The Gigantic Art Space Where Euclid, Galileo, and a Robot Meet
By: Jason Wright | Categories: Alumni Achievements
There is an extra buzz on Wednesdays and Thursdays in the first-floor reading room of Price Gilbert Memorial Library. A literal buzz, plus some whirrs and clanks, emanating from a small, oddly shaped box as it scours the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the Hinman Building and the College of Design.
Back and forth goes the box, controlled by four tethering cords, with its small, articulated arm trailing behind a swath of black, white, or bright magenta paint. It is known as the human-style painting robot, and it is creating, two days at a time, a massive mural called Polycentric Truthes.
The brainchild of Library Artist-in-Residence Tristan Al-Haddad, Arch 01, M Arch 06, with help from the robot’s creator, PhD student Gerry Chen, the mural was created from January to early February and is now on display.
Polycentric Truthes complements Watermark, another massive installation by first Artist-in-Residence Deanna Sirlin, which currently bathes the Grove Level of Crosland Tower in colorful light.
“An artist residency at Georgia Tech should be a very unique type of inquiry,” says Al-Haddad. “It should be an exploration at the intersection of art and technology such that it is specific to the culture of the place.”
The new mural, which is an interpretation of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, unfolds as a massive expressive diagram on the building. The piece speaks to what the philosopher Nelson Goodman called “Irrealism” or “Worldmaking,” says Al-Haddad.
“Three systems, three worlds, three realities, all using identical elliptical geometries, create sameness and difference simultaneously,” says Al-Haddad.
For Chen, being able to use the robot in a novel indoor setting—with a complex network of inset windows—has been a learning opportunity.
“It’s been a really amazing and unique experience to take my research from the lab and bring it into Price Gilbert,” says Chen, who studies in the School of Interactive Computing. “There have been a lot of unforeseen challenges, but that’s just part of the artistic and learning process at a research institution. There have been so many things I couldn’t possibly have learned without taking this technology into the real world.”
In January 2023, the Library partnered with Al-Haddad, a former Tech assistant professor and double Jacket, for the second installment of its Artist-In-Residence program. Catherine Manci, public programming and community engagement specialist, is the founder and manager of the Library's Artist-In-Residence program. Polycentric Truthes is the culmination of the program and drew from student work in three workshops throughout March and April 2023. These included a “RoboGraffiti” technical workshop, a reading discussion and sketching session, and a live drawing party to close out the semester.
In the sessions, students read portions of Euclid’s Elements and Galileo’s seminal work as “provocations” to get their creativity flowing. From there, they drew and sketched ideas that were eventually translated into the robot’s gestural painting style.
Al-Haddad, who also designed and implemented the Library’s seventh-floor roof terrace Crosland Chroma project, says Polycentric Truthes represents more than a year of research and exploration and the convergence of robotic technology and conceptual design. The merger of art, science, and engineering perfectly encapsulates the type of exciting work that can be realized through multi-disciplinary research and design projects at Georgia Tech, he says.
“Prior to the specialization that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, artists were engineers, architects were master builders, and geometers ran the military… I think we need more blurring of the lines,” he says. “I recommend we all practice squinting from time to time.”
Meet the Artists
Alumnus & Artist-in-Residence Tristan Al-Haddad (pictured center) is a multi-medium designer and visual artist in addition to previously holding the position of assistant professor in the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech. He leads Atlanta-based Formations Studio.Gerry Chen (pictured right) is a PhD student at Georgia Tech, where he studies artist-robot collaboration to understand how robots can superpower artists and how art can drive technology. After completing his undergraduate at Duke, Chen continued his studies at Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM) PhD program in the School of Interactive Computing under Professors Frank Dellaert and Seth Hutchinson.
