The list of materials for instrument builder Andy Cavatorta’s new project includes, but is not limited to, Mongolian horse hair, dried wasps nests, and plenty of vacuum tubes. For Cavatorta, a Media Lab alum who recently designed an instrument for Bjork, this is all part of the process of creating awe-inspiring robotic instruments.
Late one night, violinist and MIT alumna Julia Ogryzdiak looked outside the window of her Oakland loft and saw an unusual sight. “I saw all these kids practicing choreography with fire on their heads,” she recalled at Wednesday’s lecture-demonstration. Continue reading
What do you get when you bring together students from across disciplines — from mechanical engineering to materials science to architecture – to make things? This was, in part, the … Continue reading
Congratulations to Jie Qi of the Media Lab’s High-Low Tech Group, the first place winner of the Schnitzer Prize! Check out her interactive light painting, “Pu Gong Ying Tu (Dandelion Painting).”
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Reposted from MIT News Trimpin — he goes by his surname only — first immigrated to the United States in 1979 because there was not enough junk in his native … Continue reading
The Demaines’ curved-crease sculptures exemplify collaborative, cross-disciplinary exploration. Finding origami to be a powerful tool to study mathematics, the father-and-son duo explore foldable forms from both mathematical and artistic perspectives. Continue reading
Tristan Perich writes music in 1s and 0s. His is an art determined by the binary on/off logic of the computer, an art in search of foundational laws. He is interested in processes, scripts, and scores: cyclical and infinite sets of rules that illuminate the possibilities and limitations of the knowable world. Continue reading
Pamela Z and Hauschka met only moments before their back-to-back lecture/demonstrations last Wednesday; two days later they performed together, improvising a duo midway through the Friday night CAST Marathon in Kresge Auditorium, and sounding as if they’d been playing together for years. This was perhaps one form of the ‘happy accident’ that Pamela had spoken of in her talk, but the level of simpatico was too palpable to be just that. The shared sensibilities between two such distinct artists says something about where we are musically and culturally, and perhaps where we’re going as well. Continue reading
It was likely the first time Senegalese sabar drums, a cello, a didgeridoo, an accordion, a piano and panpipes made from test tubes all occupied one stage together. A follow-up to 2011′s FAST Forward Marathon concert, the concert celebrated the convergence of art and technology — from simple percussive acts to the most sophisticated gestural controls — and showcased the many creative tools and techniques used by artists from MIT and beyond. Continue reading
This March, CAST presented at the conference Innovations: The Intersections of Art and Science at Wesleyan University. We’re re-posting a reflection on the conference by ArtFwd Blogging Fellow Erinn Roos-Brown: … Continue reading