This past Saturday, February 5, the Project Jumpstart team hosted the 9th annual Innovation Competition in partnership with the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Kelley School of Business. Learn about these amazing projects!
THE WINNERS
Walker Smith
MAESTRO MOLECULES – 1st Place, $3,000
What does a molecule sound like? While this may seem like an absurd question, undergraduate chemistry and music double major Walker Smith has combined his expertise in chemical research, electronic music, and scientific communication to take audiences on an immersive audiovisual tour of the molecular world. “The Sound of Molecules” educates and inspires diverse audiences by illustrating the interconnected beauty of science and music in novel and engaging ways. Appearing as Maestro Molecules, he and his business partner, WonderLab Museum, will bring educational performances to middle and high schools, universities, museums, and other venues around Indiana, and eventually beyond.
Kylie Dickinson
THE AVIARY FASHION PROJECT – 2nd Place, $1,500
The Aviary Fashion Project collaborates with a wide variety of instrumentalists to create a fashion brand based upon the ideals of sustainable and affordable clothing. The project offers musicians clothes that are personally geared towards different instrumentalists’ needs and that represent a wide variety of cultures and fashion influences. The plan includes a runway show premiering 12 outfits designed personally by Jacobs School of Music Students at the Eskenazi Museum of Art and the launching of a website where performers can personally design and order unique clothing, or buy copies of past outfits at a significantly reduced cost.
Sage Hamm and Xinyuan Deng
INTERART COLLECTIVE – 3rd Place, $500
The InterArt Collective, a web-based creative hub and app, provides artists with an opportunity to collaborate by focusing on cross-disciplinary exchanges. The website design enables artists create their own profiles without having to undertake the stress and cost of making their own website. A second feature is forums where discussions are promoted within and across disciplines. Collaborative engagements are fostered, advertised, and organized by the InterArt Collective, giving new works an opportunity to be heard in a variety of settings. The InterArt Collective creates a more dynamic, relevant world of art and music.
THE FINALISTS
Ari Swartz, Ryan Kaneko, and Kylie Dickinson
KEN: MUSIC MICRO-LABEL
KEN is a unique record label formed by music fans frustrated with the high barrier to enter the music industry. KEN’s operations are run in the form of a micro-label: a music label which signs singer/songwriters song-by-song and provides Artists with the opportunity to experience professional production at no up-front monetary, time, or commitment costs. Instead, KEN invests in its Artists, putting in the work necessary to attain fair returns for both the Artists and Staff.
Abby Michaels
THE IMMERSIVE ORCHESTRA
The Immersive Orchestra aims to completely transform a traditional concert hall into an immersive, interactive space for audiences to experience music and visual arts in collaboration with a resident orchestra. With projections on the walls, kinetic sculptures, interactive technology for the audience, and comfortable, unique seating options, The Immersive Orchestra provides an opportunity for people to experience classical music in a completely new way.
Anna Rigoni
THE VILLAS FESTIVAL
The dream is to create a Musical Festival during the month of June that connects the beautiful Villas in Vicenza, Italy and the whole Veneto region. The Festival is designed to expand opportunities for emerging musicians and artists, activate community arts participation in the region, draw audiences to the area, and to create collaborations between different arts in the frame of the beauty of the historical architectural buildings.
Sergey Tkachenko
RESPIRE
Respire aims to produce a concert in the fall of 2022 where the Fauré Requiem will be performed alongside newly commissioned works from students across the IU campus. With a focus on current events, newly commissioned works serve to recontextualize this choral masterwork to make it more relatable, accessible and entertaining for contemporary audiences.
Timothy Yip and Dmitri Volkov
MUSIC ODESSEY
Music Odessey is a music instrument education mobile app for young audiences. The app is designed to include music quizzes with different types of music questions for students. It will also be gamified with player lives and a character suited for young audiences. Similar to the language app Duolingo, the character will respond to the user’s answer choices. Additionally, students can practice note reading through a sheet music viewer directly from the app.
Yi-Ping Chou
LAB-AMI
LabAMI will be the “hub” that provides classical musicians with opportunities to network with one another and to form connections with different tech companies, gaming industries, and innovative corporations. The goal is to create a new style of performances and attract a variety of audiences/ business/ investors.
OUR SPONSORS
This year’s competition is produced by the Jacobs School’s Office of Entrepreneurship & Career Development, with additional funding from the Kelley School of Business Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and a grant from Elevate Nexus, which is part of the State of Indiana’s Elevate Ventures fund.
