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Maker Made 2022 features work by ATLAS community

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 16:52:05 +0000

Maker Made 2022 features work by ATLAS community Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/22/2022 - 09:52

Zack Weaver, an ATLAS lecturer who played a key role in establishing the ATLAS BTU Lab, stands in front of Maker Made 2020. Weaver is a creative technologist at BLDG 61: ��«��Ƶ Library Makerspace and a curator for Maker Made.

A group of six artists and technologists connected to the ATLAS community contributed to ��«��Ƶ Public Library’s Maker Made 2022, which runs through March 28.

If you go

Who: Everyone is invited

What: Maker Made 2022, a gallery show celebrating the diverse and inspiring work by local makers.

When: Runs through March 28. The exhibit is open whenever the library is open.

Where: Canyon Gallery, ��«��Ƶ Public Library, 9th Street and Canyon Boulevard, ��«��Ƶ

Cost: Free

The fourth annual gallery show celebrates the diverse and inspiring work by local makers, representing the collective energy and ambition of a community of inventors, designers, engineers, artists, craftspeople and tinkerers.

“There’s no better way to celebrate a period of creative output than a party and a show-and-tell, and that’s what Maker Made has become,” says Zack Weaver, one of the show’s curators and a creative technologist at BLDG 61: ��«��Ƶ Library Makerspace. BLDG 61’s makerspace provides maker education to the public for free in an “inspiring and inclusive environment.”

Weaver, an ATLAS lecturer who played a key role in establishing the ATLAS BTU Lab, says inspiration for Maker Made dates back to his days as a Carnegie Mellon student of Professor Mark Gross, now director of the ATLAS Institute. Gross, along with university colleagues organized annual exhibitions, similar to the ATLAS Expo, Weaver says.

The ATLAS Connection
Creative Technology and Design graduates Luciano Mejia and Chaz Golin helped curate Maker Made 2022. Hired as "Contract Killer Creative Technologists" in late 2021, the two were major contributors to the show’s success. For exhibits by members of the ATLAS community, see below.

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 ��«��Ƶ 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.

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ATLAS community’s work featured in Museum of ��«��Ƶ exhibit

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 22:18:54 +0000

ATLAS community’s work featured in Museum of ��«��Ƶ exhibit Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/01/2021 - 16:18

A group of CU ��«��Ƶ artists and technologists, many of whom share connections with the ATLAS Institute, contributed to the Museum of ��«��Ƶ’s newest exhibit, “Convivial Machines,” which opened Saturday, Oct. 30.

The gallery showcase is the first museum installation for ��«��Ƶ Experiments in Art and Technology (B.E.A.T), says the exhibit's curator, Jiffer Harriman (ATLS PhD '16), who started B.E.A.T. in 2019 to “foster creativity and collaboration at the intersection of art and technology.” Museum visitors can expect to see a variety of interactive systems, including musical installations and video art, as well kinetic sculptures, digital games, bioluminescent algae and more, Harriman says.

“The exhibit highlights a local community of artists and creative technologists looking for new ways to see the world,” says Harriman. “It explores the differences and balance between what people do well—expressiveness and creativity—and what machines are good at–repetition and connection.”

One of the emerging themes of the show is the tension between the benefits that technology offers and the negative impacts, Harriman says. Some installations imagine new possibilities, while others point toward technology’s negative effects, including an installation of "useless boxes" that contain a single switch, which when turned on, is immediately switched off by a robotic finger, he adds.

The ATLAS Connection
Inspired by bioluminescent algae and the idea of engaging with something “live,” Harriman has blended research led by Mirela Alistar, assistant professor of computer science with the ATLAS Institute, into the installation. Alistar, also the director of the Living Matter Lab, and Netta Ofer, an ATLAS master’s student, have created an exhibit, “Bioluminescent Touch,” where visitors can interact in the darkness with dinoflagellates, algae that produce light when exposed to oxygen through physical stimulation.

“The bioluminescent response to human touch creates unexpected connection and empathy with the microorganism, drawing us into the wonder of communicating and interacting with nonhuman beings,” Ofer says.

Slaton Spangler, now a software engineer with LASP who, as an undergraduate majoring in computer science was a very active member of the BTU Lab, made the interactive installation, “Amorphous Breeze.” The piece displays a network of undulating “blobs” that fade in and out following a set of underlying rules. When a viewer presses a glowing green button, a fan in the real world appears to blow away the blobs, replacing them with new blobs that follow new rules. The patterns that emerge from the waves of blobs tend to be mesmerizing in the same fashion as a lava lamp, Spangler says.

Spangler also constructed the installation, “Clear the Void,” which uses an XBox Kinect to create an interactive space of digital images provided by Matt Corones, an ATLAS master's student (Creative Industries) in the ACME Lab, Dajira Medić, Jeanne Kipke, Andy DiLallo and Shannon Derthick.

In a third installation, Spangler created a hardware platform to loop an installation of video art from the B.E.A.T. community that includes a range of experimental techniques and themes.

If you go

Who: Open to everyone

What: "Convivial Machines," an exhibit by ��«��Ƶ Experiments in Art and Technology (B.E.A.T), including many artists and technologists from the ATLAS community.

When: Oct. 30–Feb. 6, 2022

Where: Museum of ��«��Ƶ, 2205 Broadway, ��«��Ƶ

Cost: adults $10; seniors, college students, youth (5-17) $8; under 5–free.

Info

Video artists including Angie Eng (PhD IAWP ‘21) who as a PhD student was an active member of the BTU Lab, and Professor Ellen Do and Annie Margaret, teaching assistant professor, were on Eng's dissertation committee; Bentley Brown; Christopher M. Carruth, former ATLAS lecturer/current CMCI lecturer, (MTMS—Information and Communication Technology for Development '13); Isaac Kim, ATLAS master’s student; Kevin Hoth, ATLAS lecturer; Laura Hyunjhee Kim, IAWP PhD student and a member of the BTU Lab; and Mark Mosher project their videos in a loop on a wall.

Priyanka Makin, an ATLAS master's student, fabricated the “Nature Mobile,” a kinetic sculpture of nature shapes that explores the future relationship between technology, engineering, art and nature. Makin used a laser cutter to cut the pieces and built and programmed the motor. With the help of natural sunlight in the lobby, the sculpture scatters colors throughout the entry to the museum.

Perry Owens, an undergraduate CTD student and member of the ACME Lab, created the sculpture, "The Future of Problem Solving," which expresses the duality between man and machine as they are tasked with solving a puzzle. To succeed, man and machine must achieve harmony through trust and coordination. Owens made the "human" from resin casts of his own hands. Using a 3D modeling software, he designed the mechanical arms and 3D printed them with fingers that can be posed. He also 3D printed the Rubik's cube, which can be rotated, and added a wooden exterior, while the LED-lined portals and mirrors were laser-cut.

"I imagine the future of our world is one in which there is collaboration between technology and humanity, instead of competition and war," Owens says. "This piece was fabricated using human skills combined with technology, akin to its message of unity between man and machine."

A collaborative effort of seven created the musical arcade, “Galaga's Ghost,” a multi-channel musical instrument that up to six people can play with buttons, joysticks and air guitar moves. The interactive musical composition was created by Sean Winters, a CMCI lecturer in the Department of Critical Media Practices who performs regularly in the ATLAS Black Box. Winters is also on the B2 advisory committee. Torin Hopkins, a PhD student in the ACME Lab and the instructor for the SOUND class, helped design the interface layout and assisted with the final fabrication of the piece.

A group of 14 artists and technologists connected to ATLAS contributed to the Museum of ��«��Ƶ’s newest exhibit, “Convivial Machines,” which opened Oct. 30. It's the first museum installation for ��«��Ƶ Experiments in Art and Technology (B.E.A.T), founded by Jiffer Harriman (ATLS PhD '16).

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'Tis the season to geek out

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 01:32:38 +0000

'Tis the season to geek out Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/11/2017 - 18:32

Slaton Spangler launches the new "hackable" ATLAS tower light.

Just in time for the holidays, ATLAS Institute is gifting control of its tower lights to anyone and everyone.

Using a smart phone or computer, you too can change things: Make the lights flash green and red for the holidays, send secret messages in Morse code across campus—the possibilities are endless.

“It’s pretty fun to see people play with it,” says Slaton Spangler, a longtime lab assistant in the institute’s Blow Things Up Lab, who built the website and put the hardware in place. “A lot of people at ATLAS work on interactive experiences. This is a novel one: People can control this giant light.”

When Spangler first approached ATLAS Director Mark Gross with the idea, Gross was enthusiastic: "Heck yes, you can hack the tower."

Spangler devised the system, which uses two credit card-sized microcontrollers to interpret user instructions from the website and signal the LED arrays to change color and flash. From the website, users can define color, duration and transition type. For example, blue for two seconds might “snap” to red for one second, before fading to green for three seconds. For those so inclined, it’s possible to bypass the website and just send code directly to the tower microcontrollers. However the code arrives, the system will loop through the latest sequence until someone sends a new one.

The roughly 18-foot tall glass tower, which was included in the 2006 construction of the ATLAS building, was conceived as a landmark in the middle of campus, says Bobby Schnabel, founder and longtime director of the ATLAS Institute.

Previously, there were five pre-programmed color sequences to choose from; changing those patterns required going up to the roof, climbing into the tower and working with outdated software.

Spangler says this is only phase one, and he looks forward to hearing where future hackers take the project: blinking lights to the beat of a favorite song, broadcasting tomorrow’s weather using open source data feeds and intuitive color coding are just some of the possibilities.

Everyone is welcome to figure out the next steps. He's written a manual. And because the documentation is open source, anyone can replicate and modify the project elsewhere.

Spangler will soon be moving on to support interactive projects at the esteemed Meow Wolf art collective in Santa Fe, New Mexico. First established in 2008 by local artists, Meow Wolf moved into its first permanent facility in March 2016, a gift from Game Of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin.

“People who hang out in the BTU lab end up doing amazing things,” Spangler says. “I learned many of the skills for the tower project from doing my own projects in the BTU Lab, and from helping other students.”

How would he feel if people around the world started playing with the lights?

“I would love it to get outside the CU ��«��Ƶ campus,” he says. “The more, the merrier.”

Just in time for the holidays, ATLAS Institute is gifting control of its tower lights to anyone and everyone.

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Maker Made 2022 features work by ATLAS community

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ATLAS community’s work featured in Museum of ��«����Ƶ exhibit

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'Tis the season to geek out

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ATLAS community’s work featured in Museum of ��«��Ƶ exhibit