Arts at MIT
  • About
    • About
    • Apply
    • Calendar
    • Facts + Figures
    • Leadership
    • Partners
    • Team
  • Projects
    • Cross-Disciplinary Classes
    • Faculty Grants
    • Visiting Artists
  • Performances
    • It Must Be Now!
    • MIT Sounding
      • 2021-22
      • 2019-20
      • 2018-19
      • 2017-18
      • 2016-17
      • 2015-16
      • 2014-15
    • MIT Performing
      • 2021-22
      • 2020-21
      • 2019-20
      • 2018-19
  • Publications
    • Articles
    • Books
    • Press Releases
    • Reports
  • Symposia
    • Active Matter Summit
    • Being Material
    • Frontiers in Science, Technology, and the Arts
    • Seeing/Sounding/Sensing
    • Unfolding Intelligence
    • Lecture Series

MIT Arts Programs

  • Arts at MIT Portal
  • Center for Art, Science & Technology
  • School of Architecture + Planning
    • Architecture Department
    • Art, Culture + Technology
    • History, Theory + Criticism
    • Media Lab
  • School of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences
    • Comparative Media Studies/Writing
    • Literature
    • Music and Theater Arts
    • Open Documentary Lab
  • Office of the Provost
    • Council for the Arts at MIT
    • Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT
    • List Visual Arts Center
    • MIT Museum
    • MIT Student Art Association (SAA)
    • Student Arts Programs
  • About
    • About
    • Apply
    • Calendar
    • Facts + Figures
    • Leadership
    • Partners
    • Team
  • Projects
    • Cross-Disciplinary Classes
    • Faculty Grants
    • Visiting Artists
  • Performances
    • It Must Be Now!
    • MIT Sounding
      • 2021-22
      • 2019-20
      • 2018-19
      • 2017-18
      • 2016-17
      • 2015-16
      • 2014-15
    • MIT Performing
      • 2021-22
      • 2020-21
      • 2019-20
      • 2018-19
  • Publications
    • Articles
    • Books
    • Press Releases
    • Reports
  • Symposia
    • Active Matter Summit
    • Being Material
    • Frontiers in Science, Technology, and the Arts
    • Seeing/Sounding/Sensing
    • Unfolding Intelligence
    • Lecture Series
  • Arts at MIT Portal
  • Center for Art, Science & Technology
  • School of Architecture + Planning
    • Architecture Department
    • Art, Culture + Technology
    • History, Theory + Criticism
    • Media Lab
  • School of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences
    • Comparative Media Studies/Writing
    • Literature
    • Music and Theater Arts
    • Open Documentary Lab
  • Office of the Provost
    • Council for the Arts at MIT
    • Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT
    • List Visual Arts Center
    • MIT Museum
    • MIT Student Art Association (SAA)
    • Student Arts Programs
MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology Projects

A major cross-school initiative, the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) was founded in 2012. Since then, CAST has been the catalyst for more than 35 artist residencies and collaborative projects with MIT faculty and students—20 cross-disciplinary courses and workshops, four concert series and numerous multimedia projects, lectures and symposia.

  • Classes: integrating the arts into the core curriculum and creating new artistic work or materials, media and technologies for artistic expression.
  • Visiting Artists: distinctive for its emphasis on the research and development phase of artistic work, residencies embed artists in the cutting-edge research and teaching at MIT, where scientists and engineers are open to artists’ speculative and hands-on way of working.
  • Faculty Grants: creating new opportunities for art, science and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge and discovery at MIT, CAST supports projects that may be difficult to fund through traditional sources or are exploratory in nature but may lead to creative works, significant research or interesting collaborations in the future.
Filter by
  • CAST Projects
  • Faculty Grants
  • Visiting Artists

Critical Broadcasting Lab

2018-20 Mellon Faculty Grant Recipient

Hearing Amazônia–The Responsibility of Existence

Exploring the plight of the natural world through Brazilian and Amazonian music

The Day

Conversation with Wendy Whelan and Maya Beiser, moderated by Sara Brown, April 23, 2020

The Hammer and the Feather

Exploring the sonic poetry of gravity

Two Mobility Futures 0∞

Divergent futures where humans move constantly, or not at all

VALIS

Reimagining live performance interactivity for a new generation

Visualizing the Proton

Illustrating the subatomic world

2018-19 MIT Sounding

MIT Sounding is an annual concert series open to the public

3 Questions: Sarah Schwettmann on the interface between art and neuroscience

A Black History Month Celebration

MGH partners with organizations and groups throughout the Greater Boston area to celebrate and honor Black History Month

A Three-Dimensional Spider Web Soundscape Comes to Life

Adesola Akinleye

Investigating the embodied choreography of urban space

Adrienne Truscott

Feb 7-9, 2019: Genre-straddling performance artist presents THIS

Agnieszka Kurant

Creating art through emergence and collective intelligence

All That is Solid Melts Into Air: CAST Inaugural Visiting Artist Tomás Saraceno

Alvin Lucier

Legendary composer blurs the lines between experiment, composition and art installation

Anat Cohen

A virtuoso widely recognized as one of the most vital clarinetists working today

Andrew Schneider

Nov 9-11, 2018: Interactive media artist and company presents NERVOUS/SYSTEM

Andy Cavatorta

Through the design of such complex and experimental instruments, Andy Cavatorta explores the ways in which we create meaning through sound.

Anicka Yi

Investigating the powers of olfactory sensation

Anna Kohler’s Mytho? Lure of Wildness

2016 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Anne Lilly

Arnold Dreyblatt

Media artist and composer explores audio visual perception and memory

Arthur Ganson

Kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson creates machines at once whimsical and philosophical

Ascoli Ensemble

Vocal ensemble using technology to reconstruct unusual medieval repertoires

Audra McDonald

2018 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

Ayesha Jordan and Justin Hicks

Feb 15, 2019: Work-in-Progress Showing

Azra Akšamija’s Displaced Empire

Azra Akšamija’s Lightweaver

2017 Mellon Faculty Grant Recipient

B. Stephen Carpenter II

Intentional Public Disruptions: Art, Responsibility and Pedagogy

Bang on a Can

Bang on a Can strives to expose worldwide audiences to exciting and innovative music.

Behind the Artwork: Tomás Saraceno’s Aerocene Project

Ben Houge

Sonification of real-time data

BIC

Bringing Kreyòl music and digital poetry to MIT

Bill Viola

2009 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

Billy Novick

"Sincerity... elegance... a lovely celebration of tunefulness" — Downbeat

Brandon Clifford’s Filament: Megaphones at the New York Philharmonic

2018 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Braxton Cook

Vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Braxton Cook comes to MIT to participate in It Must Be Now!

Carsten Höller

Manifesting the art-science of sleep and dreaming

Charlotte Brathwaite’s Bee Boy

2016-17 CAST Faculty Grant Recipient

Christian Bök

Living poetry

Christopher Janney

Christopher Janney’s site-specific works facilitate interactions between people and their environment, creating in the urban landscape a sense of spontaneity.

Chuck Hoberman

With Hoberman, MIT students invent new transformable mechanisms

Constanza Macras

Building dance theater from the ground up, October 31, 2019

Cristina Parreño Alonso’s Tectonics of Wisdom

David Adjaye

2016 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

David Sheppard

David Sheppard's work as a sound designer has taken him across the world and across genres, collaborating with many leading orchestras and ensembles as well as rock and pop musicians, visual artists, dance and film creatives.

Diemut Strebe

Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence

Diversifying Space

Exploring the social impact of science and technology at an interplanetary level

Don Byron

Legendary clarinetist and composer forging "a sound above genre"

duoJalal

"Fearless seekers and synthesizers of disparate instruments and cultures” —Toronto Star

Either/Or Ensemble

Avant-garde ensemble Either/Or is fiercely virtuosic

Elena Ruehr’s Songs from Extrasolar Spaces

Translating the cosmos into music

Eric Singer

Engineer, programmer, roboticist, and artist using sensors and robotics in multimedia systems

EVIYAN

World roots, post-minimalism and jazz in a singular, earthy and intense sound

Florian Hecker

Psychoacoustic experimentations

FLUX Quartet

"One of the most fearless and important new-music ensembles" — San Francisco Chronicle

Fradreck Mujuru and Erica Azim

Celebrating the Shona mbira tradition

Ge Wang

Computer Maestro

Gediminas Urbonas’s The Swamp School

2018 Mellon Faculty Grant Recipient

Glenn Branca Ensemble

Honoring a pioneer of the avant-garde

Graham Jones and Seth Riskin’s Paranormal Machines

Detecting and measuring the paranormal

Guilherme Marcondes

Captivating films and animations that probe the relationship between humans and our constructed environment

Guillermo Klein

April 28, 2017 - a stellar collision of vocal jazz, Latin music, and poetry

Gustavo Dudamel

2010 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

Hans Tursack and Viola Ago’s Understorey

Harry Allen and Rob Swift

MIT hosts harbanger, a battle DJ septet

Hauschka

Fueled by a love of rhythm, Hauschka creates playful, unpredictable and inventive music

Hussein Chalayan

Transformable fashion

Hyphen-Labs

NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism

Ian Condry’s “Dissolve Music”

2017 Mellon Faculty Grant

Ian Hattwick’s Instrument Design as Artistic Practice

2019-21 CAST Cross-Disciplinary Class

Immense Joy / Hots

Clarice Lispector’s brutal and tender exploration of what it truly means to be poor

It Must Be Now! Performance Program

Iva Bittová

Czech avant-garde violinist, singer, and composer.

J. Meejin Yoon’s FloatLab

2017-18 CAST Mellon Fellow

Jacob Collier

“Jazz music’s new messiah” —The Guardian

Jamshied Sharifi

Composer, producer, and keyboardist Jamshied Sharifi premiered Awakening at MIT

Jason Levine

Audiovisual artist and performer whose primary medium is code

Jason Moran

Adventurous jazz pianist

Jay Scheib’s In the Jungle of Cities

May 17, 2019: A Works/Process Presentation inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s genre-smashing play

Jay Scheib’s The Silence

Two sisters on the run from massive human failure, December 12-14, 2019

Jenna Sutela

Interspecies communicator using living material to explore the unknown

Joe Lovano

“One of the greatest musicians in jazz history”—New York Times

Joel Fan

Soaring and virtuosic pianist

John Akomfrah and Lina Gopaul

The films of John Akomfrah and Lina Gopaul, founders of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, are the catalyst for an exploration of the overarching theme of “cinematic migrations.”

John Chowning

Inventor of FM synthesis

John Fitzgerald and Matthew Niederhauser

Capturing the pace and process of global suburbanization

Johnny Gandelsman

Violinist Gandelsman "plays with a balletic lightness of touch and a sense of whimsy and imagination" —Boston Globe

Judith Barry’s All The Light That’s Ours To See

2019 International Exhibition and Performance Fund

Julia Ogrydziak

Experiential art works and performances

Jupiter Quartet

Chamber music ensemble performs Beethoven’s foundational String Quartets

Karim Ben Khelifa

Humanizing the enemy

Karin Coonrod

Far-reaching inventiveness

Katerina Cizek

Pioneer in participatory and interactive documentary production

Kaynak Pipers Band

Traditional kaba gaida folk music of Bulgaria

Keeril Makan and Jay Scheib’s Persona

Visceral new operatic adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s classic film

Keith Ellenbogen

Using ultra high-speed cameras to showcase underwater worlds in exquisite detail.

Ken Urban’s The Immortals

A work-in-progress by playwright Ken Urban, drawing from the strange and troubling case of Henrietta Lacks

Lakaï Dance’s The Block: An Afro-Musical

The Block: An Afro-Musical, September 27 & 28, 2019

Lara Baladi

Archiving revolution

Lerna Ekmekçioğlu’s Twelve Faces of Armenian Feminism

Libby Larsen

2004 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

Lion’s Jaw

Creating an environment where risk, rigor, and rebellion can flourish through dance

Lisa Dwan

2019–20 CAST Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist

Lochan Rijal

Sharing the rich heritage of traditional Nepalese music

Lontano Ensemble

Lontano is synonymous with “the future in music.”

Luciana Souza

2020-21 CAST Virtual Visiting Artist

Lupe Fiasco

Maki Namekawa Presents Philip Glass, Keith Jarrett, Joe Hisaishi, Evan Ziporyn

Marcus A. Thompson’s Faculty Recital

2017 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Mark Stewart

Multi-instrumentalist, guitarist, composer, and instrument designer

Matthew Ritchie

Artistic explorations of existence and scale

Maya Beiser

Maya Beiser is a “cello goddess” — The New Yorker

Mel Chin and Rick Lowe

Exploring the complexities of building healthy communities through art and activism

Memory Matrix

A solidarity-building and educational enterprise

MIT Arts Events at the 2018 Cambridge Science Festival

MIT to Present IT MUST BE NOW! Featuring 125 Performers of World Premiere Compositions

MIT’s ‘It Must Be Now!’ advances social justice through music and media

Mugaritz

Crossing culinary borders

Newton Harrison

Eco-Art and Action Research

Nik Bärtsch’s MOBILE

Rigorously conceptual zen-funk

Object Lesson: Aerocene Explorer

Observations from The Immortals workshop at MIT

Olafur Eliasson

2014 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

On the Record

Creating new shared territories for discursive and collaborative practices.

Pamela Z

Transforming elegant physical gestures into complex aural and visual landscapes.

Pawan Sinha’s “Vision in Art and Neuroscience”

2017 & 2018 Mellon Faculty Grant

Pawel Romanczuk, Small Instruments

Complex sounds from small instruments

Pedro Reyes

Inaugural Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology

Pilobolus

Dance company Pilobolus creates interactive performance with MIT robotics

Promesa: Voicing Counter Colonialism Through Board Game Creation

Understanding Puerto Rico’s debt crisis through play

Queer-Feminist-Antiracism and Design for the Future

Rafi Segal and Marisa Jahn’s Architecture for New Collectives

Rania Ghosn’s Blue Marble Circus

2017 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Rania Ghosn’s The Planet After Geoengineering

2020 International Exhibition & Performance Grant

Robert Lepage

2012 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

Robert Wilson

Visionary avant-garde director

Roomful of Teeth

The expressive potential of the most basic instrument: the human voice

Rosa Colón Guerra

Challenging colonialist narratives through board games

Santiago Calatrava

2005 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

Saraceno: Conversations on Atmosphere

Saraceno: Conversations on Biomimicry

Saraceno: Conversations on Cosmology

Sarah Cahill

“Sterling Bay Area pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” —The New York Times

Sarnath Banerjee

Demystifying social science through creative storytelling

Scanner and Stephen Vitiello

Sonic investigations into bodily experience and spatial practice

Sean Jones

Trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator, and activist Sean Jones comes to MIT to participate in It Must Be Now!

Simon Smith

Masterful and intrepid Stockhausen concert

Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project

History is made through the objects we save and the stories we tell about them

Stephanie Frampton’s ARTificial Intelligence

2018 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Sumie Kaneko

Traditional Japanese music with a jazz inflection

Suzan-Lori Parks

2006 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

Suzanne Bocanegra

Tauba Auerbach

A visual distillation of complex mathematical and scientific concepts

Terri Lyne Carrington

Drummer, producer, and educator Terri Lyne Carrington comes to MIT to participate in It Must Be Now!

Terry Riley

Minimalist legend

The Boston Camerata

Anne Azéma, Artistic Director

Things to do around Boston this weekend and beyond

Thom Kubli

Exploring the boundaries of physical space and floating structures

Thomas Heatherwick

2020 Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT

Tomás Saraceno

Expanding our thermodynamic imagination

Trevor Paglen

Meticulously researched ways to see and interpret the world around us

Trimpin

Engaging the visual, spatial, and kinetic properties of sound

Tristan Perich

Victor Gama

Instrument building and music composition using new technologies and the creative practices of Africa and the Diaspora

Video: Visiting Artist Tomás Saraceno’s In Orbit

Vik Muniz

Shifts in scale, photographic manipulation and unexpected materials

Volumetric Cinema

2018 Mellon Faculty Grant Recipient

WacŁaw Zimpel

Classical clarinetist lights up Polish jazz scene

Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya

Performance installation exploring the juxtapositions of multiplicities and the power of rising

Footer Menu

  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Calendar
  • Donate
  • Accessibility

Footer Social Menu

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Soundcloud
  • Instagram
MIT