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With a Bachelor of Science from �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder (Class of ‘88) and a background in music, videography, theater and broadcast/web television, Bret stepped up as a central part of the ATLAS community from its earliest days, before we even had a building to call our own. He advised on ensuring our permanent home would be technologically advanced in its time, and (importantly) adaptable to future innovations. 

Almost twenty years later, we can proudly say that the B2’s 2,700-square-foot Black Box Experimental Studio and three adjacent studio labs are as well-designed, flexible and exciting to experience as they are because of Bret’s expertise. He trained and supervised students, artists, technicians and support staff along the way, empowering them to take full advantage of every aspect of the space’s unique capabilities.

Bret Mann, broadcast engineer extraordinaire, has kept the B2 Center for Media Arts & Performance studios at the forefront of technology since the Roser ATLAS Center was completed in 2006. His contributions to the ATLAS Institute and to the Boulder campus community are legion, and he brings to his work a keen eye, deep technical know-how, and as a drummer, the perspective of a performing artist. An alumnus of �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder, Bret began working as a technical director in 1991, and has generously mentored countless students and diverse members of the faculty from all corners of the campus. - Mark D Gross, ATLAS Director

In a facility designed to push creative and technical boundaries, Bret ensured countless multimedia performances, artist residencies, student projects and ATLAS Expo events ran smoothly, no matter how experimental or complex their needs. 

I cannot overstate Bret’s importance and centrality to the B2. Bret raised this place! He was central to early visioning, when the Roser ATLAS building was merely an idea. For the B2’s existence, Bret has been its most consistent and important steward, advocate, and engineer, deftly ushering it through changing technological eras, from analog tapes to digital signals. Bret has committed his expertise, creative problem solving, deep care and relentless work ethic to turn the B2 into the technologically-advanced multimedia space-of-possibility it is today. He’ll be sorely missed. - Ondine Geary, Managing Director, B2 Center for Media, Art & Performance

Bret officially retires on July 1, 2024. We wish him all the best!

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Imagine yourself walking into an unassuming room on the �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder campus. You cross the threshold, close your eyes, and are instantly transported by sound into the heart of the Amazon jungle or to the sonic center of a Beethoven Symphony. The space takes on new dimensions, and your imagination unfurls as a tapestry of sound overtakes you. 

This is the experience of hearing the high-density speaker array in the ATLAS B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance for the first time. Unlike conventional stereo or surround sound audio systems, high-density speaker arrays utilize a collection of strategically placed speakers throughout the room to create an immersive three-dimensional soundscape. This means that instead of simply hearing a Beethoven symphony emanating from a speaker positioned in front of you, you're dropped right into the heart of the performance itself, surrounded on all sides by its robust instrumentation. 

The high-density speaker array in the ATLAS B2 consists of 44 custom-built speakers that encircle the walls and ceiling of the ATLAS B2’s 2,700-sqft Black Box Experimental Studio. The system was installed in 2020 to enable cutting-edge sonic research and performance experimentation. Since that time, the ATLAS B2 has been able to present live and recorded works of many renowned guest artists as well as esteemed faculty and students from across campus. 

This month, the ATLAS B2 offers the Front Range community an opportunity to experience firsthand the full power of this large-scale immersive audio environment during Dr. Sean Winters’s Sonic Summit: 40.4 Festival, which runs April 15th to 20th. 

The festival, created by Winters in 2022, brings together a global community of immersive-sound audiophiles and showcases the remarkable capabilities of CU’s space. It also provides the perfect chance for first-time audiences to experience sound in an entirely different way. 

Winters explains, “It’s easy to take sound for granted in everyday life and, typically, sound is presented to us in predictable formats. This festival gives us a chance to present sound in fresh ways that offer audiences an opportunity to listen…to really listen…. It’s almost like hearing again for the first time.” 

Now in its third year, Sonic Summit (or the 40.4 Festival) is attracting the attention and participation of some of the most notable artists and organizations in the industry. This year, the festival is collaborating with Austria’s Ars Electronica to present “Sonic Saturday”, a collection of sound pieces curated for Ars Electronica by Anton Bruckner Private University. Artists from all over the world have specifically designed these works for immersive audio environments like the one at ATLAS B2, and Boulder audiences will be the first to hear this collection outside of Austria. 

Sonic Summit schedule
All are invited to attend festival concerts in the ATLAS B2 Black Box Experimental Studio (directions and parking) on Wednesday & Thursday, April 17 & 18, at 7:30 pm, and on Saturday, April 20, at 2:00 pm. Each date offers a distinct lineup and audiences are encouraged to attend them all.  

• 4/17 - Enjoy an evening of immersive acousmatic and audiovisual compositions from artists around the world, curated by Sean Winters
• 4/18 - Artists Mary Letera, Sean Winters, and Enrique Mendoza perform live with original compositions utilizing the speaker array
• 4/20 - Experience the Ars Electronica immersive audio collection 

Events are free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but registration is encouraged. Registration links and additional details can be found at colorado.edu/atlas/b2

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2023 was a banner year for the B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance! 

This unique space is designed to advance and support interdisciplinary experimentation and radical creativity at the intersection of art, technology, media, science and performance. Equipped with an ambisonic sound array, motion capture studios, fully immersive green screens, and other advanced technologies, the B2 offers research-artists the most innovative playspace in the region.

In 2023, the B2 hosted dozens of events, eleven creative residencies, and hundreds of hours of student and faculty projects, classes and research.

Download the B2 Year in Review report to learn how this one-of-a-kind facility supports programs across the university and builds community beyond campus.

The report includes:

• Introductory letter from ATLAS Institute director Mark D Gross
• Facility overview
• Creative and research residencies
• Open experimentation and workshops
• Community engagement
• Curricular support
• Campus-wide partnerships
• Budget
• What’s next

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The community is invited to take a walk through 's magical Afrolandscape, “," an interactive environment in which mobile sculptures hanging from reclaimed Afro hair morph seamlessly into gender-fluid shapes. 

Déesse, an artist whose work has been exhibited around the globe, describes the installation as a "sculptural exploration of surrealist gender-bending Afro-futurism." She developed Hermafrodek during a recent ATLAS B2 Creative Residency; the B2 Center for Arts Media and Performance/CMAP is an interdisciplinary and wildly experimental community located in the Roser ATLAS Center at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder. 

Who: Everyone and anyone

What: "Hermafrodek: A Suspension of Identity," a magical Afrolandscape

When: Open viewing hours—May 23-26, 2-4 p.m.; May 27, 11-1 p.m.

Where: Roser ATLAS Center, ATLAS Black Box Experimental Studio (ATLS B2 level), 1125 18th St. Boulder

Cost: Free

Learn more about the technologies in the Black Box Experimental Theater, including Augmester course offerings with hands-on learning opportunities. 

This interactive exhibit, located in the ATLAS Black Box Experimental Studio, utilizes the highly specialized equipment available in B2, incorporating motion capture, projection mapping and Ambisonic sound technology to create an endlessly shifting soundspace which engages and captivates visitors. 

For this project, Déesse's collaborators include ATLAS Affiliate Brad Gallagher as technical art director,  as sound designer and technical support and staff member Gary McCrumb as lighting designer and audio engineer. 

Déesse’s work has been exhibited in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas, at institutions including the Katonah Museum of Art; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art; Printed Matter, Inc., New York, NY; the Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center in Asheville; Mahmoud Darwish Museum; Center for Global Justice; San Miguel De Allende, Mexico; Bogotá Arte Contemporaneo Gallery, Bogota, Colombia; Galerie Nord Berlin, Germany; Greatmore Studios, Capetown, South Africa; Total Arts Gallery, Dubai and the Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi.

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After rebounding from a major flood with vibrant new leadership and a new toolbox of performance technologies, the ATLAS Institute’s B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance now offers more varied and interesting opportunities to artists, engineers, creative technologists and performers than ever before. As challenging as the post-flood refit was, it provided B2 with the opportunity to install some exciting new capabilities into the Black Box Experimental Studio and the other spaces that make up B2. Topping this list are an 8-camera motion capture system, a 44-speaker spatial audiosonic array and the latest in low-latency video relay technology.

What possibilities does this open up? They are endless: With the physical movement of performers digitized, it can be processed and projected in the same space with appearances transformed into, say, an animated character or moving points of light or whatever an artist can dream up. Physical movement can also be programmed to trigger certain sound events that, projected across the 3D audiosonic array, are percieved differently, depending on where the listener is in the space. 

Confused? That's understandable; there's nothing familiar about these technologies. "There's certainly no other facility in Colorado with these capabilities, and there are probably only a handful in the whole country," says Ondine Geary, executive director of B2.

To make these technologies more accessible to the community, the ATLAS Institute is offering two new summer classes in August: one focused on using the motion capture technology and the other on the 3D audiosonic system.

“These classes will empower the community by teaching them how to use the new technologies,” said Geary. “I'm excited to see what ideas emerge and how the use of these technologies evolves.” 

Both classes emphasize the design elements and skills needed to utilize the technologies in a performance context. The curricula will accommodate undergraduate and graduate students with varied skills and objectives, including technologists, performers, designers, choreographers and composers. The intensive courses will be taught over three weeks during Augmester, so as not to disrupt artists during their B2 residencies.

Intermedia Motion Capture (ATLS 3519-051)—focuses on the motion capture technology in performance and serves as a broad overview to the technology available in the ATLAS Black Box; students will use the motion capture system to interact with the ambisonic sound system, DMX controlled LED lighting and 360-degree video projection.  

Immersive Audio & Ambisonics (ATLS 3519-052)—focuses on the applications of immersive audio technologies in both media production settings and live performance contexts. The course focuses specifically on understanding the basics of immersive audio and then applying, prototyping and iterating these concepts hands-on with the spatial audio system. 

Brad Gallagher, an ATLAS-affiliated PhD student in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance, created and will teach “Performance Technologies: Intermedia Motion Capture,” which focuses on non-traditional uses of motion capture technology, particularly those applicable to live performance, including generating sound with movement, controlling and affecting lighting and interacting in real time with 360-degree video projection. To a lesser degree, the course also covers using motion capture to create animation through skeleton tracking. The goal of the course will be to produce solo and collaborative performances using these technologies. 

Sean Winters, an ATLAS-affiliated lecturer for the Department of Critical Media Practices and the College of Music, created and will teach “Performance Technologies: Immersive Audio & Ambisonics,” where students will learn how to use the 44-channel audio system in the ATLAS Black Box Experimental Studio. Students will produce sonic content from scratch for ambisonic diffusion, record 3D sound fields and become familiar with the specific tools needed to edit/mix ambisonic content. Technically, they will gain advanced knowledge of immersive audio production, ambisonic recording techniques and a solid understanding of how to employ these concepts using the ATLAS Black Box’s state-of-the-art audio system. 

Geary says the courses involve historical and theoretical information, but the real thrust is to “get your hands dirty and use these tools.”

She envisions participants meeting artists from multiple disciplines and establishing collaborative relationships. 

“Technological know-how is one component, but understanding how, when and why to implement those technologies in art-making is also an important component,” she said. “Students can expect to gain enough understanding of these tools to be able to expand their creative practices. These courses will give them the confidence to independently use these technologies. ”

[video:https://vimeo.com/530168490]
Brad Gallagher's "Rumpus Room for Dancers" demonstrates motion capture triggering specific sounds. His project will be exhibited at the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe in June.

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