Interactive Media Technology Center History
The Interactive Media Technology Center (IMTC), now absorbed into IPaT, was a research, design, and education center dedicated to research spanning technology, education, culture, and medicine. IMTC’s focus was in digital media processing, and they applied their research to a wide variety of areas including culture, education, and technology. IMTC played a pivotal role in helping the city of Atlanta win the 1996 Olympic Games. Note that several links on this timeline open a new window to get additional information.
1987
Originally formed as the Multimedia Technology Lab (MmTL) under the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs (OIP) with co-directors Michael Sinclair and Fred Dyer. The initial project was to create a virtual reality system supporting Atlanta's bid for the 1996 Olympics.
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OIP executive administrator Jean Gunter provided key support. The lab was located in Centennial Research Building, 3rd floor.
1987 - Bidding for the Olympic Games Starts
The centerpiece of Atlanta's 1996 Summer Olympic bid package was a seven-foot-tall, three-screen interactive video-disc system equipped with touch screen and trackball controls. View picture of the screens. The system was developed by Georgia Tech and GTRI researchers, with assistance from other universities and off-campus organizations. Three interactive presentations were produced by IMTC.
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The multimedia presentation combined virtual reality techniques, computer graphics, animation, and aerial photography that allowed viewers to take a virtual airborne tour of proposed Olympic venues. The roots of the Olympic interactive video system could be traced to earlier military projects, including missile defense modeling and simulation research.
August 27, 1989
Olympic System 1 - Magic Carpet Ride
IMTC's first project was to develop an interactive tour of Atlanta and its planned Olympic venues. It allowed International Olympic Committee (IOC) members to fly around the city from the comfort of a hotel suite using a graphics computer and a wooden encased trackball.
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The system was unveiled at Atlanta's official entry into the Olympic bid race in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in September, 1989. A map screen showed where the user was in the city, and icons for each Olympic sport. The user could "fly" into icons representing the sports venues, and the video screen would descend to earth and enter the facility. The system served as a "virtual" bid book, as each voting member could easily and quickly, and interactively look up information pertinent to their questions. The system spent the year after its premier traveling the world to wherever voting IOC delegates met to help sell Atlanta to the world.
1990
Olympic System 2 - Vision of the Village
Tech's second Olympic system took an up close and personal look at plans for Atlanta's Olympics. Many of the facilities, such as the Olympic Village, were shown in a high-tech theater using a surround interactive video system developed by Tech.
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IMTC and the Atlanta Organizing Committee decided that Atlanta needed another high-tech sales tool for the final vote for the Centennial games, scheduled for Tokyo, in September, 1990. The system was unveiled in the final days of the Olympic bidding in Tokyo in 1990. Both Olympic systems were a collaboration of a number of campus and industrial collaborators.
1990-1996
Olympic System 3 - Vision of Atlanta
The final version of the system was upgraded to contain information on all of Georgia's Olympic sites and widely shown for many years. This system presented panoramic views of Atlanta and the state of Georgia, with an opportunity to move through panoramas and select venues for more information. This system became part of the Georgia Resource Center, an economic development facility for Georgia.
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This iteration of the system featured an animated map of the Georgia Tech campus back-projected onto a frosted Lucite model. This served as a sort of touch screen controller. Touching points on the Lucite map would drive the location viewed on the screens. This huge feat wasn’t accomplished in a silo. Team members' recall how willing businesses and organizations were to pitch in. For example, Delta Airline’s machine shop assisted with the Lucite model. People from Georgia State wrote the scripts and managed production of video for the final presentation that was delivered to the International Olympic Committee in Tokyo in 1990. One example in this version was the full-color computer-simulated "fly-through" of the Olympic whitewater events venue. It was designed to orient TV viewers whenever Olympics coverage shifted from Atlanta-area sports venues to the whitewater course in Tennessee. GTRI developers integrated data from the LANDSAT satellite, high-altitude and low-altitude photography, and U.S. Geological Survey elevation information into the simulation.
1993
Multimedia Technology Lab led by MIke Sinclair develops a proof of concept virtual reality eye surgery simulator at Georgia Tech in cooperation with the Medical College of Georgia.
1994
Multimedia Technology Research Laboratory develops Motion Interactive (MINT), a software package for creating animated figures that simulate human movement. Pictured left-to-right are Mike Sinclair and student Scott Robertson. This is part of the bio-mechanical research going on at Georgia Tech partly spurred by the Olympics.
1994
This year marks the start of a 5-year collaboration between the Atlanta Ballet and Georgia Tech. The project's charter is to find innovative ways to integrate technology and the arts, specifically dance. The project's first performance, "Non Sequitur,” featured a ballerina dancing with a computer animated "virtual" dancer and was shown on CNN's Future Watch program in May of 1994. The projects include the use of motion capture technologies.
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Partners in projects included Georgia Tech's Robert Ferst Center for the Arts, the Savannah College of Art and Atlanta’s Beacon Dance. Technologies utilized included: 3D motion capture, real-time 3D graphics, bodycams, interactive infra-red sensors, laser sensors, dance pads, real-time visual and audio manipulation, remote data processing and visualization, IR motion tracking of the dancers, and more.
1996 - Microsoft DirectMusic
Microsoft DirectMusic, released in 1996, resulted from interactive music work that IMTC collaborated on for the Olympic system. DirectMusic was a component of the Microsoft DirectX API that allows music and sound effects to be composed and played and provides flexible interactive control over the way they are played.
1997 - Perry Historical Museum
IMTC helped support a Sam Nunn project with a historical museum in Perry, Georgia, with new intellectual property (IP) developed for phonetic search of audio archives. Georgia Tech faculty started a company based on the IP called FastTalk. The name was later changed to Nexidia. In 2016, software provider Nice Systems purchased Nexidia for $135 million in cash to expand its growing analytics business.
1997
The High Museum of Art in Atlanta revamped its Visual Arts Learning Space in April, 1997. Four computers with touch-screen capabilities combined with works of art displayed from the High's collection offer interactive learning to visitors to delve deeper into art pieces placed next to each machine . This new interactive experience was developed with High Museum staff and Georgia Tech's Interactive Media Technology Center. The museum's first foray into educational technology, "See for Yourself," is intended to introduce visitors, young and old, to the basic elements of art: line, color, composition and light.
