The MIT Museum and MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) present an ongoing series of sci/art/tech installations and programs, starting in September 2023 with Arachnodrone, a multimedia installation based on a spider web.
Programming includes a series of MIT class sessions led by professors and visiting artists on topics ranging from drawing to video and music technology.
“As CAST recently celebrated its tenth anniversary and the MIT Museum opened a new building at the heart of Kendall Square in Cambridge last year, it is an especially fitting time for this collaboration to begin,” said Vice Provost for the Arts Philip S. Khoury. “The work fostered by the Center for Art, Science & Technology which supports more than a dozen projects each year at the intersection of art, science, and technology, and the new museum that aims to “turn MIT inside out,” have missions that complement each other perfectly and show the best of what is being explored and created in these areas of research at MIT.”
On view at the
MIT Museum
314 Main Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
United States
For more information, contact cast@mit.edu
What’s On
Installation
Arachnodrone
Fall 2023 – Spring 2024
An immersive multimedia installation and performance environment that presents a 3D model of a Cyrtophora citricola spider’s tropical tent-web as a modulating drone-harp. The strands of the web are activated by the user’s movement, producing sound based on proximity and principles of sympathetic resonance.
Free with museum admission, no registration necessary.
Presentation
Gazing Upwards
Saturday, March 2, 2024 / 2:00pm
An afternoon with National Geographic night sky photographer Babak Tafreshi and MIT urban astrophotographer Evan Kramer.
Free with Museum admission. Pre-registration not required or available. Seating is limited so early arrival is suggested.
Past Events
Presentation
Drawn Together: An Evening with Linda Barry
Friday, November 3, 2023 / 6-7:30pm
Why is there such a striking similarity between the lines drawn on paper by children who are in the middle of getting or explaining an idea, and the white board lines made by scientists who are doing the same thing?
Explore questions of representational and other kinds of drawing with cartoonist Lynda Barry, and discover how this powerful tool of connecting through a different way of thinking, seeing and being is right at our fingertips.
Painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher Lynda Barry presents her work to the general public and students enrolled in the CAST supported class 21A.513 Drawing Human Experience.
After Dark Event
The Five Senses
Thursday, November 9, 2023 / 6–9pm
Take in the sights and sounds of Arachnodrone with the exhibition artists, explore the science of taste with Clover Food Lab, create your own fragrance in the Maker Hub, and investigate the connection between touch and sound in the Learning Labs.
Small batch beers from Winter Hill Brewing Company and slow cooked BBQ from Scott Brothers Kitchen available for purchase.
Open Class
Making Documentary: Audio, Video, and More with Albert Figurt
Tuesday, December 5, 2023 / 2-4:30pm
Students enrolled in CAST Visiting Artist Alberto Angelini’s (aka Albert Figurt’s) class, 21W.752 Making Documentary: Audio, Video, and More, present their short video science documentary projects to the general public. The class focuses on the technical demands of long-form storytelling in sound and picture.
Free with museum admission, no registration necessary.
About the Presenters
MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology
A major cross-school initiative, the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) creates new opportunities for art, science and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures and publications. Evan Ziporyn, Faculty Director; Leila W. Kinney, Executive Director.
MIT Museum
In October 2022, a reinvented MIT Museum opened in a new location in the heart of the Kendall Square Gateway of MIT’s campus at 314 Main Street in Cambridge, MA. The museum aims to make innovation and research available to all by presenting the best of STEAM, and to “turn MIT inside-out,” inviting visitors to take part in on-going research while demonstrating how science and innovation will shape the future of society. Open daily 10am–5pm.