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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’s 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?
“Whaaat!?” 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—through experimental games, alternative controllers and playful interactions, we want attendees to wonder, “What could possibly be next?”
 
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 – 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 Colorado. 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’s 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—hidden laugh tracks, haunted televisions, maybe even a sitcom living room set? That said, this year's arcade game selections are all over the place—the 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 – 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’s 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’s 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’t 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’s 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 CU Boulder.

Final thoughts?
We hope you’ll consider joining us for season seven of the Whaaat!? Festival… it promises to be the best one yet!
 

Whaaat!? Festival event details

Event details and schedule:  

Tickets:

When: Saturday, November 2, 2024 from 10 AM - 4 PM

Where: Roser ATLAS Center, 1125 18th St., Boulder, CO

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Congratulations to ATLAS teaching assistant professor Anthony Pinter, who was recently honored with the i3 Outstanding Mentor Award for the 2022-2023 cohort. 

The (i3) is an undergraduate research and leadership program that prepares students from underrepresented backgrounds for graduate study and careers in the information sciences. Each year, the program selects 25 students from across the U.S. to be i3 Scholars, in which they undertake a full-year research project and two summer institutes hosted by the University of Texas at Austin.

Such experience translates into much higher acceptance and success rates for students who want to pursue graduate degrees, and the program is notable for helping those with non-STEM majors to enter graduate programs in information and computing sciences.

Pinter has worked with i3 in several capacities including teaching fellow, research advisor and core leadership team member. He says, "I've been involved in i3 in some way since 2017, and I genuinely look forward to every opportunity I get to visit the program and interact with i3ers and the surrounding community.” 

For the past year, he has mentored a team of three i3 Scholars:

• Martia Williams, a 2022 graduate of North Carolina State University with a degree in mathematics education and a minor in English

• Katha Patel, a junior at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, majoring in political science with a minor in criminology law and society

• Janai Adams, a 2023 graduate of Texas State University with a degree in marketing and a minor in philosophy

From left: Dr. Pinter, Dr. Kayla Booth (i3 Director), Martia Williams, Katha Patel, Janai Adams and Dr. Joe Sanchez (i3 Core Leadership Team)

Together they have collaborated on a research project that has yielded an undergraduate first-authored publication, “Music sounds better with(out) you: Curating streaming music as part of post-break-up identity management” (Patel et al., 2023). 

Their research explores how people treat music as a digital possession in the context of break-ups, how they save and interact with music post-break-up, and how memories affect people’s listening interactions with that music on streaming platforms. Music connects deeply to memory and experience, and in this context, it acts as a component of post-break-up identity.

The team is hard at work preparing a full paper, first-authored by Martia Williams, that will likely be submitted to the , which is generally considered the most prestigious in the field of human-computer interaction. 

Pinter reflects, “i3 is a one-of-a-kind program in the nation, and the quality of students and research work coming out of i3 is nothing short of incredible—nevermind that it is largely undergraduate driven work! Katha, Martia, and Janai's project with me is no exception. From day one, they've been incredibly involved in the research process. Their investment in the project showed in their iConference poster and in the paper they are currently preparing for submission to CHI. I love working with undergraduate students on research and creative endeavors, and my work with Katha, Martia, and Janai only further underscores how important mentoring and collaboration with students is to me."

The team presented their research findings at iConference.

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The ATLAS Institute is delighted to welcome Anthony Pinter to the CU Boulder faculty this fall as a teaching assistant professor. He teaches courses on web development, computational thinking and programming, focusing on how data represents us, our lives and the worlds around us.  
His research focuses on understanding the experiences people have during life transitions and how those experiences are represented in sociotechnical systems. He is particularly interested in how people make decisions about the data that are left behind when romantic relationships end, and how those decisions contribute to the formation of post-break-up identities.

discusses "algorithmic cruelty" and how social media has made breakups more difficult. See Pinter’s Spring 2022 ATLAS Colloquium talk, “Hi, I’m Anthony”. 

Before joining the ATLAS faculty, Pinter completed a PhD in Information Science, advised by Jed Brubaker. He completed a B.S. and M.S. in Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University in 2015 and 2017, respectively. He remains connected to Penn State as an adjunct faculty instructor with The Pennsylvania State University's World Campus. He spends as much time as possible out and about on skis and mountain bikes and coaches track and field at Boulder High School.
 

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Praised by their graduate students for their scientific competence, work ethic, creativity and compassion, two ATLAS professors received Outstanding Faculty Mentor awards from CU Boulder’s Graduate school on May 3, an honor bestowed this year on only 18 faculty members campus-wide.

Ellen Yi-Luen Do, professor of computer science and director of the ACME Lab, and Carson Bruns, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and director of the  Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, were both honored for outstanding contributions to mentoring individual graduate students and the quality of their interactions with them.

Their nomination materials showcased their many contributions in mentoring graduate students and supporting the mission of graduate education, while supporting their students’ career development and individual growth.

Carson Bruns
Bruns’ research focuses on emergent nanomaterials—engineering matter at the smallest of scales to create materials with particular properties. His group has received wide recognition for its work on “smart tattoos," which have the potential to impart new properties to skin.
 
Jesse Butterfield, an ATLAS-affiliated PhD candidate and alumnus of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, said that Bruns regularly comes up with “brilliant ideas for impactful scientific work.” One such idea—the use of invisible tattoo inks to protect skin from UV light and the cancers it causes—forms the backbone of Butterfield’s PhD studies.
 
“He spends more time with his grad students than any other advisor that I’m aware of, and with some of them by orders of magnitude,” Butterfield said. “He gives each of us his full attention.”
 
Bruns always pushes his students to work on their career goals, even when it slows progress within the lab, Butterfield adds, including when two students wanted to take time out to intern with companies of interest, and when Butterfield wanted to teach an undergraduate class. 
 
Butterfield said Bruns’ kindness has been unwavering since they began working together in 2017.  “I give the strongest recommendation possible for awarding Carson, in large part due to his capabilities and strengths in his work, but also for his personal qualities, which allow him to continuously raise up the people around him. He is one of those rare people who constantly makes those around him better.”
 

Ellen Yi-Luen Do
In Ellen Do’s ACME Lab, students are engaged in a wide range of projects, from alternative game control, to immersive musical jam sessions, to robotics for wellness, to visual analytics, toys to promote child development and generative art.
 
Despite the breadth of their work, she tells her nine PhD and two master’s students that she is always available: “only an email or door away.”
 
And on any given day, the ACME Lab is a busy central hub, buzzing and flowing with undergraduate and graduate students, says ATLAS PhD Student Sandra Bae. “Ellen has cultivated a lab culture where her students warmly welcome any student interested in research to join our weekly lab meetings, directly mentor undergraduate or master’s students for their capstone projects or simply invite others to socialize. She understands the importance of a social support system where the lab functions as a family.”
 
Bae points out that Do is excellent at harnessing and directing the interests of her students. “Her mentoring strength comes from how observant she is,” says Bae. 
 
“As a PhD advisee of Ellen’s, her influence is imprinted on my life,” Bae said. “She is my academic mentor, who listened to my first conference presentation five times in a row; my senior, who taught me how to treat friends and myself with compassion; my spiritual leader, who motivates me with her delightful energy; my personal role model, who helps me, another Asian-American woman, be more confident that I belong and can succeed in academia.”

Fiona Bell, ATLAS PhD student, member of the Living Matter Lab; Dissertation Completion Fellowship, (one academic semester of financial support).

Carson Bruns, assistant professor, ATLAS Institute & Mechanical Engineering; Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award.

Ellen Yi-Luen Do, professor, ATLAS Institute & Computer Science; Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award.

Sasha de Koninck, PhD candidate in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance, member of the Unstable Design Lab; Graduate School Summer Fellowship ($6,000); Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant ($1,000).

Varsha Koushik, PhD'22, Computer Science, member of the Superhuman Computing Lab; First-place, Three-Minute Thesis Competition Winner.

Anthony Pinter,  PhD'22, Information Science, ATLAS lecturer and incoming teaching assistant professor; Second-place, Three-Minute Thesis Competition winner.

Purnendu, ATLAS PhD student; Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant ($1,000).

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