ATEC Team's Creation to Add Interactive Harmony to Jazz Artist's Show

By now, visitors to the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building have grown used to seeing an alternating set of distinctive, cardboard sculptures strewn across all corners of the first floor.

Angular renderings of mermaids, chess knights, masks and an array of abstract forms provide a jolt of creative panache for passers-by. It’s all courtesy of the 3-D Studio and Digital Fabrication Lab led by Professor Andrew F. Scott at UT Dallas.
Stepping into the lab, visitors are met with a workspace in constant motion. At the moment, graduate students are buckling down — weaving their way through a series of tall, steel frames and multiple piles of broad cardboard panels. Scott and his team are in the homestretch of wrapping up a massive undertaking: a relief sculpture that will serve as the interactive backdrop for an upcoming Terence Blanchard concert.

ATEC Course Recycles Technology for Creative Art Projects

A happy accident provided Andrew Scott, associate professor in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication, with the opportunity to secure tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of projectors needed to teach a class this semester for a fraction of the cost.
In the class, Projection Mapping Lab, UT Dallas students explore artistic expression by projecting images onto objects and spaces. They can take advantage of what Scott calls an immersive grid image along with taped patterns on a solid wall that provide a foundation for the projected artwork.
“The grid becomes projected artwork, and it’s absolutely beautiful,” Scott said. “This project pushes the creative envelope of the class.”