EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Leah Talatinian
Director of Communications
When people think of the clarinet, they may conjure images of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Pete Fountain or Sabine Meyer. On Friday, May 11, 2018 however, audiences will be treated to the talents of MIT’s own Ini Oguntola, who will … Continued
On April 30, MIT’s yearlong suite of opportunities for student arts entrepreneurs culminated in the sixth annual Creative Arts Competition, a $15,000 prize for the most promising arts-focused startup at the Institute. Eight teams were selected as finalists (from 23 … Continued
Bose, BuzzFeed, E*Trade, Gillette, Huffington Post, Texas Instruments, Zipcar—those are just a few familiar companies founded by MIT alumni. With MIT’s “lab to market” ethos, it may come as no surprise that thousands of alumni have turned their research findings … Continued
“The notion of ‘artistic research’ has really taken hold and captured the imagination of the art world in the past fifteen years,” explains Gediminas Urbonas, associate professor in the Art, Culture & Technology (ACT) program in the MIT School of … Continued
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
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
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
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
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
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 Aerocene Explorer? The … Continued
Language is the defining trait of being human, yet a deep knowledge of how it works did not develop until the 20th century. Pioneering linguists like Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, MIT Institute Professors emeriti, were instrumental in the development … Continued
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
Jay Scheib, Professor of Theater at MIT, directs Bat Out of Hell, a rock ’n’ roll musical based on Jim Steinman’s eponymous albums made famous by Meat Loaf. First written over forty years ago, Steinman’s dystopian, futuristic adaptation of the … Continued
“The history of time-based art and technology are entwined,” notes Henriette Huldisch, Director of Exhibitions & Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center, in her catalogue for Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995. Yet, we rarely pause to consider how the physical … Continued
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
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
To counter the prevailing “technology of rationality,” which guides most human behavior and hampers our openness to new experiences, organizations must adopt a “technology of foolishness,” argues behavioral theorist James G. March. This sensible foolishness paves the way for experimentation … Continued
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
The 2017 Hacking Arts Festival, which took place at MIT on November 10-12, centered on a timely theme, “Why human?” A surfeit of recent articles report an increasing skepticism about digital technologies among millennials. As retreating into tech-enabled virtual worlds … Continued
Object Lesson is an ongoing 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 Errantry? Errantry is an artist … Continued
“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
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
Object Lesson is a new 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. 3D CERAMICS PRINTER What is a … Continued
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
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
