Throughout the spring semester, hundreds of ATLAS students have hacked, designed and prototyped their creative visions into reality, and now they are ready to share their work for ATLAS Expo Spring 2016, which takes place this Wednesday, April 27, 5 to 6:30 p.m. From automated drum kits, to musical gloves, a responsive art canvas, wearable tech, big data and choose-your-own adventure websites, the depth and breadth of student projects is impressive.
If you’ve heard about ATLAS, but you aren’t quite sure what happens there, you aren’t alone. Students come to ATLAS from just about every department in the University: some to join the Technology, Arts and Media (TAM) program; others to gain specific expertise in web or 3D modeling; and still others to earn a PhD studying a unique, interdisciplinary, technology-related topic that doesn’t have a natural home elsewhere. Whatever their goals, ATLAS enables students to pursue multidisciplinary objectives in a technology-rich community.
And it will all be on display this Wednesday.
One Expo presenter, Chris Koski, was inspired by the automated, acoustic music of ATLAS PhD candidate Jiffer Harriman (see photo), so he built his own electronically controlled drum kit. Rather than recorded or synthesized samples generated electronically, his drum kit is controlled digitally but it creates sound acoustically.
Reflecting on Expo, Koski says he’s excited to present, but even more excited to see what others have made: “There’s a really nice culture of creativity in ATLAS. You’re doing what you want to do, nobody else is doing it, and you get to look over and say, ‘Hey! That’s pretty cool!’... but you don’t worry about competing with people!”
In addition to viewing student work, Expo visitors will be able to drop in on the newly launched ATLAS Laboratory for Playful Computer and the ATLAS Interactive Robotics and Novel Technologies Lab, both hosting their first open houses since launching in January.
“We’ve got an unbelievable number of projects,” said ATLAS Director Mark Gross. “We’ve had a very dynamic year and tons to share and celebrate.”
