BEING MATERIAL
A symposium hosted by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST)

April 21-22, 2017
MIT Samberg Conference Center, 6th & 7th floors, Building E52
50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139

In 1995, MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte predicted that “being digital” would have us entering a realm increasingly unconstrained by the materiality of the world. Two decades later, our everyday lives are indeed ever more suffused by computation and calculation. But unwieldy materiality persists and even reasserts itself. Programmable matter, self-assembling structures, 3D/4D printing, wearable technologies and bio-inspired design today capture the attention of engineers, scientists and artists. “BEING MATERIAL” will showcase recent developments in materials systems and design, placing this work in dialogue with kindred and contrasting philosophy, art practice and critique. Panels on the PROGRAMMABLE, WEARABLE, LIVABLE and INVISIBLE—along with a concert, AUDIBLE—will explore new and unexpected meetings of the digital and material worlds.

 

Participants include:

Conveners

Stefan Helmreich, Elting E. Morison Professor of Anthropology and Program Head

Leila W. Kinney,  Executive Director of Arts Initiatives and MIT CAST

Skylar Tibbits, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Co-Director, Self Assembly Lab

Rebecca Uchill, Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer, Department of Architecture

Evan Ziporyn, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor; Chair, Music and Theater Arts; and Faculty Director of MIT CAST

Honorary Chair
Ron Kurtz ’54, ’59, SM ’60

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Grace Leslie. Courtesy of the artist.
Grace Leslie. Courtesy of the artist.

Grace Leslie

Grace Leslie is an electronic musician and music cognition researcher committed to harnessing the expression granted by new music interfaces to better understand the link between music and emotion, with an ultimate goal of employing musical brain-computer interfaces to promote wellness. … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Audible on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 3:00-3:30pm

Nicholas Negroponte

Nicholas Negroponte is the co-founder (with Jerome B. Wiesner) of the MIT Media Lab (1985), which he directed for its first 20 years. A graduate of MIT, Negroponte was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design and has been … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Welcome and “Been Digital” on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 12:00-1:00pm
Bettina Stoetzer

Bettina Stoetzer

Bettina Stoetzer is an anthropologist whose research focuses on the intersections of ecology, globalization and urban social justice. Stoetzer’s current book project, Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration and Urban Life, explores the changing cultural politics of nature and citizenship in the … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Livable Panel Discussion on Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 9:00-10:30am
Kevin Slavin

Kevin Slavin

As an entrepreneur, Kevin Slavin has successfully integrated digital media, game development, technology and design. He is a pioneer in rethinking game design and development around new technologies (like GPS) and new platforms (like Facebook). In 2005 he co-founded Area/Code … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Programmable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 1:00-3:00pm
Natasha Schull

Natasha Dow Schüll

Natasha Dow Schüll is a Cultural Anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her forthcoming book, KEEPING TRACK: Personal Informatics, Self-Regulation, and the Data-Driven Life (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017), concerns the … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Wearable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 4:00-6:00pm
Credit: Mark Blower.
Casey Reas

Casey Reas

Casey Reas is a computational artist and co-developer of Processing, a programming language geared towards the visual arts. Reas’ software, prints and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, … Continued

Panel Participant in "BEING MATERIAL," 2017 CAST Symposium
Programmable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 1:00-3:00pm

Manu Prakash

Manu Prakash is an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University and physicist working at the molecular scale to try and understand no less than how the world really works. As he told BusinessWeek in 2010, he is humbled and inspired … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Programmable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 1:00-3:00pm
Nadya Peek_Courtesy of the Artist.

Nadya Peek

Nadya Peek develops infrastructures of fabrication. She does this by deploying unconventional digital fabrication tools, small scale automation, networked controls, and advanced manufacturing systems. Spanning design, electronics, firmware, software, and mechanics, she rebuilds production systems to accommodate high-tech in low … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Programmable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 1:00-3:00pm
Credit: Erin Valkner.
Lisa Parks

Lisa Parks

Lisa Parks, Ph.D. is a media theorist who writes on television, satellites, drones, and infrastructures of surveillance. Parks, a Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT, previously worked at UC Santa Barbara (1998-2016) where she chaired the Department of Film and Media Sudies … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Invisible Panel Discussion on Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 11:00-1:00pm
Trevor Paglen, Courtesy of the Artist

Trevor Paglen

Trevor Paglen is an artist and geographer who explores and documents invisible infrastructures, ranging from secret corporate and government sites to networks known through technologies of non-human, machine vision.  Paglen’s work spans through image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering and numerous other … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Invisible Panel Discussion on Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 11:00-1:00pm
Michelle Murphy

Michelle Murphy

Michelle Murphy is an historian of science, and the recent past who studies often invisible infrastructures of environmental toxins, reproductive technologies, and compromised environments. Murphy’s work is guided by questions of environmental and reproductive justice. She is the author of … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Invisible Panel Discussion on Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 11:00-1:00pm

Lucy McRae

Lucy McRae is a sci-fi artist, film director and body architect. In films, music videos and immersive installations, she places the human body in complex, futuristic scenarios, focusing primarily on taking audiences out of their comfort zone. McRae is a TED … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Wearable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 4:00-6:00pm
Bill Maurer

Bill Maurer

Bill Maurer is a cultural anthropologist of law, property and finance, examining how new kinds of monetary practices (from cryptocurrencies and mobile banking to alternative finance) generate unexpected configurations of social, political, and ecological life. Maurer’s research focuses on the technological infrastructures … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Livable Panel Discussion on Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 9:00-10:30am
Ben Fry. Credit: Fathom.

Ben Fry

Ben Fry is principal of Fathom Information Design, a design and software consultancy located in Boston. He received his doctoral degree from the Aesthetics + Computation Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, where his research focused on combining fields such as computer science, statistics, graphic … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Programmable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 1:00-3:00pm
Credit: Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff
Michelle Finamore

Michelle Finamore

Michelle Tolini Finamore is the Penny Vinik Curator of Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and has her Ph.D. from the Bard Graduate Center in New York. Books include Gaetano Savini: The Man Who Was Brioni (Assouline, 2015) … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Wearable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 4:00-6:00pm
Tal Danino.

Tal Danino

Tal Danino is a synthetic biologist, engineering some of the smallest forms of life, in the form of “programmable” bacteria. Danino’s research explores the emerging field of synthetic biology, focusing on designing novel behaviors in bacteria that have technological applications. … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Livable Panel Discussion on Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 9:00-10:30am
Photo credit: Cem Talu.
Hussein Chalayan.

Hussein Chalayan

Hussein Chalayan, for more than twenty years, has used clothing as a platform to display materials that change state and transform themselves. His work is characterized by an adventurous, bold incorporation of technology and an ability to address conceptual issues—such … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Wearable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 4:00-6:00pm
Benjamin Bratton.

Benjamin Bratton

Benjamin H. Bratton‘s work spans Philosophy, Art, Design and Computer Science. He is Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the Center for Design and Geopolitics at the University of California, San Diego. He recently founded the school’s new Speculative … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Programmable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 1:00-3:00pm
George Barbastathis

George Barbastathis

George Barbastathis is a mechanical engineer, known for creating an optical invisibility cloak, a calcite crystal system that may make possible hiding objects in plain sight. Barbastathis is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and holds the Singapore Research … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Invisible Panel Discussion on Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 11:00-1:00pm
Credit: M. Scott Brauer
Sandy Alexandre

Sandy Alexandre

Sandy Alexandre writes on black American material culture—particularly literature and photographs—examining how histories of black displacement, invisibility and vulnerability haunt and energize the ways black lives matter now. Alexandre’s research spans the late nineteenth-century to present-day black American literature and … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Invisible Panel Discussion on Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 11:00-1:00pm
Azra Akšamija. Credit Dietmar Offenhuber.
Azra Akšamija. Credit Dietmar Offenhuber.

Azra Akšamija

Azra Akšamija is an artist, architectural historian and Associate Professor in the MIT Art, Culture and Technology Program. In her multi-disciplinary work, Akšamija investigates the politics of identity and memory on the scale of the body (clothing and wearable technologies), on the civic … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Moderator, Wearable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 4:00-6:00pm
Courtesy of Christina Agapakis.
Christina Agapakis.

Christina Agapakis

Christina Agapakis is a biologist, artist, writer and creative director at Ginkgo Bioworks, an organism design company that is bringing biology to industrial engineering. She explores the aesthetics of biotechnology and has made cheese from the artist Olafur Eliasson’s tears. … Continued

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Wearable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 4:00-6:00pm