance to understand what others may be going through," she said.

Blending Art and Technology

After earning a bachelor's degree in visual communication design and a master's degree in animation direction and new media from the Tehran University of Art, Shoomali wanted to continue her education, and a book she read while completing her thesis led her to Georgia Tech.

Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck guided Shoomali in her understanding of the evolving relationship between art and technology. Murray, a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, encouraged Shoomali to apply to Georgia Tech to pursue her Ph.D. and served as her advisor until her retirement earlier this year.

Shoomali digitized her illustrations for Between Classes with an iPad and completed the publication process entirely online. In each step of her educational journey, Shoomali says that she has developed new perspectives on how to merge traditional and modern techniques in her creations. This includes her latest project, an animated short film titled Paw and Scissors, which is made up of 6,000 hand-drawn frames.

"The process of creating a piece of art can take a long time, but technology can enhance the process and expand its audience. Traditional art can get overlooked because it may not be accessible to everyone, or audiences may not be willing to wait for something to be completed. At the same time, if we rely too heavily on technology, little by little, we are going to forget who we are, so I think it's important that they overlap," she said.

Shoomali currently serves as an instructor of record at Tech, teaching design and media courses. After earning her Ph.D., she plans to become a professor and design interactive museum exhibits.

Subtitle

Shamim Shoomali hopes her new book will help other students see that they aren't alone.

Summary sentence

Shamim Shoomali hopes her new book will help other students see that they aren't alone.

Summary

Shamim Shoomali hopes her new book will help other students see that they aren't alone.

Dateline

Mon, 07/07/2025 - 12:00

Contact

Steven Gagliano – Institute Communications

Associated importer

Keywords

price gilbert library

PhD student

student art

News room topics

Campus and Community

Categories

Art Research

Arts and Performance

Mercury ID

683023

Source updated

Mon, 07/07/2025 - 14:38

Teaching AI to Collaborate, not Merely Create, Through Dance

dgivens8 — Fri, 30 May 2025 18:14:41 +0000

Teaching AI to Collaborate, not Merely Create, Through Dance dgivens8 Fri, 05/30/2025 - 14:14

Two children are playing with a set of toys, each playing alone. That kind of play involves a somewhat limited set of interactions between the child and the toy. But what happens when the two children play together using the same toys?

“The actions are similar, but the choices and outcomes are very different because of the dynamic changes they’re making with the other person,” says Brian Magerko, Regents’ Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communication. “It’s a thing that humans do all the time, and computers don’t do with us at all.”

Welcome to the next frontier of artificial intelligence (AI) — not just generating but collaborating in real-time.

Magerko and his colleagues, Georgia Tech research scientist Milka Trajkova and Kennesaw State University Associate Professor of Dance Andrea Knowlton, are putting a collaborative AI system they’ve developed to the ultimate test: the world’s first collaborative AI dance performance.

Dance Partner

LuminAI is an interactive system that allows participants to engage in collaborative movement improvisation with an AI virtual dance partner projected on a nearby screen or wall. LuminAI analyzes participant movements and improvises responses informed by memories of past interactions with people. In other words, LuminAI learns how to dance by dancing with us.

The National Science Foundation-supported project began about 12 years ago in a lab and became an art installation and public demo. LuminAI has since moved into a different phase as a creative collaborator and education tool in a dance studio.

“We’re looking at the role LuminAI can play in dance education. As far as we’re aware, this is the first implemented version of an AI dancer in a dance studio,” says Trajkova, who was a professional ballet dancer before becoming a research scientist on the project.

To prepare LuminAI to collaborate with dancers, the research team started by studying pairs of improvisational dancers.

“We’re trying to understand how non-verbal, collaborative creativity occurs,” Knowlton says. “We start by trying to understand influencing factors that are perceived as contributing to improvisational success between two artists. Through that understanding, we applied those criteria to an AI system so it can have a similar experience with co-creative success.”

“We’re working on a creative arc,” adds Trajkova. “So instead of the AI agent just generating movements in response to the last thing that happened, we’re working to track and understand the dynamics of creative ideas across time as a continuous flow, rather than isolated instances of reaction.”

Students from Knowlton’s improvisational dance class at Kennesaw State spent two months of their spring semester working routinely with the LuminAI dancer and recording their impressions and experiences. One of the purposes the team discovered is that LuminAI serves as a third view for dancers and allows them to try ideas out with the system before trying it out with a partner.

The classroom experiment will culminate in a public performance on May 3 at Kennesaw State’s Marietta Dance Theater featuring the students performing with the LuminAI dancer. As far as the research team is aware the event is the world’s first collaborative AI dance performance.

While not all the dancers embraced having an AI collaborator, some of those who were skeptical at first left the experience more open to the possibility of collaborating with AI, Knowlton says. Regardless of their feelings toward working with AI, Knowlton says she believes the dancers gained valuable skills in working with specialized technology, especially as dance performances evolve to include more interactive media.

Refined Movement

So, what’s next for LuminAI? The project represents at least two possible paths for its learnings. The first includes continued exploration about how AI systems can be taught to cooperate and collaborate more like humans.

“With the advent of generative AI these past few years, it’s been really clear how great a need there is for this sort of social cognition,” says Magerko. “One of the things we’re going to be getting off the ground is sense-making with large language models. How do you collaborate with an AI system – rather than just making text or images, they’ll be able to make with us.”

The second involves the body movements LuminAI has been cataloging and analyzing over the years. Dance exemplifies highly refined motor skills, often exhibiting a level of detail surpassing that found in various athletic disciplines or physical therapy. While the tools designed to capture these intricate movements—through cameras and AI—are still nascent, the potential for harnessing this granular data is significant, Trajkova says.

That exploration begins on May 30 with a two-day summit being held at Georgia Tech to discuss its application for transforming performance athletics, with interdisciplinary participants in dance, computer vision, biomechanics, psychology, and human-computer interaction from Georgia Tech, Emory, KSU, Harvard, Royal Ballet in London, and Australian Ballet.

“It’s about understanding AI's role in augmenting training, promoting wellness as well as diving deep in decoding the artistry of human movements. How can we extract insights about the quality of athlete’s movements so we can help develop and enhance their own unique nuances?” Trajkova says.

Summary sentence

Georgia Tech and KSU faculty are putting a collaborative AI system they’ve developed to the ultimate test: the world’s first collaborative AI dance performance.

Summary

Georgia Tech and KSU faculty are putting a collaborative AI system they’ve developed to the ultimate test: the world’s first collaborative AI dance performance.

Dateline

Thu, 05/02/2024 - 12:00

Contact

Megan McRainey
megan.mcrainey@gatech.edu

Associated importer

Keywords

artificial intelligence (AI)

go-ai

go-neuro

Categories

Art Research

Digital Media and Entertainment

Georgia Tech Arts

Mercury ID

674495

Source updated

Fri, 05/10/2024 - 14:03

Janelle Dunlap Turns Beekeeping Into Art

admin — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 01:23:21 +0000

Janelle Dunlap Turns Beekeeping Into Art admin Mon, 10/30/2023 - 21:23

Hundreds of thousands of honeybees make their home atop The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, and it's up to Janelle Dunlap to make sure the hives thrive.

Dunlap was hired earlier this year as the Urban Honey Bee Project's (UHBP) first-ever beekeeper in residence. Throughout her residency, she'll conduct research into the pollinator's place in our ecosystem and how beekeeping may offer relief to veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while connecting with the bees through art.

Dunlap had been gardening for over a decade, but in 2016, when she got the urge to find new ways to engage with nature, she recalled a powerful piece of imagery that shaped her childhood — Wu-Tang Clan's music video for “Triumph” and its depiction of the group's members as a powerful swarm of Africanized killer bees.

"The political messaging and tying Africanized killer bees in with the stereotypes and the tropes of African Americans in the media, and the way that that was so poetically tied in, visually stuck with me,” she said. “It was the first time I recognized a political message being articulated through art. For that reason, it stuck with me that bees were a form of strong symbolism tied to resilience."

Living in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dunlap became a certified beekeeper under the Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association in 2017. She continued practicing as she moved around the country, with stops in Chicago and Denver, eventually landing in Atlanta in 2021. Looking for a way to connect to the local beekeeping community, she attended an April presentation by UHBP Director Jennifer Leavey, who offered Dunlap a chance to get involved at Georgia Tech.

She now handles the inspection of the hives on The Kendeda Building roof, where she monitors for pests and ensures the bees have proper nutrition to sustain their population through the seasons. The UHBP began in 2012 with the goal of educating the Tech community on the importance of these pollinators within the Atlanta ecosystem and beyond — a charge that Dunlap carries on.

Over the next year, she will continue working on her sound art project that examines the frequency at which bees “buzz” and how it, along with the responsibilities of beekeeping, is being used by VA hospitals and programs to ease the effects of PTSD. While the science behind the connection is still being explored, beekeeping was recommended more than a century ago — to soldiers returning home from World War I — according to a CNBC profile of Bees4Vets, a nonprofit based in Nevada.

From the Hive to the Canvas

Whether it was baking sourdough bread or learning a new language, many people, including Dunlap, took the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic to pick up a new hobby. She began a master's program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the goal of using beeswax in encaustic painting, which uses hot wax mixed with pigments. The use of natural materials collected through her beekeeping practice connects Dunlap to her work.

“It's a way of tapping into another level of consciousness. It's a way of articulating the noncommunicable relationship between me and the bees. When there's a language gap between people, we try to fill it in with translation, but without a direct way to translate the language or the sensation that I feel from the bees, this allows me to document my practice in an abstract form,” she said.

By layering the wax and applying heat throughout the process, Dunlap watches the pieces take shape, often with the unpredictability of an active hive, as she says the art “can create itself.” She collects the wax in small amounts, knowing that she can only produce her art if the bees are healthy.

"It's an eco-conscious practice, making sure I don't use more than I need," she explained. “I love the landscape it creates, and it's all about me creating a direct relationship with my medium and knowing that I earned it by developing a relationship with the bees."

As Dunlap continues her year-long residency with the UHBP, she intends to help educate the community, both on campus and around the Atlanta area, in the hopes that more prospective beekeepers will explore their curiosity to unlock the full potential of the practice.

"It's been a practice that keeps unveiling itself to me," she said. "As you get more engaged, you learn there is so much more to it than just the day-to-day hive inspections. There is a lot of beauty to it as well."

Students at Tech have several ways to get involved with research and beekeeping, including the Living Building Science VIP team, the Beekeeping Club, and various classes and workshops hosted by the UHBP.

Subtitle

The Urban Honey Bee Project’s new beekeeper in residence is creating art and educating the public with her practice.

Summary sentence

The Urban Honey Bee Project’s new beekeeper in residence is creating art and educating the public with her practice.

Summary

The Urban Honey Bee Project’s new beekeeper in residence is creating art and educating the public with her practice.

Dateline

Mon, 10/30/2023 - 12:00

Steven.Gagliano@gatech.edu

Contact

Steven Gagliano - Institute Communications

Keywords

kendeda building for innovative sustainable design

Georgia Tech Urban Honey Bee Project

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

cos-community

News room topics

Earth and Environment

Categories

Art Research

Community

Environment

Institute and Campus

Life Sciences and Biology

Research

Mercury ID

670762

Source updated

Mon, 10/30/2023 - 10:47

Search Begins for Inaugural Assistant Vice Provost for the Arts

admin — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 13:12:41 +0000

Search Begins for Inaugural Assistant Vice Provost for the Arts admin Thu, 10/05/2023 - 09:12

Georgia Tech is looking for a new leader to champion arts education and research.

Provost Steve McLaughlin has convened a search committee charged with selecting the inaugural assistant vice provost for the Arts (AVP-A). This new position will help advance Tech’s strategic goal of more deeply integrating the arts into education and research.

This position is open to current full-time tenure-track and nontenure- track faculty at Georgia Tech. Leslie Sharp, dean of Libraries, will serve as chair of the search committee.

Reporting to Senior Vice Provost for Education and Learning Laurence Jacobs, the position will sit at the intersection of art and technology, offering students and faculty a new opportunity to innovate.

“This new role is so exciting because it will help Georgia Tech develop new and reimagined curricular experiences that nurture different ways of thinking, understanding, and problem-solving,” said Jacobs. “Weaving arts and STEM disciplines together creates a more comprehensive and interdisciplinary learning environment, which benefits our students and society as a whole.”

Emphasizing the curricular components of the arts could ultimately create academic majors, minors, or certificates that would distinguish Georgia Tech students from competitive institutions, Jacobs added. He also noted that students with such qualifications are well placed to make a sizable impact on the state’s already exploding arts and production scene.

According to the Georgia Council for the Arts, the creative industries generate a $62.5 billion economic impact in Georgia. That includes 200,000 employees who earn a combined salary of $12.1 billion. Georgia Tech wants to position itself as an arts-in-technology trailblazer that could fuel an even more significant economic boon for the state.

Among other responsibilities, the AVP-A will:

Liaise with College deans, School chairs, and leadership as well as faculty (e.g., tenure-track, lecturers, research and academic professionals, librarians, and archivists) to design and lead the implementation of innovative programs that develop and incorporate the arts.
Contribute to the Institute’s Arts@Tech and Arts Square strategic planning initiative.

Facilitate student engagement in arts-based curricular and cocurricular learning experiences, encouraging creative expression and critical thinking across disciplines.
Collaborate with the associate vice president for Arts, Belonging, and Community in the division of Student Engagement and Well-Being to ensure alignment between curricular and cocurricular efforts and to integrate performing, visual, and all other forms of art into learning, service, and scholarship.

Candidates should log in to OneUSG Connect (https://oneusgconnect.usg.edu), click the Recruiting Self-Service tile, click the Apply for Jobs tile, and search for job ID 264210. Candidates should submit a CV, cover letter, and list of three professional references by Nov. 1, 2023.

For more information, visit https://provost.gatech.edu/assistant-vice-provost-arts-search, or contact Susan Gilstrap (susan.gilstrap@gatech.edu).

Summary sentence

Georgia Tech is looking for a new leader to champion arts and education.

Summary

Dateline

Thu, 10/05/2023 - 12:00

susan.gilstrap@gatech.edu

Contact

Susan Gilstrap

susan.gilstrap@gatech.edu

Associated importer

Keywords

arts @ tech

Georgia Tech Office of the Provost

News room topics

Campus and Community

Categories

Art Research

Community

Georgia Tech Arts

Institute and Campus

Institute Leadership

Mercury ID

670156

Source updated

Thu, 10/05/2023 - 09:12

Georgia Tech Hip Hop Scholar Featured in Google Arts & Culture’s Atlanta Page

admin — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 20:57:12 +0000

Georgia Tech Hip Hop Scholar Featured in Google Arts & Culture’s Atlanta Page admin Mon, 06/05/2023 - 16:57

Georgia Tech’s Joycelyn Wilson is featured in Google’s new curated Atlanta arts and culture page, which debuts today (June 8). Wilson, an assistant professor of hip hop studies and digital media in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts’ School of Literature, Media, and Communication, wrote the essay on Atlanta’s role in the rise of hip hop. The essay anchors the hip-hop section of the new website. Her HipHop2020 Innovation archive is also featured.

“This is an exciting opportunity to showcase the rich history of hip hop in the city of Atlanta and how culture works as an art and a technology,” said Wilson. “It’s also a wonderful way to highlight how my colleagues and I in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communications are using culture as a lens to teach humanities-infused science, technology, engineering, art, and math.”

Learn more about the HipHop2020 Innovation Archive

Wilson’s scholarship focuses on social justice-oriented humanities instruction in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics), hip hop, African-American music and performance, and African-American education in the South. Her scholarship also focuses on the culture, race, and technology of her native Atlanta and pop culture topics.

She is known for her use of hip hop and pop culture in her computational media and humanities classes at Georgia Tech, a technique she was among the first to use while teaching in Los Angeles public schools.

In her essay for Google, Wilson traces the rise of hip hop in Atlanta and how the city and the genre have influenced one another.

“Atlanta, as a metaphor for opportunity, has come to represent Black excellence — a dynamic of realized racial and economic progress that other populations, minorities, and corporations have benefited from,” Wilson writes in the essay. “Pairing Atlanta’ with hip hop complicates this dynamic because hip hop culture is no longer a part of the popular mainstream. It is the mainstream.”

In addition to her section-anchoring essay, the site features two stories on the HipHop2020 Innovation Archive, a collection of thousands of albums, posters, flyers, autographs, and other memorabilia collected by Michael Webster — an early hip hop DJ in Atlanta — and curated by Wilson and her Four Four Beats Lab.

One story features details on the Michael Webster Collection, which forms the bulk of the HipHop2020 Innovation Archive. The other photo story tells the story of how Wilson’s Four Four Beat Labs acquired the archive.

Google’s new site features 30 Atlanta cultural institutions, 130 stories, and more than 4,800 artifacts and artworks.

Atlanta is the fourth U.S. city to be featured in Google Arts & Culture after the Kansas City metropolitan area, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, N.C.

“We are thrilled to showcase Atlanta’s rich culture and historic art scene for everyone to explore and enjoy online at Google Arts & Culture,” said Hetal Joshi Gordon, director, global client lead, and site lead for Google’s Atlanta Office. “From the city’s historic museums to global cuisine and innovative spirit, Atlanta is unique and joyful.”

The School of Literature, Media, and Communication is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Summary sentence

Joycelyn Wilson's essay on hip hop anchor's the genre's section of the site, which also includes two stories about her HipHop2020 Innovation Archive.

Summary

Joycelyn Wilson's essay on hip hop anchor's the genre's section of the site, which also includes two stories about her HipHop2020 Innovation Archive.

Dateline

Tue, 06/08/2021 - 12:00

Contact

Michael Pearson
michael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu

Associated importer

Keywords

hip hop

joycelyn wilson

Categories

Institute and Campus

Art Research

Student and Faculty

Digital Media and Entertainment

Policy, Social Sciences, and Liberal Arts

Mercury ID

647970

Source updated

Tue, 06/08/2021 - 07:37

Art Research

Shared Experiences Inspire PhD Student’s Book ‘Between Classes’

Blending Art and Technology

Keywords

News room topics

Categories

Teaching AI to Collaborate, not Merely Create, Through Dance

Dance Partner

Refined Movement

Keywords

Categories

Janelle Dunlap Turns Beekeeping Into Art

From the Hive to the Canvas

Related links

Keywords

News room topics

Categories

Search Begins for Inaugural Assistant Vice Provost for the Arts

Keywords

News room topics

Categories

Georgia Tech Hip Hop Scholar Featured in Google Arts & Culture’s Atlanta Page

Learn more about the HipHop2020 Innovation Archive

Keywords

Categories