Welcome to one of our latest projects: Subjective Immersion!
The Cortical Resilience Lab strives to understand how altered life experiences affect brain function and structure, and thus our perceptions. This project in particular was incited by Dr. Woon Ju Park receiving the Arts at Tech Catalyst Grant for Art Innovation. Thus it became a critical element of the lab’s mission to best ‘paint’ our interests on canvas and share our findings. A member of our team, Joshua Jackson, and recent PURA award winner was tasked with crafting this project. Joshua translated the nature and subjectivity of our daily perception into a form of art.
The difficulty of this project lied in establishing workable data relevant to subjective experiences. Joshua determined that to analyze the subjectivity of an individual’s perceptions, he would rely on eye-tracking equipment and software setup by another lab member, Loic Daumail. However, Joshua still had more ideas relevant to innovating this project and elevating the Georgia Tech and Atlanta community.
As a part of Joshua’s project, he wished to create a piece of art that invokes a since of synesthesia. His immediate idea was that as a participant gazes at a painting, it tells a visual story that is accompanied by appropriate music. For example, darker tones may elicit eerie and dissonant notes while brighter tones could elicit cheery, upbeat notes. He crafted a quick demo of this idea, overlapping a digital grid on a painting so that theoretically as your eyes wander, the music would change appropriately. Please see the example video recorded by Joshua himself!
Now settled on his core idea, Joshua set out to secure a unique painting and a collection of appropriate music files. Joshua would need a painting he could overlap with the digital grid and have participants view utilizing the aforementioned eye tracking gear. Collaborating with local Atlanta artists, Joshua was able to produce a completely unique and distinct painting as well as music collection for this project. The next steps were assembly and finally, testing.
Below are two different eye tracking samples provided by the aforementioned lab members, Joshua Jackson and Loic Daumail. The procedure lasted roughly two minutes each, with the red markings on the painting delineating the focus of their eyes. Below the referenced images are the accompanying sound files composed by their unique, subjective experiences.
This project was a critical success, being granted an Arts Expo at the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech. We hope that by translating subjective experiences of seeing an art into music, you can truly immerse yourself in their world.
Visual artist: Connor Wright, GT ’26, @connorisavisionary
Auditory artist: Lawson Crutcher, GT ’26, @lawsoncrutcher3218
— Joe Fagan