BUGS for Jonathan Goldman

2018 Council for the Arts at MIT Grant Recipient

BUGS for Jonathan Goldman. Photo: Lydia Brosnahan.
Artists Gary Zhexi Zhang and Agnes Cameron. Photo: Heidi Erickson.
BUGS for Jonathan Goldman in front of the Stratton Student Center. Photo: Courtesy of the artists.
BUGS for Jonathan Goldman in front of the Stratton Student Center. Photo: Lydia Brosnahan.

A series of public sculptures inspiring new interactions and collective behaviors

About the Project

BUGS is an installation of inflatable sculptures in honor of CAVS artist Jonathan Goldman, a fellow and a graduate student at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies in the 1980s whose areas of practice included video, environmental art, and inflatable sculpture. BUGS brings together MIT legacies of public art and architecture and informal technology, hacking and creativity to create a playful and poetic artwork. Coinciding with the 150th anniversary celebration of MIT’s Architecture Department, this intervention celebrates the diverse past and future of the School of Architecture and Planning. It draws on MIT’s inventive history of informal mesh networking, of tangible interaction, and of large inflatable sculpture (see CAVS fellows Otto Piene, Jonathan Goldman, and more recently, the self-assembly work of Skylar Tibbits).

Schedule

Past Events

BUGS at Arts on the Radar
Friday, September 7, 2018 / 7:00–11:00pm
MIT Building E15, Lower Atrium

BUGS at Stratton Student Center
Wednesday – Friday, September 19–21, 2018
Stratton Student Center (MIT Building 20)

Giant Inflatables Workshop
The February School
Saturday, February 23, 2019 / 11am
Wiesner Student Art Gallery, Stratton Student Center (MIT Building 20)

About the Artists

Agnes Cameron is a graduate of the Viral Communications group at the MIT Media Lab. Right now she’s thinking about local and urban networks, in the context of the decentralized web.

She holds a Master’s in Information and Computer Engineering from the University of Cambridge, with research interests in holograms, self-organizing systems, and bio-inspired engineering. While there, she made some fun things for installations, operas, parties and as resident electrician for a research project in the Cambridge computer security group. She also worked with the CUSU women’s campaign on a series of panel discussions about the intersections of tech, gender, race and sexuality for the Cambridge Science Festival.

More at the artist’s website: Agnes Cameron

Gary Zhexi Zhang is an artist and writer interested in socio-technical objects, and a graduate of the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology. His current work explores decentralized organizations such as swarms, mycelia, and markets within the context of aesthetics, cryptography, and work. He works with film, installation, and software.

Recent projects and exhibitions include Cross-feed at Glasgow International 2018, vdrome.org (online), Vorephilia: The Opera at the Cambridge Junction, ALL CHANNELS OPEN at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire (2017), and Hereafter at The White Building, London (2017). He has recently held residencies at PRAKSIS, Oslo; SPACE Art & Technology, London; BALTIC, Gateshead; CCA, Glasgow; and Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn. As a writer, Zhang has published essays and criticism magazines including Frieze, Elephant, FOAM, Fireflies, and King’s Review.

More at the artist’s website: Gary Zhexi Zhang