When Jason Salavon—who makes art with data—arrived at UChicago as an assistant professor of visual arts in 2007, he felt like something was missing. Looking for a laser cutter and a 3-D printer, he found such equipment scattered around campus, mostly in science labs.

“We need a maker space,” said Salavon, who is also a fellow in the Computation Institute. With broad-based support from arts, sciences, and humanities partners, the Hack Arts Lab (HAL) became a reality in 2013.

HAL offers every tool that a technically savvy artist—or a visually inclined hacker—could hope for. There’s a 3-D printer and a laser engraver/cutter, a replicator and a digitizer, software for creative projects, and more. Most services are free, and HAL, located in room 206 in the Searle Chemistry Laboratory, is open to students, faculty, and staff five days a week.

“Our staff may or may not be able to help you with a really complex project. But the ethos is, come in with an idea, and let’s all try to figure out ways to make it,” said Salavon at a February 6 open house celebrating HAL’s first anniversary.

Guests at the open house sipped wine while watching a MakerBot digitizer scan small physical objects like a tape measure. They examined intricate paper-doll clothing and a plastic T. rex made by laser and 3-D printers, and took turns swiping a giant interactive touch screen.

Campus dignitaries like Ian Foster; Matthew Tirrell; William Michel, AB’92, MBA’08; and Martha Roth—respective heads of the Computation Institute, Institute for Molecular Engineering, Logan Center for the Arts, and the Humanities Division—got a firsthand look at HAL’s capabilities. Salavon thanked them for supporting the project from its outset.

Before making a toast, Roth noted that HAL and the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey share a name. “The original HAL 9000 had a lot of interesting capabilities: facial recognition, lip reading, murder,” said Roth, drawing a laugh from the crowd. The University’s new maker space is meant to be a collaborative venture, she added, with capabilities that science fiction writers a half century ago could not have imagined.