Proceed with caution: abundant spoilers for “WandaVision” lie ahead.

Our Take: 4 Stars

When Tony Stark snapped his fingers in the climatic ending of “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), many devoted fans might have felt a little lost as to what was next for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel wrapped up Phase III with some of the biggest revelations in its history, and it was difficult to see how the franchise was going to follow up on blockbusters like “Endgame” and the subsequent “Spiderman: Far From Home.”

“WandaVision,” a television series exclusively on Disney+, offered a peek into what fans can expect from Phase IV. Rather than riding on the success and ubiquity of previous films for shock factor and fan service, Marvel spread its wings with “WandaVision” while still remaining true to its hallmark characters and story lines.

At first glance, “WandaVision” might have been a hard sell: the trailer showed two Avengers (one of whom is supposed to be dead) who look like they’ve been dropped into the Dick Van Dyke Show. Yet, creator Jac Schaeffer (“Timer”) and director Matt Shakman (“Cut Bank”), with the talents of franchise icons at their fingertips and all the panache of any Marvel production in their arsenal, managed to pull that off and more.

“WandaVision” follows Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen, “Wind River”) and Vision (Paul Bettany, “A Beautiful Mind”) as they play out a suburban idyll in a series of episodes that each pay homage to a different era in sitcom history.

The show’s first few episodes are so authentically true to their source material that viewers can’t help but be entertained. But everything is not as it seems, and something sinister lurks behind the hilarity unfolding on-screen. In classic Marvel fashion, the early episodes are littered with Easter eggs and clues to what is actually going on.

As the show jumps from the ‘60s to the ‘70s to the ‘80s, the puzzle starts to come together: the couple’s shiny, silver-screen life is created and controlled by Wanda herself, in a desperate attempt to bring back the not-quite-man she loves. Meanwhile, outside Wanda’s “Hex,” Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris, “Dear White People”), Jimmy Woo (Randall Park, “Fresh Off the Boat”) and Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings, “Thor: The Dark World”) begin to put the pieces together.

From there, “WandaVision” unfolds along two storylines: Wanda and Vision in “WandaVision,” the show within the show, alongside Rambeau, Woo and Lewis as they seek to save Wanda from herself, at cross purposes with S.W.O.R.D. acting director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg, “Parenthood”).

But the two narratives quickly blur into one as the world inside the Hex collides with the one outside it.

It’s not a perfect show, of course. It’s hard to feel invested in Woo, Lewis or even Rambeau as their storyline bounces between over-the-top dramatics and painfully cheesy humor. Some lines sound straight of an early 2000s show on Disney Channel, which is a little ironic.

A few plot points — particularly the show’s conclusion — feel rushed and introduced too late in the game. But none of these defects detract from the experience of watching the show.

Every one of the eight episodes is a meticulous production worthy of the rest of the franchise, with the level of care and thought (and probably also the big budget) that hallmarks Marvel movies. From coloring to costuming to aspect ratio to quirky theme songs, each episode keeps viewers on the edge of their seats.

But beyond production, the episodic format is new for Marvel, and the creators of “WandaVision” use it to their advantage rather than trying to recreate the epic action of a typical MCU film. Nothing is too weird or whimsical for the show, and it is impossible to get tired of it as it moves seamlessly from creepy to hilarious and back.

The show’s quirkiness is held together by brilliant performances from its lead actors. Paul Bettany brings another level of humanity to Vision, in no small part through a never-before-seen (for Vision) hilarity. Kathryn Hahn’s (“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”) portrayal of Agatha Harkness has won her adoration as the show’s zany villain. And at the heart of “WandaVision” is Wanda herself, the woman as well as the superhero, in a grounded, powerful performance by Elizabeth Olsen.

“WandaVision” deals in binaries — the show within the show, the dual narrative inside and outside the Hex, the contrasts between Agatha and Wanda. On the one hand, it is a whimsical new experience for Marvel, and a preview into what is to come for the MCU.

The genius of the show, however, is the way that it delves into Wanda’s character as she grieves the loss of everything she has ever known and loved. At its core, it is a touching portrayal of a woman forced to deal with the unimaginable.

As it examines Wanda’s past, it offers a heartbreaking look into a woman’s response to loss. The show has many unexpectedly poignant moments. One of the most memorable is when Vision asks Wanda, “What is grief, if not love persevering?”

The sitcoms that “WandaVision” references, from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” to “Bewitched” to “Full House” to “Modern Family,” are cultural landmarks because we see ourselves in them.

While “WandaVision” is poised to take its place alongside these household names, its real legacy will be the way it reminds us that superheroes are not so unlike us after all.

There is no band in the world like BTS. The specific blend of insane chemistry, genre-bending music, angelic good looks, incredible stage presence and once-in-a-generation talent has made the K-pop group into a global phenomenon and earned them a literal army of devoted fans.

The group’s seven members — RM, Suga, J-Hope, Jin, Jimin, V and Jungkook — were prepping for a global tour of their penultimate album “Map of the Soul: 7” when the pandemic hit last March. Undeterred, BTS began work on a brand-new, record-smashing album, “Be,” which was released in Nov. 2020.

On Feb. 23, they continued to make history when they became the first K-pop group to perform on MTV’s legendary Unplugged series, joining the likes of Nirvana, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi and Miley Cyrus. The virtual concert, which featured four songs from “Be,” was a reminder to fans new and old of just how good BTS are, and will doubtless be remembered as one of their most iconic pandemic-era performances.

The concert opened with BTS’ first live performance of “Telepathy,” an exuberant disco-pop track off of “Be.” Calling the song “unplugged” might have been a bit of a stretch. In true BTS fashion, the performance of “Telepathy” was an extravagant production of swooping camera shots and an ostentatious set that had the group members playing foosball and horsing around on a motorcycle in the background.

But despite its upbeat retro vibe and funky undertones, the lyrics, like those of most BTS songs, go deep. Suga, who is performing again after taking time off for an injury, helped to write “Telepathy” and said that “the song’s lyrics describe our current situation of temporarily being apart from each other.”

Next on the set list was “Blue & Grey,” a melancholy guitar ballad that the group performed in a backlit, plant-filled greenhouse. Like “Telepathy,” “Blue and Grey” is a B-side track off of “Be” that had never been performed live. With its simpler melody and light acoustic instrumentation, the track allows the group’s vocals to shine, especially V’s soulful baritone, which apparently has no concept of range.

“Blue & Grey” offers a poignant insight into the burnout, depression and loneliness that even the most successful artists experience. V, who originally wrote the song for his solo mixtape, said that he “tried to express my inner sadness and uncertainty, so I translated the feeling of burning out as ‘blue’ and the sadness of not being able to see ARMY as ‘grey.’”

Arguably the highlight of the concert, however, was BTS’s jaw-dropping, instantly-iconic cover of Coldplay’s “Fix You.”

The cover was notable for a couple of reasons: for one thing, it is only the second song that BTS have performed all in English (after their No. 1 hit “Dynamite”).

For another, it had the rap line (RM, J-Hope and Suga) singing the lower harmonies to the vocal line’s melodies — an unusual but welcome occurrence for the group.

Beyond that, “Fix You,” with its uplifting lyrics and soaring refrains, is a quintessentially BTS song that showcased the sheer magnificence of the group’s vocals and their desire to offer hope and comfort to their fans.

Seated in a row, with little production beyond some lighting, BTS gave a transcendent performance that left fans and non-fans alike with chills.

“Last year, we all went through such difficult times, and this song gave us comfort,” said Jimin about the cover, “so we wanted to prepare this cover to comfort you all as well.” The concert closed with performances of two of BTS’s most successful songs to date: “Life Goes On” and “Dynamite.” The two songs were performed with a live band and were the most “unplugged” of the night, with barely any vocal backing.

Despite having already given several live virtual performances of both songs, the group delivered fresh renditions that leveled both songs up by several notches.

Grammy-nominated “Dynamite” debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 2020, making it BTS’ first number one single in the U.S. and making the band the first South Korean group to top the chart.

Three months later, “Life Goes On,” the lead single off of “Be,” debuted at number one as well, and became the first song to top the charts that was sung in primarily non-English.

But despite the smashing success that they have found with both of these songs, BTS’s renditions of them on MTV Unplugged were brand new, with extensive ad-libbing and more harmonies — especially on the part of Jungkook, who, like the rest of the group, can not seem to stop outdoing himself.

As a whole, BTS’ performance on MTV showed that even stripped of their impressive choreography and all the drama of their live performances, BTS is one of the most talented bands in pop music.

Their MTV Unplugged offered insight into the ways that they are maturing and improving as a group and highlighted their ability to embody a range of genres.

Considering all they have already accomplished, it might be easy to think that BTS has already peaked.

With this concert, they have proved that the only place they are going is up.

Every Liberal Arts student at Tech has been there at one point (or many points): you’re hanging out with a group of perfectly nice people and then, inevitably, the conversation turns to school and majors, and then, before you get a chance to mumble that you’re LMC, INTA, HTS, etc., the jokes about liberal arts and Ivan Allen College start flying.

I still don’t quite understand why the STEM crowd continues to labor under the delusion that we’re the perfect butt for their jokes, but if you’re a member of that group, I’m here to remedy your misperceptions.

Here are six common myths about LMC, addressed.

(Also, many of these probably apply to Liberal Arts students in general at Tech, but being LMC myself, I can’t speak to the other IAC majors specifically).

Myth #1: LMC majors don’t exist. Yes we do, and we’re proud of it. Though we may be few in number, we are mighty.

LMC stands for Literature, Media, and Communication (not CommunicationS), by the way.’

Myth #2: They don’t know what they want to do. This might have some truth to it in that LMC is a beautifully broad major that gives you lots of options and opportunities to explore.

But plenty of us come into the major knowing exactly what we want to do, or we choose to have options, and not be pigeonholed into a single industry or career.

Myth #3: They weren’t smart enough to do anything else. On the contrary, most of us are in LMC because we wanted to be in LMC.

Many of us could have gone to a more traditional liberal arts school if we had so desired, or chosen a more technical major. Many of us went to STEM-heavy high schools.

But we all chose to do something off-the-beaten path for our own reasons, and they’re good ones: we wanted a more technical background, or we wanted to do all the things, or it just fit a specific career goal the way nothing else did.

Myth #4: They’re all girls. Nope. This is Georgia Tech we’re talking about, after all.

Myth #5: They don’t learn useful hard skills / they won’t be able to get a “real” job. The ability to communicate never goes away. And Robin Williams said it better than I: “words and ideas can change the world.” They’re called “humanities” because they speak to something fundamentally human— something that we need to hold on to.

In more practical terms, LMC is a lot more than just an English major — it covers everything from film to technical communication to information design to video production to journalism. There are very few other majors that give you so many options to curate your classes to what you want to do, whether you’re interested in social media, pre-law, or film production.

The options are virtually endless, and you pick up a host of skills — writing well and speaking well, to start with — that will only become more and more vital as the world gets more technical. (When a computer replaces you in a few years and the only person who still has a job is that weird liberal arts student you knew in college, you’ll understand what I mean.)

Also, like most Tech students, LMCers are generally talented, passionate, intelligent people who are likely to succeed no matter what they do.

Myth #6: LMC is easy. While we may not be solving equations, conducting experiments, or writing a program, the difficulty of LMC comes from thinking a lot about big things (the biggest things— life, love, etc.) and then finding a way to articulate them; from dealing more often with abstracts than with anything concrete; and from being forced to be creative on demand.

Creativity isn’t easy, even for creative people, and the constant demand to be creative and to then be graded on your creativity is draining.

Rather than relying on patterns and formulas, LMC challenges you to constantly push the limits— and if you think that’s easy, I’d like to see you try.

In conclusion, LMC makes the world go round— just take a look at this newspaper.

Our Take: 2 Stars

When Lana Condor (“Deadly Class”) and Noah Centineo (“Sierra Burgess Is A Loser”) brought Jenny Han’s young adult novel to life in 2018, they were irresistible.

Netflix’s “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” became a pop-culture phenomenon for a few reasons: it had an endearing cast and a charming story; it was considered a big step for Asian-American representation; it had all the hallmarks of a classic rom-com.

The chemistry between the lead actors and the cutesy kitsch of the entire film made for an undeniably delightful experience.

Three years later, the third and final installment in Netflix’s franchise based on Han’s trilogy is substantially less delightful.

Following up on a comparably mediocre second film, “To All the Boys: Always And Forever” follows the now-iconic Lara Jean Covey and Peter Kavinsky through their senior year of high school and all of its accompanying turmoil: college admissions, the senior trip and prom.

Drama ensues when Lara Jean and Peter are not accepted into the same school, even though, as Lara Jean’s younger sister Kitty (Anna Cathcart, “Odd Squad”) puts it, they “aren’t cut out for this long distance thing.”

Lara Jean’s various crises and indecisions, which, at this point, any viewer of the TATB trilogy is intimately familiar with, make up the primary conflict of the rest of the film.

He gets into Stanford; she gets into Berkeley and then falls in love with NYU. What is a girl to do when the love of her life is going to school on the West Coast and she kind of wants to live on the other side of the country?

As Lara Jean struggles to answer the age-old question of head vs. heart (with all the appropriate theatrics), the film clunks through every trope in the book: Peter searches for reconciliation with his estranged dad, the Covey girls adjust to a stepmother and impending nuptials, and the standard drama of promposals and highschool romance unfolds in the background.

In true TATB fashion, Kitty has a secret, Margot offers maternalistic advice, Lara Jean bakes, Chris does something that’s supposed to be outrageous and Peter and Lara Jean break up at least once.

And of course, the storyline culminates with the two of them having sex, an entirely unpredictable and shocking turn of events.

The big issue with “Always and Forever” is that ostensibly it is about growing up, getting serious, learning there is a world beyond the confines of high school. But the film, and Lara Jean herself, are so wrapped up in themselves that the growth that happens seems forced and irrelevant anyway.

One can’t watch the film without wondering “So what?” Does it really matter and who really cares?

Not that it is an unwatchable movie by any means. The cutesy, over-the-top aesthetics that won so many hearts in the original 2018 film prevail in this one, from the costuming that made Lara Jean an icon to the graphics that give the film its true-to-the-original DIY flavor.

The soundtrack features fun cameos by Lauv, The Spice Girls, BLACKPINK and others. And Condor and Centineo certainly are not hard on the eyes.

Like the films that preceded it, “Always and Forever” doesn’t take place in the real world. The deliberately composited shots and meticulous sets give it a cartoonish, Anderson-y feel. And the events of the film are not particularly realistic either — it is a world where seniors at NYU invite random highschoolers to their parties, and where those parties take place on a rooftop lit by fairy lights, with live music and a one-in-a-million view.

But while this approach worked in the first film, it prevents this one from being anything but trite. Lara Jean’s doe-eyed innocence, inability to make up her mind, and quirky tendencies are endearing in the first installment, irritating in the second, and downright infuriating in the third.

Peter’s curly-haired, puppy-dog appeal captured hearts all over the world when he first appeared in 2018. But it is a little old at this point, and in this film Peter, for all his good looks and charm, comes across as mostly just immature.

Condor and Centineo are both talented actors, and the chemistry between them is still fun and enjoyable to watch. But despite their efforts and their apparent love for the film and their roles, “Always and Forever” falls flat due to a poorly developed plot and an absence of any real maturity that all of the cute visuals and pretty faces in the world do not make up for.

(And don’t even get me started on Kitty. She’s the worst.)

Our Take: 4 Stars

“The Dig,” a historically-inspired period drama based on John Preston’s novel of the same title, is a quiet, quintessentially British story about life, love and archaeology. The film tells the true story of the excavation of Sutton Hoo in 1939, one of the most prominent archaeological finds in British history. The find was one of the first to offer insight into the so-called “Dark Ages” in Britain, and many of the artifacts unearthed are still on display at the British Museum.

In the film as in real life, the ship is first discovered by amateur archaeologist Basil Brown, played to unassuming perfection by Ralph Fiennes (“Schindler’s List”).

Brown begins the excavation at the behest of the wealthy, widowed Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan, “The Great Gatsby”), who owns the estate of Sutton Hoo. As the drama of the excavation itself unfolds, so does the internal drama of those unearthing it — Mrs. Pretty grapples with her own mortality, while Basil must decide between his pride in his discovery and his love of it.

Once the import of Basil’s discovery becomes clear, conflict arrives in the form of archaeologists from London, eager to claim the find for themselves. Ken Stott (“The Hobbit”) plays Charles Phillips, the Cambridge archaeologist who takes over the dig. Accompanying Phillips is Stuart Piggot (Ben Chaplin, “Dorian Gray”) and his young wife Peggy (Lily James, “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again”). The tensions between Stuart and his wife quickly become evident — the two share a bedroom, but not a bed, and Stuart seems to prefer the company of his fellow archaeologists to that of his wife.

While Stuart dallys, Peggy catches the eye of Mrs. Pretty’s dashing young cousin, Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn, “Emma”), who arrives first to help out with the excavation and then to photograph it. As war looms on the horizon, the two engage in a tender affair that both know will be over almost as soon as it begins.

The film takes place on the cusp of World War II, and tremors of the coming conflict give it an underlying sense of urgency and tragedy. The signs of war are everywhere — RAF planes fly overhead, Mrs. Pretty sees uniformed soldiers when she goes into London — and the archaeologists hurry to finish the dig before the fighting starts.

The acting in the film is superb but understated. Fiennes and Mulligan both give delightfully no-nonsense performances as their respective characters; Mrs. Pretty and Basil Brown are bland and unperturbed on the outside to conceal the emotions that churn beneath the surface. James, who has built her career playing fresh-faced, relentlessly charming damsels, brings unexpected depth and weight to Peggy’s character. Archie Barnes (“His Dark Materials”) is irresistible as Robert, Mrs. Pretty’s young son; Flynn’s Rory Lomax is, like the rest of the film, quietly compelling.

With the gloomy, lovely British countryside as a backdrop and the coming war weighing heavily in the forefront, “The Dig” examines the tragedy of the passage of time and the meaning of what we leave behind. As history is unearthed beneath her feet, Mrs. Pretty is forced to come to terms with what it means to die while she watches Robert, who subsists more on fairytales than reality, grow up into a world about to be torn apart. Meanwhile, Peggy finds something precious and fragile with Rory, who is trying to capture it all with his camera before it passes him by.

In conclusion, “The Dig” will doubtless take its place amongst the period dramas that we all know and love as it brings the fascinating story of the Sutton Hoo excavation to a new generation and a different time.

Somewhat ironically, the film notes in the closing scene that much of Basil Brown’s contribution to the excavation went unrecognized until recently — if nothing else, “The Dig” serves to remedy that. More importantly, though, it explores the concepts of history, time and mortality, hoping to find within them a reason to hold on.

As Brown himself says in the film, “That speaks, doesn’t it? The past?”

“The Dig” is streaming on Netflix now.

Our Take: 4 Stars

Just in time for Black History Month, Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah” is a riveting account of the infamous events surrounding the life and death of Black Panther Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya, “Black Panther”) during a tumultuous time in American history. With themes of racial injustice, police brutality and systemic oppression, the film tells a gripping story of the most relevant civil rights issues today.

Set amid the smoky streets of 1960s Chicago against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and a countercultural revolution, “Judas and the Black Messiah” follows the true story of William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield, “Knives Out”) as he infiltrates the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. At the beginning of the film, O’Neal is a petty criminal who quickly gets in over his head at the behest of CIA Agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”).

Meanwhile, Hampton, a charismatic leader and ardent speaker, works to unite the oppressed groups in the city under his message of revolutionary socialism, in opposition to the Chicago police and the CIA. As Hampton’s influence grows, so does the desire of the people whose way of life he threatens to eliminate him. O’Neal finds himself caught in the middle of a conflict that descends into a cycle of violence, forced to choose between security on the one hand and a cause he is devoted to on the other.

Aesthetically, the film is engrossing from start to finish, offering an intimate snapshot into the lives of both men and those around them. It begins and ends with documentary-style clips of O’Neil, first portrayed by Stanfield and then by the man himself, that place the film in its time.

This sense of historicity is borne out by the grimy sets, realistic shoot-out scenes, and powerful script, while excerpts of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X play in the background.

Stanfield’s performance alone makes “Judas and the Black Messiah” well worth the watch.

His portrayal of O’Neal — a double-crosser and one of the easiest figures to condemn — provides an agonizing look at what it is to choose between two impossible options.

Rather than criticizing his actions, the viewer can not help but feel sympathy for O’Neil as the film shifts the responsibility for his increasingly poor choices onto a system that offers no alternatives.

Kaluuya in his turn provides a nuanced, magnetic performance that sucks the viewer in as much as it does Hampton’s fellow Panthers. His relationships with the other members, his influence over the surrounding gangs and his growing attraction to fellow Panther Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback, “The Hate U Give”) all contribute to a picture of a man who cares deeply about getting justice for those he cares about.

The film offers insight into Hampton the man as well as Hampton the Panther; ultimately, Hampton abides by his motto to live and die for the people.

On the other side of the conflict are the CIA’s Roy Mitchell and director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen, “The West Wing”). Both Sheen and Plemons are slimy and despicable in their parts, playing the film’s villains a little too conveniently.

In exchange for all of the nuance of Kaluuya and Stanfield’s characters, the “bad guys” of the film are stereotyped into their roles with little thought given to the matter.

The film delves into both the atrocities and the charities on the side of the Black Panthers without excusing or condemning them; perhaps understandably, it does not offer the opposite side the same consideration.

The film’s underlying messaging is clear and uncompromising: it is the story of two men trapped in a system that was never meant to include them and held in place by those who it best serves.

The film strikes a resonant chord today; Hampton’s radical messaging via Kaluuya’s powerful delivery sounds familiar to any viewer who has lived through 2020.

“Judas and the Black Messiah” caters to the current moment perfectly — perhaps a bit too perfectly.

It feels almost as if the narrative has been oversimplified to appeal to the masses of people living through a civil rights movement of their own.

Nevertheless, the film offers insight into a tumultuous moment in history that never really ended, leaving the viewer to decide if and when the ends justify the means.

“Judas and the Black Messiah” will be available to stream on HBO Max on Feb. 12.

Directly to the left of the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, on top of a low hill and framed by oak trees, stands a sculpture made entirely of tree branches and other natural materials woven and bent around each other to form a graceful sculpture that looks like it grew there. The piece is the latest by internationally-acclaimed artist Patrick Dougherty, whose 300+ pieces have appeared all over the world.

Dougherty, who is known for his “stickwork,” describes this piece as an “architectural shrubbery” that reflects structural elements from around Atlanta. When completed, it will be entirely free-standing. The sculpture is visible from Ferst Drive, one of the campus’s main thoroughfares.

Dougherty himself has constructed the piece with a team of volunteers that include Tech students, faculty and staff as well as participants from the Atlanta area. Community installation began Jan. 7 and will wrap up on Jan. 22.

The construction process began with gathering the materials — the sticks themselves — from Serenbe, a New Urbanism community just outside of Atlanta. Once the saplings arrived at the site, Dougherty drilled holes for the largest sticks along the perimeter of the design, following a footprint that he had drafted in advance.

Once the piece has this structural core, the team goes back for an “aesthetic phase”, which Dougherty describes as “using sticks as lines to draw with.”
Finally, they put the finishing touches on the piece in the “fix-up stage.”

Ian Buckalew, a second-year ME student, got involved with the installation over the winter break, when he helped gather materials at Serenbe. When he moved back to campus, he volunteered to assist with building the piece on campus.

“I like the natural vibe he’s going for,” said Buckalew, who describes himself as an outdoorsy person, “You don’t see much wilderness in Atlanta.”

Amy Senn, herself a nature artist, volunteered to assist with the project at the recommendation of a friend. She has followed Dougherty’s work for a few years.

“It’s a really cool opportunity to experience nature in a very unexpected way,” said Senn, “like you’re not going to expect to find this natural architectural structure in the middle of a college campus, so to happen upon it and be able to interact with it is pretty special.”

Dougherty’s installation on Georgia Tech’s campus is part of the Eco-Commons reclamation project to establish 80 acres of greenspace across campus, and will be the first section of the Eco-Commons to open.

Sponsored by the Kendeda Foundation and in partnership with Serenbe and Georgia Tech Arts, Dougherty’s work reflects Tech’s larger commitment to sustainability.

“Patrick’s art sits at the intersection of creativity, environmental sustainability and collaborative work,” said Aaron Shackelford, director of Georgia Tech Arts.

“All of these are important values for us at Georgia Tech, and I hope the campus and city can join him in creating this remarkable and unique new addition to our home.”

“A good sculpture,” said Dougherty himself, “is one that causes people to have a lot of personal associations.”

His goal for the piece is not to make an environmental statement as much as it is to remind people of the importance of nature and to build those positive associations with the environment.

“Anything that moves in the vein of capturing your imagination and is also a bit natural tends to further that end…reminding people of sustainability, environment, ecology,” Dougherty said.

“You kind of need to be able to go look at a tree once in a while.”

Dougherty’s sculpture near the Kendeda building located on Ferst Drive near West Campus, is still under construction and will not be open to the general public until April 2021.

In partnership with Georgia Tech Arts, Tech’s LGBTQIA Resource Center, and Tech’s Women’s Resource Center, Shilo Shiv Suleman will lead the Georgia Tech community in a series of immersive workshops beginning in January 2021. 

The Fearless Futures series will bring Tech graduate and undergraduate students together virtually to imagine new possibilities for a socially just world, with topics such as Health, Care, and Healing and Earth, Economy, and Resources. The series will culminate with a community-inspired project in the Spring of 2021. 

In addition to being a social justice activist, artist, and speaker, Suleman is the founder of the Fearless Collective, a public arts project based in Southeast Asia that strives to “move from fear to love using participative art.” The Fearless Collective has co-created 40 murals in 10 countries across the world, including India, Canada, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Pakistan.

Below, Suleman explains her vision for her work at Tech and beyond, in her own words. This interview has been edited for clarity. 

..

ER: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your story? How did you come to be involved in the arts and what led you to found Fearless Collective? 

SS: Beauty is my mother tongue. But we didn’t always speak in Beauty.

My mother married young, outside of her religious upbringing. She moved to Singapore, cut off family ties, had two children, and took up mapmaking as a hobby to fill her time. She used to recreate old maps with a single-hair brush and a diamond cutter’s eyeglass in the smallest room in our house, barely big enough to fit her drafting table.

Here was a woman who could make a world.

Beauty became both the financial and emotional backbone of our family. My father was a magician (best known for his disappearing acts, and one night he vanished). My mother found herself responsible for two children, so she began to teach art. At 14, I used to carry her basket of crayons and assist her. During the day she worked two jobs to sustain us, at night we painted. At first, we poured the pain out of our bodies, one bottle of ink at a time – our work back then was full of abandonment and pain.

But here’s the marvellous thing about pain: if you stay with it long enough- it begins to shapeshift.

Beauty saved me.

At 16, I started to illustrate stories of my own life in thick red handbound journals.

I started to tell my own story and found I could tell other stories too, which led to me illustrating books for children, with many published books by the time I was 18.

In December of 2012 I was in Delhi when the Nirbhaya rape happened. At the protests following this incident, people came with candles and banners, but they also came with invisible things like fear that sometimes caused them to buckle. There were thousands of us there. Our fists were clenched, but our eyes were full of water.

Fists clenched, banners high: “Hang the rapist.”

Girls whispering: “It could have been me. It could have been me. It could have been me.”

In my lifetime, this was the greatest flood I had witnessed. We were grieving, we were fire, this was a battle we had raged in our bodies long enough. This is a battle that we shouldn’t have to fight anymore.  As we sat on the streets, there was much nuance and healing in the way we told each other our stories, and revealed our scars to each other.

All the images in the media perpetuated the problem. They fetishised, fixated on details we never needed to know. They sensationalized the stories, but didn’t (let me) heal. These stories in the media were very different from the stories we were telling each other on the pavements.

Fear was absolutely counterproductive to the seismic shifts we needed to see: what we need/ed was more women out in public space, claiming space, in the day and in the night. Moreover, even the imagery in the protests reinforced our oppression- images of women being attacked, images of shadows and silhouette hands reaching for help, women screaming painted in black.  In subtle ways these images only fetishized the violence that we wanted to step away from.

I made another kind of image. It was an image of a woman with her arms crossed over her chest, the word “fearless” scrawled at the bottom. No matter what I am wearing, where I am, what time of night, I never (ever) ask to be raped.

I put this poster online, along with a call for others to affirm what being fearless meant to them, and ended up instigating a flood of hundreds of posters designed by artists across South Asia and the world. This was the beginning of Fearless. 

ER: What does Fearless Collective do? What does it mean to “move from fear to love using participative art?” 

SS: Fearless is a South Asia based public arts project that is led by women based in the Global South. We have worked in over 10 countries, co-creating 40 murals, reclaiming spaces, carving out public depictions of women and queer people, and their significance in societies around the world. Fearless’ work is to show up in spaces of fear, isolation, and trauma and support communities as they reclaim these public spaces with the images and affirmations they choose.

We believe fear is a complete misuse of the imagination. We use participative art to create the (healing) space for people to transform their fears into beauty and love; to imagine into existence their safe and sacred futures. 

In conflict and moments of trauma, we use art to create empathy between people, between communities. In Shaheen Bagh, as we painted images of Muslim women in the midst of anti-CAA protestors, a policeman stopped at our mural and told us how beautiful it was. Art makes us visible to each other. 

ER: What have been some of the highlights of your time leading Fearless Collective? 

SS: Early this year we painted a mural in Shaheen Bagh – revolution heartland, in the midst of anti-CAA protests led by Musllim women. After years of painting all over the world, this was a homecoming for me, as I found myself deeply involved and deeply moved by an issue that spoke to my very identity. 

The Fearless Yathra we’ve just completed has been another huge highlight. As soon as the lockdowns in India eased up, we set out on a 3 city tour – Lucknow, Delhi and Jaipur to work with different communities. We ended up with 3 beautiful murals in the three cities – which spoke to women’s desire, queer love and essential life and labour. In each of these spaces we painted, danced and occupied space joyfully – an act of reclaiming the streets as our own after long months of isolation. 

ER: What do you envision for the Fearless Collective Workshop Series at Georgia Tech? What can prospective participants look forward to in the series?

SS: In this series we are using the imagination as an antidote. Through different themed workshops, we will guide students through a process of creating their own Fearless Future – reimagining the new futures we want to emerge into. After the initial workshop, I will work closely with groups of students to bring to life what they have imagined.  

ER: What about Tech that suits this series specifically?

SS: We are excited to work with students with a tech background. Some of my biggest installations have been technology-based. I have made art installations out in the desert that beat with your heart. Installations that react to the tidal data from oceans and channel them into light. Installations that react to breath. 

Georgia Tech students will have the skill sets to create innovative solutions – this workshop will be a space where I guide you to put those skills to use through a process of imagining new possibilities in a socially just world. 

..

Learn more about the Fearless Futures series here. Find Suleman on Instagram and Facebook, and watch her TED talk here. 

On a fall night four years ago, CS student Samuel Porta was studying for his finals on the fourth floor of the CULC.

Sitting with his notes spread out on the table in front of him, the thought came: “I need some coffee.”

So he packed everything up in his backpack and headed down to the Starbucks on the first floor.

He was greeted by a 30-minute line. Out of the frustration of sitting a few flights of stairs away and still not knowing how long the wait would be, however, grew an idea: Tech should have a solution for this.

Four years later, that idea has become an app called queues that collects data from its users in order to cut down on wait times.

Porta created the first prototype of the app in an English 1101 class at Tech, where he was asked to pitch a problem that needed solving.

He described that class as the “culmination of inspiration and opportunity.”

In the Summer of 2018, queues was accepted into the Startup Launch program of Create-X, Tech’s initiative to help entrepreneuring students make their businesses into reality.

The support the team received from Create-X, said Porta, “carried us and helped us grow into where we are now.”

From their initial prototype, Porta and his team realized that mobile reporting of wait times wasn’t enough — “people would use the app if there were good wait times, but we weren’t able to get good wait times if people wouldn’t use the app,” he said.

So queues partnered with GT Dining’s provider Aramark to install tablets all around campus that enabled students to report their wait times without having to download the app, facilitating 5000+ reports per month.

In March 2020 — its third time competing — queues won first place in Tech’s prestigious InVenture prize.

Fresh off their hard-earned victory and on the cusp of partnering with Aramark, which would allow them to expand their services to more campuses in the Southeast, the future was looking bright to the queues team. Then the pandemic hit. Queues’s data-gathering tablets suddenly became unfeasible.

Several members of the team left.

The partnership with Aramark got put on the back burner. Undaunted, queues relaunched in October with the added functionality of tracking the lines at COVID-19 testing sites around campus.

Since then, the app has gained 50 to 100 users a week, all contributing to the app’s mission to “Wait Less, Together.”

The team, now 16-strong, is also working to develop a computer vision algorithm in partnership with Tech that will analyze footage from the Institute’s cameras.

Porta says that the biggest challenge is collecting enough data; he has realized that the only way to make the operation scalable is by using the computer vision software.

He’s hoping to expand to study spaces and common areas around campus where the app can tell the user how many seats are available.

Now, the team is focused on officializing its relationship with the office of the Provost and connecting with SGA.

Liz Welsko, queues’ VP Marketing, says the priority for the whole team is to secure the relationships and partnerships that will make the business profitable enough to support full time jobs.

Welsko, who joined the team this year and will graduate in the spring, said she would love to stay on the team post-college, but the company’s partnerships are the “deciding factor.”

“Everyone on the team is passionate about what they do,” said Porta.

“The big thing is the economic realities.”

At the end of the day, there needs to be enough revenue coming in that team members can be paid competitively once they graduate.

Porta’s goal is for a position at queues to be “your first and last job: the minute you graduate we have a job waiting for you.”

In ten years, Porta envisions a country with shorter wait times because of queues.

He hopes to have the app accessible in major restaurant franchises across the country, enabling anyone to easily figure out where they can get the quickest bite to eat.

“Those wait times — when you could be studying, or doing something else — add up,” said Porta.

He hopes that the growth of his startup will, through the collection of data, “make somebody’s life easier.”

Queues is available for download on the App Store and the Google Play store.

Learn more about the app at queuesapp.com or on Instagram @queuesapp.

Our Take: 5 Stars

The premise of “The Queen’s Gambit,” a seven-episode Netflix miniseries, is simple: Elizabeth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy, “Emma”) rises from the obscurity of orphanhood and femalehood in the mid-20th century to make a name for herself by being very good at chess. Beth is also deeply troubled, and a spiral into addiction accompanies her ascent to stardom.

The first episode of the series introduces the viewers to a young Harmon, played with remarkable potency by Isla Johnston (“Kiri”). After a tragic car accident that leaves her an orphan, Harmon joins the Methuen School for Girls. There, Beth meets the strait-laced Mrs. Deerdorf (Christiane Seidel, “Godless”), the foul-mouthed, big-sister figure Jolene (Moses Ingram, “Day 74”) and a surly janitor named Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp, “Joker”). Also at Methuen, Beth encounters the two dominant influences of the series: chess and the green tranquilizing pills that the school gives the girls.

When Beth stumbles upon Mr. Shaibel playing chess in the basement, the game captivates her instantly. Mr. Shaibel recognizes Beth’s natural genius for the game, heightened by her nightly pill-induced hallucinations. It doesn’t take long for her to outplay him, and then the high school chess club’s teacher, and then the entire club itself.

Fast forward a few years, and Allston (Patrick Kennedy, “Mrs. Wilson”) and Alma Wheatley (Marielle Heller, “MacGruber”) adopt Beth, while Jolene is left behind. Beth is still settling into her new life when Allston abandons his wife and adoptive daughter. Alma, a talented pianist and chronic drinker, is left to chaperone her daughter — and pocket a portion of her paycheck — as Beth’s chess career takes them around the country and to ever-increasing heights of luxury.

But Beth’s cripplingly self-destructive tendencies and violent addictions plague her rise to celebrity. The main thread of the plot often intersperses with her memories of her mother’s descent into madness and eventually suicide. Charismatic men weave in and out her life, but they cannot seem to decide if they are more enamored of her or of her dazzling ability.

As chess becomes Beth’s obsession and her means of controlling a world that has slipped away from her too many times, the series explores genius, madness, trauma, family and the things that bind them all together. Beneath the layers of glamor and confidence, Beth returns time and again to the same question: without winning, who is she?

“The Queen’s Gambit” has been described as a coming-of-age tale as it follows Beth from her tragic childhood, through her years of teenage prodigy, to a conclusion that finds her at the pinnacle of her game. But the thing that gives the series its sparkle and makes it as addictive as one of Beth’s green tranquilizers has little to do with the plot.

The series even manages to make a game that involves pieces gliding across a board indecipherably — at least to a novice — into a riveting piece of drama.

The matches are so beautifully shot, lit and edited that one cannot look away, even without knowing what is going on.

World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov and chess coach Bruce Pandolfini consulted on the series, and the games were based on actual matches.

“The Queen’s Gambit” takes the viewer on a journey, first to Cincinnati, Las Vegas, New York, then to Paris and Moscow.

Every scene and location in the film is shot with impeccable elegance and striking precision, evoking the old-timey glamor of Hollywood in the 60s.

Everything that happens on screen is intentional, lending weight and quiet tension to even the most subtle moments.

The series’ graphics, which play with black-and-white symmetry of a chessboard, are worthy of note.

Apart from visual aesthetics, the show also distinguishes itself auditorily with a strings-heavy soundtrack composed by Carlos Rafael Rivera that jumps sinuously from the tension and drama of a chess game, to tragedy of a loss, to the pathos of Beth’s story.

Rivera’s score is interspersed liberally with oldies — “End of the World” (Herman’s Hermits), “Fever” (Peggy Lee) and “Venus” (Shocking Blue), to name a few — that add dimension and sensitivity.

The crowning achievement of “The Queen’s Gambit,” however, is Taylor-Joy’s magnificent performance as Beth Harmon, opposite notable work by Harry Melling, Moses Ingram, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Marielle Heller. With her delicate features and doe-eyed charm, Taylor-Joy captures the allure of her character with ease.

Outfitted in an array of exquisite ensembles, she glides through her scenes with a quiet intensity and a chameleon-like ability to convey many emotions and none at all.

Director Scott Frank (“The Lookout”) has managed to hit all the notes that recent Netflix creations have missed. With its hypnotic pacing, understated portrayal of addiction, and mesmerizing onscreen chemistry, “The Queen’s Gambit” is one of the most enjoyable pieces of content to emerge from 2020.