MIT2016 Open House

Location: Online

Listen to previews of the Arts at MIT Open House activities beginning with this welcome message from Leila W. Kinney, Executive Director of Arts Initiatives and the Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). 

Location: Saxon Tennis Courts

Tomás Saraceno, CAST visiting artist, and scientists in EAPS joined forces to confront the climate crisis at COP21 in Paris with an art exhibition inspired by solar balloons and meteorological data exploring Earth’s stratosphere and its chemical constituents.

Videos of Saraceno’s air-fuelled sculpture were presented alongside display simulations of potential flight tracking and data on iGlobe – a spherical display system for visualizing earth system data. During Open House, visitors chose launch points and climate data to display on the iGlobe to see where the balloons will go. 

Location: Saxon Tennis Courts

CAST Visiting Artist Lara Baladi invited visitors to explore and participate in the multidisciplinary project, Vox Populi.

Baladi presented a spatialized archive of the 2011 Egyptian revolution and demonstrated an interactive timeline based on the artist’s archive, Vox Populi, on the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath. During Open House, she unveiled the website showing the genealogy of Vox Populi and the projects that have stemmed from the archive.

 

Location: Killian Court

Arts at MIT is reproduced the 1916 Bucentaur—a giant barge decorated as a 15th century Italian vessel—for the MIT2016 Procession on May 7. During Open House, visitors put the finishing touches on the updated 2016 Bucentaur and prepared it for the river crossing. More than 300 visitors wrote their wishes for MIT’s next 100 years onto medallions that were attached to the barge, like a floating time capsule.

Location: Wiesner Gallery, W20, Second Floor

What happens when you combine circuit building with paper craft? This exhibition of a collection of artworks by MIT artists and engineers explored what new experiences and unique stories arise when we use circuits as an expressive medium—from glowing paper mushrooms to cyberpunk graffiti to an interactive painting that comes to life when you pet it!

The artists also led a hands-on circuit building workshop using Chibitronics Circuit Stickers, so that visitors could create their own paper circuits.

Location: Kresge Lawn

Student Art Association (SAA) ceramics instructors Darrell Finnegan and Jason Pastorello demonstrated wheel throwing techniques. SAA also displayed pottery by students.