Oh my, butterflies! An immersive look at our Appalachian neighbors

This is an interactive art experience that brings together knowledge and data on Appalachian butterflies and presents them in a novel way. So this project originated from some conversations I had with Trevor Finney about how you might display 3D collections in an exhibit context and be able to manipulate them through hand gestures. There is inherently a challenge in presenting 3D artwork in a gallery setting. The challenge is essentially you have a 3D object that's meant to be viewed in dimension, in the round. Trevor made a rough prototype over the summer of a digital interactive using the Pepper's Ghost technique to create a hologram effect and then using Touch Designer so you could use hand gesture to manipulate the hologram. and he got it to a place where we felt like we could give it to the students and have them situated in an exhibit context. I was initially excited at what I perceive to be quite a challenge to translate a topic that is more scientific, ecological, like butterflies, into something that art students can really grasp. It's the learning opportunity we get, because I think none of us really used Touch Designer before, so the learning is like super hard but along the way that travel was helpful and we got to like cooperate with each other to fix the problems and make sure everything comes together at the end. What I hope people get out of this when they come to this exhibit is an opportunity to see ways to engage with things we would think of as data as information in a in a fun way in a way that kind of pulls them in and makes them play and puts them in a space of curiosity.