Fall 2023: Thank you from ICAT!

Happy holidays from the ICAT team. Thank you for the wonderful year! We hope our students and faculty have had a relatively stress-free finals season. From everyone here at ICAT, we would like to thank you for this past semester and look back on the amazing feats we accomplished together by remembering the highlights and showing our gratitude to everyone involved.

Torpedo Factory (August 5-present)

Beginning in August, this semester was the first installment of the Torpedo Factory exhibit. Our exhibit, Sound Horizons, is still on display in the Target Gallary now through January, featuring four surround-sound projects made possible by ICAT’s Tesseract, a mobile version of the CUBE. These projects are from former ICAT projects titled: Dear Younger Me, Liminal Spaces, Sonification of Cybersecurity Data, and Musical Connection. This is a year-long collaboration and Sound Horizons will be changed on January 28th for Shakespeare's Garden. Thank you to the Alexandria Office of the Arts for collaborating with ICAT and making this possible.

Synaptic Soiree (September 15-16)

We extend our gratitude of the Alexandria Office of the Arts to also include this semester’s wonderful Synaptic Soiree. In the Torpedo Factory’s Grand Hall, three performances were shown throughout the evening. The three performances originated from ICAT projects and were titled Embodied Art; Emerging: Wuhan-Hu-1; and Body, Full of Time. This event kicked off the official grand opening of the Sound Horizons exhibit. You can find a video of the event on the Virginia Tech News site.

New Music Festival (September 25-27)

This semester we also hosted our three-day biannual New Music Festival. The first day allowed participants to listen to the Beo String Quartet. The second day featured new music from Charles Nicohles, Bobby Ge, and Leah Reid. Finally, the Higgs whatever closed out the festival, and the stars of the show, Miller Puckette and Kerry Hagan, also stayed until Friday for a Playdate and let us play with their new music technology. Thank you to all the performers and stage crew who made this wonderful experience possible for everyone.

Science Festival (November 11)

In November, we hosted our annual Science Festival. The Center for Educational Networks and Impacts (CENI) found the number of people who participated this year to reach pre-pandemic attendance for the first time since 2020. The Science Festival invites elementary-aged children to explore everything that science has to offer on Virginia Tech’s campus and has a wide array of activities from playing with robots to making fun science-filled concoctions. Thank you to CENI for hosting the event and making it all possible.

SEAD Grant (Ongoing)

Finally, we want to take a moment to say thank you to the students involved with the SEAD grants. ICAT considers itself lucky to have such talented and innovative students who want to do projects with us, and we look forward to seeing your creativity and ingenuity in the new year. Thank you as well to the faculty who do projects with ICAT for the amazing work this semester. We look forward to continue working with you next year.

Looking Forward

Find us online on January 12th with Ben Knapp with a seminar on How Not to Write a SEAD Grant. Major SEAD Grants are due on February 4th this semester, so be sure to attend so that you will know how to apply for funding for your project. We look forward to seeing everyone in the CID at 9 AM on January 19th for our first Playdate in 2024.

Thank you again to everyone who made this semester possible. Here’s to another great one in 2024!