Articles about the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology

In-depth coverage of the intersection of art, science and technology at MIT

News, interviews and stories about the work of the Center for Art, Science & Technology

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I control what part of the web the viewer sees while Ian plays with the hearing distance. All the fibers within this hearing distance (in blue/white) are sonified while the fibers outside of this range (in green/brown) do not produce sound. Evan and Christine improvise with the web instrument, building on Ian's sound, with Evan on EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) and Christine on electric guitar with EBow. – Isabelle Su

A Three-Dimensional Spider Web Soundscape Comes to Life

Spider’s Canvas was performed February 16-18, 2019 at the MIT Building W97 Main Theater. Visit sounding.mit.edu for more information. Following the live performances, the piece was displayed in the MIT.nano Building 12 in Spring 2019. Spider’s Canvas / … Continued

Lisa Dwan’s performance at the Old Vic Theatre of "No’s Knife," a selection of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Texts for Nothing’ (1950-52). Credit: Manuel Harlan.

Breathing New Life into Samuel Beckett

Reserve your ticket to “A Body of Beckett,” part of the MIT Performing series February 21, 2019 / 7pm MIT Theater Building W97, 345 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA Actress-director Lisa Dwan shares her somatic take on the Irish bard as … Continued

Drunk and...soon to be FAMOUS!!! Featuring Shasta Geaux Pop Shot & Edited by Tatiana McCabe.

Shasta Geaux Pop Raises the Roof and Opens the Cultural Floodgates

Reserve your ticket to Line by Line, part of the MIT Performing series February 15, 2019 / 8:00pm MIT Theater Building W97, 345 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA Ayesha Jordan brings her mega-party persona and work-in-progress to MIT Performing When Shasta … Continued

Adrienne Truscott. Credit: Allison Michael Orenstein. © 2018 Adrienne Truscott.

MIT Performing Shifts into High Gear

The season continues, presenting the work of three powerhouse talents. The inaugural season of MIT Performing—the new presenting platform for contemporary performance—returns for a swift-but-powerful mini-festival, which runs through February. Jay Scheib, professor for Music and Theater Arts at … Continued

Adrienne Truscott’s THIS.

What the Hell is THIS?

Provocateuse Adrienne Truscott brings her wickedly funny new work to MIT. One of the best anecdotes in Adrienne Truscott’s delightedly vulgar, rampantly feminist, genre-shifting solo-show THIS is about a toilet. Specifically, it’s about a toilet in a camper in a … Continued

Image: Courtesy of Runner's High.

Sound and Technology Unlock New Innovation at MIT This Fall

Sound is a powerfully evocative medium, capable of conjuring authentic emotions and unlocking new experiences. This fall, several cross-disciplinary projects at MIT probed the technological and aesthetic limits of sound, resulting in new innovations and perspectives, from motion-sensing headphones that … Continued

NERVOUS/SYSTEM by Andrew Schneider and Company: Jamie Roach. Photo by Sham Sthankiya.

Andrew Schneider’s NERVOUS/SYSTEM Boldly Launches the Inaugural Season of MIT Performing

Bringing Andrew Schneider and Company to MIT Albert Einstein once said of his teaching style, “I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” That quote essentially describes how OBIE award-winning performer, … Continued

Jacob Collier's newest album "DJESSE Vol. 1" is the follow up recording to the 2017 double Grammy-winning "In My Room."

A Jazz Wunderkind, A Haitian Pop Star and Spider Webs at MIT Sounding Series

Album Release Celebration: Djesse Volume 1 What do a jazz wunderkind, a Haitian pop star and spider webs all have in common? They’ll all be making appearances throughout the MIT Sounding Series 2018-19 season. The series kicks off with a familiar … Continued

Pedro Reyes, Manufacturing Myschief,Noam Chomsky. Credit: HErickson/MIT.

Object Lesson: Noam Chomsky Puppet

Object Lesson is an ongoing blog series that highlights some of the art, artifacts, machines, devices, books, instruments and tools that give physical form to ideas that enhance the MIT campus and community. What is the Noam Chomsky puppet? This … Continued

Two actors read from scripts while others look on.

MTA Playwrights Lab, 2018. Photo: Sarah Wagner.

MTA Playwrights Lab Gives Young Writers a Professional Experience

On a recent Friday evening, six people gathered around a table in a mostly-empty studio in MIT’s new Theater Arts building on the western edge of campus. In a few hours time, the group—local actors Marge Buckley and Sarah Bedard, … Continued

Tomás Saraceno,Aerocene. Credit: Katherine Higgins.

MIT Arts Events at the 2018 Cambridge Science Festival

Every spring, the Cambridge Science Festival (CSF) makes science accessible, engaging and fun for everyone through multifaceted, multicultural events. In spring 2018, Arts at MIT created a list of of CSF events that taking place on the MIT campus. We … Continued

2017 Hacking Arts, "Signature Hack" with CAST Visiting Artist Agnieszka Kurant. Shown here are two real animals and two fictional animals. Credit: Adam Harr Horowitz.

Behind the Artwork: Adam Haar Horowitz on The Animal Internet

Adam Haar Horowitz, together with Agnes Cameron, Ishaan Grover, Tim Robertson, Owen Trueblood and Gary Zhang, worked with CAST Visiting Artist Agnieszka Kurant at the 2017 Hacking Arts Festival on a “signature hack,” a new feature of the festival that … Continued

(Clockwise, from top left) Clarinetists Don Byron, Billy Novick, Eran Egozy and Evan Ziporyn.

The Great Clarinet Summit Shines A Light On An Oft-Overlooked Instrument

The Clarinet The clarinet is not generally considered the most heroic of instruments. In classical music, that honor belongs to the violin. In jazz, it’s the saxophone; in rock, the guitar. But the clarinet, a single reed woodwind that is … Continued

Tomás Saraceno,Aerocene. Credit: Katherine Higgins.

Object Lesson: Aerocene Explorer

Jason Levine livecoding at an Algorave. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

‘The Instrument is Code:’ Jason Levine Brings Musical Live Coding To MIT

It’s not uncommon, in this day and age, to go to a concert and spot a performer hunched behind a laptop. Head bobbing and fingers flying, she may be doing any number of things: DJing, remixing, playing live backing tracks. … Continued

The Lightweaver, photomontage of a kinetic light installation for the Future Heritage Lab at the refugee camp Al Azraq, Jordan by Azra Aksamija / FHL. Credit: Azra Aksamija, The Lightweaver, 2017.

Future Heritage Lab Devises Creative Responses to Humanitarian Crises

Artistic Collaboration Between MIT, German-Jordanian University and Refugees in the Al Azraq Camp in Jordan Associate Professor Azra Akšamija, Art, Culture & Technology Program, MIT Department of Architecture, first visited the Al Azraq refugee camp in Jordan in 2016. “Once … Continued

Marcus Thompson. Credit: Donna Coveney.

A Recital By Violist Marcus Thompson Is A Chance To Reflect On Progress, Both Personal and Political

A Momentous Day April 4, 1968 was a momentous day for Marcus Thompson. That was the day that the young violist made his debut in a recital at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It also turned out to … Continued

2017 Hacking Arts, "Signature Hack" with CAST Visiting Artist Agnieszka Kurant. Credit: Sharon Lacey.

Collectively Powered Animatronic Fictional Animals, a “Signature Hack”

The Signature Hack At the 2017 Hacking Arts Festival, MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) Visiting Artist Agnieszka Kurant worked with a team of MIT graduate students and researchers to create a “signature hack,” a new feature of … Continued

Pedro Reyes, Mexico City–based artist, named the first Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist. Credit: Chris Hind.

In the Making: Pedro Reyes

“My main material is my library. I consider that a very big palette,” says Pedro Reyes, the Mexico City-based artist known for his politically charged participatory and performative installations and multimedia works. “I feed myself materials twice as fast as … Continued

Notes On Blindness, Arnaud Colinart

Hacking VR, 7 ways

Ever since Ivan Sutherland, PhD ’63, developed Ultimate Display in 1965—a forerunner to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) that uses tactile stimuli to mimic the physical world—MIT researchers have been engineering new forms of immersive media. Today, the … Continued

Active Matter, Published September 2017 by MIT Press.

Excerpt from Active Matter by Skylar Tibbits

Active Matter (MIT Press 2017), edited by Skylar Tibbits, Assistant Professor of Design Research in the Department of Architecture at MIT and the Founder and Codirector of MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, is an essential guide to a field that could shape … Continued

A Tribute to Lou Harrison Honors His Love Affair with Javanese Music

Lou Harrison The great American composer Lou Harrison tried his hand at many things: painting, calligraphy and poetry, to name but a few. He went through a great many musical phases as well, inspired by the experimental work of both … Continued

DESIGN EARTH, "Planetarium for the Anthropocene," 2017. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Q&A with Rania Ghosn

Suspend disgust at the thought of trash; make it a compelling subject for designers and the broader public. That’s Rania Ghosn’s tactic for getting more people to improve our built environment and ask the necessary questions about landfills, oil rigs, … Continued

Vision in Neuroscience and Art. Students conduct visual experiments. Credit: Seth Riskin.

Q&A with Seth Riskin

Seth Riskin, SM ’89, came to MIT in 1986 to coach the women’s gymnastics team, before applying to the graduate program in Visual Studies at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), then under the direction of German artist Otto … Continued

MIT Museum Presents North American Premiere of Groundbreaking Virtual Reality Experience The Enemy by Visiting Artist Karim Ben Khelifa.

CAST Announces 2017-18 Visiting Artists in Visual and Computational Arts

The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) is pleased to announce the 2017-18 Visiting Artists in visual and computational arts: Pedro Reyes, B. Stephen Carpenter II, Agnieszka Kurant, Diemut Strebe, Karim Ben Khelifa, Newton Harrison, Jason Levine and … Continued