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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Andrew Quitmeyer, alumni of the Digital Media Program in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication was featured in “With BOAT Lab, Tech, Art, and Ecology Converge In One Floating Makerspace” for Fast Company.
Excerpt:
If you were given $10,000 to improve a community in another country using art, how would you do it?
For Andrew Quitmeyer, the answer was: BOAT.
An American post-doctoral researcher with a PhD from Georgia Tech, Quitmeyer created Building Open Art and Technology (aka BOAT), a floating art and tech lab for a village in the Philippines. Its purpose? Teach locals about ecological conservation.
Quitmeyer's PhD research focused on “Digital Naturalism,” or studying animals in their natural habitats with computers and sensors. He channeled that into gadget tutorials for young folks and robotics projects in Central American jungles, which eventually led him to apply to be an arts ambassador for a new outreach program known as American Arts Incubator.The program premiered last year as a partnership between the U.S. State Department and the Silicon Valley-based company ZERO1 with the mission of using art to connect to communities outside the U.S. Each ambassador leads a community in workshops and activities to explore a theme unique to their country. In his application, Quitmeyer proposed that as an arts ambassador to the Philippines, he would raise ecological awareness by combining monitoring of the local environment with performances illustrating the community's responsibility to clean up the area.
For the full article, read here.
