Feature

After rebounding from a major flood with vibrant new leadership and a new toolbox of performance technologies, the ATLAS Institute’s B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance now offers more varied and interesting opportunities to artists, engineers, creative technologists and performers than ever before.

For the second year running, Creative Technology and Design students won first place at the largest university hackathon in the Rocky Mountain region, HackCU, held this year March 5-6 on the CU Boulder campus. Another student, whose two majors include CTD and computer science, took second place this year as the sole member of his team.

​​Kailey Shara, an ATLAS PhD student and a member of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, and her team, won third place and $1,000 for Chembotix robotic automation platform. Annie Margaret, teaching assistant professor with the ATLAS Institute, and her team, placed fourth with Digital Wellness x NoSo November.

A Q&A with Ondine Geary by Shoutout Colorado. "I make dances that are scrappy, unruly and resourceful. They slip themselves into the crevices between genres and insist on using whatever was lost down there–chicken bones, loose wires, half-retrieved memories."

ATLAS PhD student Fiona Bell is passionate about sustainability; her doctoral dissertation tackles how to reduce waste through encouraging intimate relationships between designers, the materials they use and the artifacts they develop. In recognition of her work, Bell recently received financial support to help complete her thesis through a Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

She’s a trapeze artist. He’s a computer scientist. Together, they’re hoping to redefine immersive performance.

A group of six artists and technologists connected to the ATLAS community contributed to BLDG 61’s Maker Made 2022, which runs through March 28 at the Boulder Public Library. Zack Weaver, who played a key role in establishing the ATLAS BTU Lab and the show’s curator, says the inspiration for Maker Made goes back to his days at Carnegie Mellon with ATLAS Director Mark Gross.

Normally virtual surfaces cannot be felt because they aren't there. But at Reality Labs Research at Meta, (previously known as Facebook), ATLAS PhD Student Purnendu is researching soft, wearable devices–such as wristbands, rings or gloves –that could enable tactile sensations in virtual/augmented reality environments.

Centrally located in the Smithsonian Institute’s new “Futures” exhibition in Washington D.C. is an interactive light sculpture designed by acclaimed New York artist and architect Suchi Reddy, with support from a team of creative technologists that includes renowned multimedia artist and Creative Technology and Design program Lecturer Justin Gitlin.

T9Hacks kicks off this year at an in-person event on February 18 at 4:30 p.m. at the ATLAS Institute. The seventh-annual hackathon promotes interest in creative technologies, coding, design and making among college women, nonbinary individuals and other groups that are underrepresented in technical fields.