Advice: should this New Media Art project use Ruby?

We are a New Media Art collective. We all have different backgrounds
(neuropsych, artists…) and work on a new media art. We want to
blend IT, academics and art. By e.g. coding an app/webpage where we
use neuropsych to create an engine that produces art. What? Well, we
put works of art in a DB, define what should be shown when (according
to neuropsych principles and some other rules), and the result is an
app/webpage that shows blended works of art.
The engine combines works of art, the visitor is allowed to vote (do I
like this?), and with a little bit of data mining, we try to get an
idea on what the configuration of the parameters will result in a
positive vote of the visitor.
We have variations on the topic, but this is the first project we
would like to create.

So, we use MySQL as our DB, and previously thought of using PHP and
some dynamic CSS to generate the pages. However, one suggested the
Ruby might be able to do so.

Hence the question:
Would it be able to do so?
Would it be the best option (better than Java or PHP)?
Is there a large community interested in helping us with the coding
(we do not have IT people who are into Ruby)?

By all means, post any comment/question/remark or email us.

Thanks.