Experimental games from the ATLAS community and beyond? Retro arcade classics? Industry luminaries, fans and friends? Unlimited breakfast cereal and nachos? It must be time for Whaaat!? Festival, Season 7.
ATLAS associate teaching professor Danny Rankin and assistant teaching professor Anthony Pinter are gearing up for this year鈥檚 gaming gathering, now in its seventh year. We discussed the inspiration behind the event and why everyone from noobs to S-tier gamers will find something to love.
What is Whaaat!? Festival all about?
鈥淲haaat!?鈥� is the reaction to amazing interactions and experiences. It is the feeling you get when your expectations are shattered. The Whaaat!? Festival is a day devoted to that feeling鈥攖hrough experimental games, alternative controllers and playful interactions, we want attendees to wonder, 鈥淲hat could possibly be next?鈥�
Who is the festival for?
Anyone interested in games, alternative controllers, and weird and playful interactions will have a great time at the Whaaat!? Festival. The festival is open to the public 鈥� we just ask that attendees do buy tickets on . We have a few different ticketing levels available, including a pay-what-you-want option for folks who might have limited financial means. Every ticket includes our all-you-can-eat cereal bar and nacho bar lunch.
What inspired you to start the festival?
The inspiration started with other great festivals that we've attended and shown work at. We love play-focused events like AMAZE and Indiecade, and we wanted to bring together the games and creators we love to an audience here in 欧美口爆视频. Beyond that, we hope to stretch the imagination of our attendees by featuring work that expands the boundaries of what we call "games."
Is there a theme for this year鈥檚 event?
We've embraced a "golden-era 90s sitcom" vibe for this year's promotion style, and that will connect with some of the surprises at the festival鈥攈idden laugh tracks, haunted televisions, maybe even a sitcom living room set? That said, this year's arcade game selections are all over the place鈥攖he theme every year is just, "Games that make you say Whaaat!?"
Speaking of keynotes, any cool special guests scheduled to present?
Yes! We have two awesome guest keynotes this year 鈥� Josh Zhong and Naomi Clark!
Josh is a Resident Researcher at ITP, an interdisciplinary program housed within the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. (Coincidentally, several of our faculty past and present are ITP alums!) Josh will also be running his wild game, First Person Josh, and his talk is scheduled for our morning keynote slot around 10:30 AM.
Naomi is an Associate Arts Professor and the Chair of the NYU Game Center. Naomi has worked on over 35 titles in her career, and has several published books, including the seminal A Game Design Vocabulary. Naomi鈥檚 talk is scheduled for our afternoon keynote slot around 1:00 PM.
Why should people attend?
Because what else are you going to do on Saturday in Boulder when it's forecasted to be 50 degrees and rainy? [Editor鈥檚 note: at the time of this interview, the weather was forecasted to be sunny and in the 60s?]
But, actually, it is a chance to play awesome games (including some that haven鈥檛 been released yet), connect with local game makers and developers, and see what is going on in the local game community here in Boulder. It is also a great opportunity to see the ATLAS Institute, which sponsors the festival (and whose faculty serve on the event鈥檚 organizing committee.)
We showcase ATLAS student games and projects as part of the festival, so it is also a time for students to see the sort of work they could do if they decided to join us as majors in the Creative Design and Technology program at 欧美口爆视频 Boulder.
Final thoughts?
We hope you鈥檒l consider joining us for season seven of the Whaaat!? Festival鈥� it promises to be the best one yet!
Event details and schedule:
Tickets:
When: Saturday, November 2, 2024 from 10 AM - 4 PM
Where: Roser ATLAS Center, 1125 18th St., Boulder, CO
Our Q&A with festival organizers explores the inspiration behind the event as they power up to welcome gamers to ATLAS for a day devoted to all things games.
It鈥檚 one thing to study how the relief and albedo of the ice sheets affected weather patterns during the Last Glacial Maximum 20,000 years ago. And it鈥檚 a whole other thing to develop an interactive, engaging museum exhibit on the subject for general audiences. But that鈥檚 just what teams from the (CIRES), the (NSF NCAR), NOAA and ATLAS managed to do.
Millennia ago, ice sheets formed over huge swaths of North America that were nearly as tall as some of our continent鈥檚 highest mountains. They were so massive that they essentially created their own weather.
Former CIRES postdoc Dillon Amaya (now at NOAA鈥檚 ) along with Kris Karnauskas, CIRES fellow and associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, with NSF funding.
Researchers long hypothesized that the ice鈥檚 massive scale during the Last Glacial Maximum was enough to block the jet stream and change weather patterns sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean. For example, back then the area around what is today Southern California was much wetter while the Pacific Northwest was relatively drier. Today that is reversed.
Through advanced computer simulations, the CIRES team discovered that albedo creates a cooling effect that alters atmospheric circulation in ways that cannot be explained solely by the sheer size of ice sheets. Albedo is a measure of the amount of light reflected off of a surface鈥攁nd ice sheets reflect a lot of sunlight, significantly impacting wind patterns. The research showed the Pacific Ocean was the driver behind the changes.
Translating Complex Research
In spring 2022, ATLAS offered a class called Design a Science Exhibit for ATLAS and Computer Science students. It centered on designing approachable museum exhibits that translate hard science for everyday people. Led by ATLAS director Mark Gross and adjunct faculty member Wayne Seltzer in collaboration with Eddie Goldstein from the Denver Nature and Science Museum, student teams partnered with researchers and museum specialists to prototype exhibitions that incorporated coding, materials selection, fabrication and storytelling.
Gross notes, 鈥淲e should be teaching our engineers to communicate with broad audiences, particularly around climate change. We might do good science and engineering, but we鈥檙e not always good at communicating it to the public.鈥�
A team of 欧美口爆视频 Boulder students formed a group to translate the CIRES ice sheet research into an exhibit prototype, including, ATLAS PhD student, David Hunter; Natasha Smith (MS Environment, Environmental Policy); and ATLAS undergraduate students Caileigh Hudson, Logan Turner and Julia Tung.
Seltzer explains, 鈥淭he that inspired this exhibit is not all that accessible to readers who are not climate scientists. The students focused on what they decided was essential knowledge鈥攖he factors that result in an ice age and how computer models can help us predict climate change.鈥�
Experimenting with Form
The team originally conceived of a sandbox as the project medium. As you moved the sand around to build different topographies, visual projections overlaid from above would show how weather patterns change. The idea made sense in theory, but practical stipulations (sand can be challenging to manage in a museum space) pushed the team in a different direction.
Hunter details this evolution, 鈥淲e made little blocks that represent [topographic features], and then you could put the blocks on top of each other so you could sculpt [a landscape.] As a team, we went about designing and building the whole rig and had a prototype by the end of the semester, and we got to show it alongside everyone else's work at NCAR.鈥�
NSF NCAR science educators were so impressed with the prototype that they invited the team to work on a permanent installation.
Making it Real
The biggest challenge then became orchestrating all the different people and components involved in developing a functional exhibit that could live for the long-term with as little ongoing maintenance as possible. Hunter notes, 鈥淭here鈥檚 the digital prototype building, but then there鈥檚 the physical make-this-real part as well as the education part and ensuring visitors would get the right message.鈥�
After two years of iterative collaboration with scientists, curators, coders, fabricators and educators, the exhibit is now officially on permanent display at the Mesa Lab Visitor鈥檚 Center. Thousands of guests each year will be able to explore how massive ice sheets can alter the climate in surprising ways.
Amaya related, 鈥淭his was probably one of the most gratifying experiences of my scientific career. It's not often that a piece of research like this leads to such tangible educational outcomes, so I'm super proud of our team for seeing it through! It's my hope that this exhibit can help illustrate some of these exotic climate interactions so that visitors can leave with a better physical intuition for how and why things were so wildly different.鈥�
If you go:
1850 Table Mesa Drive
Boulder, CO
Free Admission
Hours:
Monday - Friday: 8:00 a.m. 鈥� 5:00 p.m. MT
Saturday, Sunday & Holidays: 9:00 a.m. 鈥� 4:00 p.m. MT
Weaving and engineering might seem unrelated on the surface, but they in fact have a great deal in common. Laura Devendorf, assistant professor at the ATLAS Institute and Information Science, is determined to build bridges among practitioners across these disciplines to unlock the potential for new lines of scientific and creative innovation.
To support this work, Devendorf, who directs the Unstable Design Lab, was recently awarded a of $297,630 for phase one of a larger project entitled, 鈥淐ultivating an Ecosystem for Interdisciplinary Smart Textiles Research.鈥�
The research builds on software Devendorf and her team developed called, , an open-source tool they describe as an 鈥渆xperimental workspace that applies parametric design to the domain of weave drafting. It supports algorithmic and playful approaches to developing woven structures and cloth, for shaft and jacquard looms.鈥�
The aim of this new research, as Devendorf describes it, is to, 鈥渢ake this software that we built for doing complex weave drafting and transition it to a project where it is sustained and grown by a larger community of weavers and [those] who we call 鈥榯extile-adjacent engineers鈥�.鈥� That way, AdaCAD can develop and adapt to the needs of a wider user-base over time as all good open source software does.
This work exemplifies the radically interdisciplinary work that the ATLAS Institute champions. By bringing together disparate experts and communities鈥攊n this case, artists, artisans, engineers and researchers鈥攚e create new approaches to discovery.
From adjacent to integrated
Textiles are pervasive, yet often misunderstood in engineering spaces. The surprising mathematical complexity, materials knowledge and innovation that have arisen over centuries of textile practice are often overlooked. At the same time, weavers who come from a tradition of craftsmanship, art and design may be unfamiliar with meaningful advances in the engineering space.
By bringing together these two worlds, Devendorf hopes to open up opportunities for breakthroughs in technology and craft, whether that is in advancing electronic-textile science or pushing the boundaries of artistic expression.
For example, an engineering team may seek ways to monitor health without the use of adhesives often required for electrodes, while weavers already have options for materials and techniques that could replace such adhesives. Yet both groups are often unaware of each other鈥檚 needs and skills. But overcoming this knowledge gap, Devendorf believes engineers and weavers could together achieve greater impact.
There are signs this is beginning to take place, and she aims to speed the process. Research labs at CalTech and MIT as well as industrial design studios around the globe have acquired digital looms to experiment with weaving advanced materials and experimental forms.
But first: listening
Phase I of this project will focus on fact-finding and planning. The team will lead community-engagement activities and trainings and gather points-of-view from craftspeople, designers, engineers and others across many communities.
Devendorf and her team have begun interviewing people from a range of overlapping disciplines. They include a weaver with a fine arts background who now works on woven implantables for a medical devices company and a textiles expert researching stronger, lighter woven materials for the aviation industry. Still others in the cohort are studying zero-waste, 鈥渨hole garment鈥� clothing manufacturing and human-computer interaction surfaces on the body. The range of applications for textiles is growing at an impressive pace.
Devendorf explains this recent uptick in interest: 鈥淭en years ago, it was all about the maker movement and digital fabrication, and it took a while before people realized that textile machines are also fabrication machines that can do things that we're still trying to get 3D printers to do. Textiles are inherently multi-material. They are flexible, they can be made stiff, they can be soft. It's a totally different mindset to control a textile machine [compared] to a printer that is making stacks. There鈥檚 a big learning gap there, but you see a lot of fabrication people jumping in.鈥�
The has also expanded access to advanced weaving techniques as a first-of-its-kind prototype-scale digital jacquard loom that is programmable with a bitmap image. Now you no longer need a factory-scale setup to experiment with textiles fabrication.
What鈥檚 next
For Phase II, the team will focus on cultivating the ecosystem through on-the-ground work with communities and creating opportunities for practitioners to share what they are making. Devendorf also aims to expand opportunities for craftspeople in scientific research and product design spaces.
She explains, 鈥渨e have huge problems to tackle as a society. I believe that engineering can address some of those, but I don't think we can do it if we don't have access to every possible technique鈥� We're overlooking a huge set of practices and people in communities that have knowledge we need to solve some of these bigger challenges. My hunch is that craftspeople understand materials, process and machinery where so much of engineering is happening at a simulation level [while] trying to engineer materials that behave like the simulations.鈥�
By fostering interconnectivity between engineering and weaving communities, Devendorf and her team in the will position textiles as a leading source for innovative solutions to global challenges.
The Unstable Design Lab director has embarked on the first phase of a years-long project to bring together engineering and craft communities to advance textile research across a range of scientific disciplines.The ATLAS Institute champions radical creativity and invention as a means of expanding the scope of our understanding of the world and building community. The ATLAS Audio Frequency Lab, led by associate teaching professor and Audio Frequency Lab director, David Schaal, encapsulates these ideals as a creative experimental space for sound production, sampling and musical performance.
Recently, groups of lab members along with students from across 欧美口爆视频 Boulder took part in the Synthux International Synth Design Hackathon, a multi-day competition to design and create a working prototype of an electronic synthesizer, and an ATLAS team was honored with the top prize for their 4-player Collaborator synth!
, the hackathon organizer, is a Netherlands-based group founded by musician, designer and teacher, Roey Tsemah, to create learning activities for sound artists and makers.
The SynthUX Hackathon 2024 featured teams from universities around the world who selected from a set of prompts centered on the theme of 鈥淗umanity鈥� to design an interactive, sound-producing device. Schaal has been active with SynthUX for several years as a way to build cross-campus community around collaborative making.
The Collaborator team, Julian Ferraro, Nick Lankau, Nik Madhu, Ana Mahadevan, and Josh Thies, chose the prompt 鈥淰irtual Human Connection鈥� to guide their ideation. The prompt stated, 鈥淓xplore the dynamics of human connection in the age of technology. Depict the intersection between virtual and physical connections, highlighting the challenges and opportunities.鈥�
Lankau said, 鈥淭he Collaborator is inspired by the peace that I find in music creation and the joy of playing with sound. I want other people who may not have musical backgrounds to be able to experience this. It鈥檚 also inspired by jam sessions I鈥檝e had with friends and the desire to be able to do that with my brothers who are less musically inclined. Collaboratively creating music is inextricably human and should be accessible to everyone.鈥�
This spirit of collaboration is what the hackathon is all about. Schaal explains, 鈥渋nstead of a competition-competition, it's more sharing ideas, building something cool and sharing with others to inspire future coursework and education.鈥� (This year, 欧美口爆视频 teams faced an additional hurdle to collaboration in overcoming two days of snow-related campus closures that disrupted the early phases of their work.)
Designing and fabricating a working synthesizer in a custom enclosure in just three days? 鈥淭hat鈥檚 ATLAS,鈥� Schaal notes. 鈥淚t鈥檚 what we're capable of. The BTU and everybody here preparing these students to do something [like this] is very special and unique.鈥� The team demoed Collaborator at ATLAS EXPO 2024, where it held up to dozens of community members going hands-on with it.
In recognition of their efforts, Ferraro, Lankau and Schaal traveled to Berlin to demo Collaborator at , 鈥渢he world鈥檚 largest trade fair and festival for electronic musical instruments鈥� featuring 鈥渙ver 250 exhibitors from all over the world, while also offering a comprehensive cultural program that celebrates the culture and joy of electronic music-making.鈥� They were blown away by the support and engagement they received and the connections they made among industry pros and musicians.
As for what comes next, Lankau relates, 鈥淚 want to continue working on this concept of collaborative and accessible audio. Making another version of the Collaborator sounds like a blast, and we already have so many ideas on how to improve it. Being able to hone in on the conceptual niche of collaborative and accessible audio just opens up so many ideas for me.
A team of students in the Audio Frequency Lab designed and built the Collaborator multi-player synthesizer, taking home top honors at this year's Synthux International Synth Design Hackathon.