A daylong open house featuring theater performances, a film premiere, panel discussions, an improvisational jazz performance and a broadcast studio demonstration, among other events, is set for Friday, Oct. 13, from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. in the newly opened ATLAS building at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The open house is free and open to the campus and the public.
The $31 million ATLAS building, which opened for classes on Aug. 28, is dedicated to bringing the study and development of subjects ranging from arts and humanities to science and technology under one roof. It also is the first building at CU-Boulder to host classes attracting students from all disciplines while serving as an incubator for multidisciplinary faculty collaboration.
"The ATLAS building will be used by every school and college at CU-Boulder," said Bobby Schnabel, vice provost for academic affairs and campus technology, and director of the ATLAS Institute. "A key aspect of the ATLAS building is its design, which serves to draw people into the building and shares with them what is occurring inside, and at CU more generally. The open house is a reflection of this spirit."
Located in the heart of the campus northeast of the University Memorial Center, the ATLAS Center's 66,000 square feet of classroom, performance, study and workroom space opened for classes even as work crews put last-minute touches on parts of the building's interior. ATLAS stands for the Alliance for Teaching, Learning and Society.
A small technical crew has been busily testing the building's myriad technical systems since the beginning of the semester. Those systems include a state-of-the-art, 2,700-square-foot black-box performance space, a modern broadcast production studio for student journalists and other disciplines, a large video wall in the building's lobby featuring student video projects, plus videoconferencing rooms, a film screening room, a technology-enhanced auditorium and four computer classrooms.
The center houses the ATLAS Institute and its 250-student Technology, Arts and Media program and its Assessment and Research Center. Also located at ATLAS are offices of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, faculty and staff offices for the film studies department and the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program.
Although the ATLAS Center is a five-story building, only three of its floors are above ground and a lot of the activity in the ATLAS building takes place on its two below-ground levels. The lower floors house the two-story-high black-box multimedia performance space, the new broadcast production studio, a digital music laboratory and student group-design spaces.
The 75-seat film screening room is among the best in the nation, Schnabel said, and the black-box theater is on the cutting edge of technology-enhanced performance spaces located anywhere in the nation on a public university campus.
The equipment available to faculty in the black box is what sets it apart, according to Michael Theodore, associate professor of music at CU-Boulder.
"After years of hauling equipment from the music college to the theater building for our Interdisciplinary Performance class, we now have this cutting-edge facility in the black box with six mobile projectors, one high-quality projector and a computer-controlled acoustic Yamaha grand piano, which is connected to the light board so that a trill can be reflected in the stage lighting if we want it to be," Theodore said.
"The manner in which the video-capture works here also is one of the things that we know is not available in many other facilities like the black box in ATLAS," he said. Theodore co-teaches the Interdisciplinary Performance class with Assistant Professor Michelle Ellsworth of the theater and dance department.
The black box, the broadcast production studio and other interior features are not the only unique attributes of the ATLAS building. The exterior of the building has video display screens mounted on the east and north sides, and the distinctive tower on the roof is lit at night and will be lit at various times throughout the year with colors signifying activities happening on campus or across the nation. During many times in the month of October, for example, the beacon will be lit in pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
"While we view the ATLAS building as a technology beacon for the CU-Boulder campus, it's also a place for interdisciplinary study," said Schnabel. "More than 6,000 students from a broad range of disciplines will be taking courses here each semester. For many of them, we think the ability to apply modern technology to myriad academic problems may be one of the highlights of their academic careers."
The Oct. 13 ATLAS building open house schedule will include:
o 10-10:30 a.m. and 11-11:30 a.m. Multimedia performance by music and theater and dance faculty and students
o 10-11:15 a.m. A panel discussion of technology, diversity and gender issues
o 11:30-12:30 p.m. Student presentation from the Technology Arts and Media program
o noon-12:30 and 1-1:30 p.m. Multimedia improvisational jazz saxophone and keyboard performance by music faculty members
o 1-2 p.m. Discussion by architects and designers about ATLAS building architecture
o 2-2:30 and 3-3:30 p.m. Performance by the student troupe Farouche
o 2-4:45 p.m. Recording and production of the CU Sports Magazine show in the production studio
o 2-4:15 p.m. Discussion by engineering and history professors of technology's impact on the modern academic community
o 4-4:30 and 5-5:30 p.m. Graduate student dance performance in a 3-D environment, created by a biology professor
o 7-9:30 p.m. Boulder premiere of a film by a CU alumnus followed by a panel talk.
For more information on the ATLAS building, the ATLAS Institute and its programs visit the Web site at atlas.colorado.edu.