Evan Ziporyn and Alvin Lucier, 2014. Photo: Still from video by Chris Boebel.

Q&A: Evan Ziporyn on Music Visionary Alvin Lucier

Composer and MIT professor discusses the enduring legacy of Visiting Artist Alvin Lucier.

Pink Anemonemefish by Keith Ellenbogen

Tactical Beauty

How underwater photography serves conservation efforts Coping with climate change is such a profoundly new part of the human experience that a new word, solastagia, has been coined to describe the emotional distress caused by violations against the planet. Underwater … Continued

Pamela Z performs at the CAST Marathon Concert, MIT, 2013. Credit: L. Barry Hetherington.

Pamela Z Sculpts Musical Abstraction From The Sounds (And Sights) Of Daily Life

It’s easy, watching Pamela Z perform, to get distracted by her gadgets: the MIDI controllers strapped to her hands like bionic appendages, the ultrasound-activated box that sings when her fingers flutter past, the laptop with its glowing screen. But if … Continued

Tomás Saraceno, Aerocene, GrandPalais, 2015. Photo: Studio Saraceno.

Behind the Artwork: Tomás Saraceno’s Aerocene Project

“With Lodovica [Illari] and Bill [McKenna], we are trying to reimagine how human beings will navigate around the world,” says artist Tomás Saraceno, describing the lofty goal of his Aerocene project. These emission-free floating sculptures, made from silver and transparent … Continued

Flux Quartet. Photo: Courtesy of the artists.

FLUX Quartet Tackles Morton Feldman’s Epic, Avant-Garde “String Quartet II”

It is often said that Morton Feldman’s “String Quartet II” is an experiment in scale. That is a fancy way of saying that the piece is very, very long—approximately six hours. The players—perhaps better described as marathoners—cannot eat or relieve … Continued

Keith Ellenbogen, "Kim Toy ," 2015. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Bursts of Light: Exploring the Multi-Strobe

Photos and text by Keith Ellenbogen, CAST Visiting Artist My work focuses on underwater photography, but sometimes it’s good to step away and try to use my photography skills in a totally different way, enabled by the fantastic resources here … Continued

Roads x Height, 2013, Selective laser sintered model by Bengler. Photo: Skrekkøgle.

Spring 2016 Preview of Programs

CAST presents a variety of workshops, exhibitions and lectures this Spring, and we hope you will join us for some of these scintillating events! McDermott Awardee David Adjaye will visit campus for a series of discussions on “The Future of the Library,” “The … Continued

Future of Suburbia. Credit: John Fitzgerald and Matthew Niederhauser.

In the Making: Matthew Niederhauser & John Fitzgerald

“In our dream, it has become a democratic society. You know, the city will become a kind of vehicle to help people live together and to be creative,” the artist Ai Weiwei remarks in Kapital Creation: Chasing the Chinese Dream, … Continued

Katerina Cizek, HIGHRISE, 2011. Image courtesy of the artist.

In the Making: Katerina Cizek

Known for her Emmy award-winning multimedia project, Highrise, about life in residential skyscrapers throughout the world, documentarian Katerina Cizek recently completed a two-year residency at the MIT Open Documentary Lab and CAST. “I always think of the Highrise project as … Continued

Installation View, Anicka Yi: 6,070,430K of Digital Spit at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA. Photo: Peter Harris Studio.

A ‘freer world,’ under your nose: Anicka Yi’s olfactory art

“A sense of smell was my portal to a freer world as a child. I prefer to smell someone’s sweater that’s been on the body than to look at a picture of that person,” explains CAST Visiting Artist Anicka Yi. … Continued

Audience members test new game from Harmonix, “The Art of Designing Electronic Music,” Ge Wang and Eran Egozy talks, MIT Museum, 2015. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington.

Ge Wang’s musical laptopian utopian vision

Musician and computer scientist Ge Wang prefers “those cases when technology takes a back seat to the human proceedings.”

Terry Riley, Terry Riley's 80th Birthday Concert, 2015. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington.

Many Happy Returns, Terry Riley

“Prandit Pran Nath used to say, ‘You in the note, and the note in you,’ and that’s a good way to describe the state to be in when you’re performing. At least, it’s the state I want to be in … Continued

Material Formations critique, Skylar Tibbits Design Studio, 2015. Photo: Sharon Lacey.

Material Formations (and Deformations)

Forget the balsa wood and foam core of yesterday’s design classes. Students in Skylar Tibbits’s innovative studio course are using everything from gummy bears to glass to rubber to foam, to create three-dimensional representations of the generative drawings they produced … Continued

Student installation for “The Harmonic Archive,” 2014.

MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) receives $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Combined grants provide 8 years of funding, among largest gifts received by the arts at MIT Cambridge, MA, April 22, 2015–The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) has received $1,500,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in support … Continued

Web in Buehler's lab, 2015. Photo: S. Lacey.

Spider Update

On his last visit to MIT, Tomás Saraceno brought a few boxes of fragile cargo to Professor Markus Buehler’s lab — a few Cyrtophora spiders and a couple of silken orbs spun by the Nephila species. As Saraceno built a … Continued

Joan Hepburn Levy. Photo: Still from IAP video, 2015.

Colors, Chords, Creativity: IAP workshop hosted by the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering explores universal design principles

Artist Joan Levy Hepburn and Joe Bouchard (Blue Öyster Cult) presented their work in painting, color and music in the IAP course “Colors, Chords, Creativity,” which was sponsored by the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Influenced by mentorships with … Continued

“Generative drawing” critique, 4.022 Architectural Design Fundamentals, 2015. Photo: S. Lacey.

Transcending The Algorithm: Architecture Students Create Generative Drawings

With his canvas stretched on the floor, Jackson Pollock dipped brushes or sticks into paint cans; then he drew in the air, dripping paint on the canvas, hovering, leaning, lunging, and gesturing here and there with varying speed. His pace, … Continued

Young Guru, 2015. Photo: Jared Fullerton, courtesy of the artist.

“Design and Destruction”: Young Guru inaugurates Hip Hop Speaker Series

A couple familiar red and white bags from the COOP bursting with MIT textbooks sat in a corner of the green room while legendary audio engineer and DJ, Gimel “Young Guru” Keaton, talked to the press before his recent lecture … Continued

Lontano Ensemble. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Lontano Ensemble performs works by MIT Composers

Lontano Ensemble: Rowland Sutherland, flute; Peter Furniss, clarinet; Caroline Balding, violin; Clare O’Connell, cello; Mary Dullea, piano; Odaline de la Martinez, conductor. The famed London-based Lontano Ensemble returns to MIT on March 15 to perform works by MIT composers in … Continued

The Boston Camerata, MIT Chapel, 2015. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington.

The Boston Camerata performs medieval music for the digital age

Before the age of print all books were manuscripts (the word means hand written), and therefore each existing manuscript is a unique artifact. A manuscript’s text, images and material components contain clues to the cultural, artistic, political, and technological achievements of … Continued

Arnold Dreyblatt, student installation for “The Harmonic Archive,” 2014. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington.

Q&A with CAST Visiting Artist Arnold Dreyblatt

Media artist and composer Arnold Dreyblatt’s connection to MIT began in 2000. As both a visual artist and a composer, there have been multiple threads to his involvement at MIT over the years. In his residency this fall he was … Continued

Bruno Latour delivers keynote address at CAST symposium, 2014. Photo: Barry Hetherington.

Seeing/ Sounding/ Sensing: CAST’s first symposium investigates the senses and what it means to be aesthetic

In his keynote address for CAST’s first symposium, Seeing/ Sounding/ Sensing, Bruno Latour (Professor at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris) observed that “Much of our philosophy comes from the still life; it’s a disease of the Dutch. Descartes and … Continued

Elena Ruehr, Gretchen Henderson and Roomful of Teeth at Kresge Auditorium, 2014. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington.

Cassandra in the Temples: Ignored prophetess commands attention in Elena Ruehr & Gretchen Henderson’s new opera for Roomful of Teeth

When the gods hand you a gift, they also hand you a whip for self-flagellation, to paraphrase Truman Capote. The Cassandra story typifies the blessing-and-coeval-curse topos. Apollo gives Cassandra the gift of prophecy to seduce her. When she refuses, he … Continued

Student installation for “The Harmonic Archive,” 2014.

The Harmonic Archive: Music, Sound & Installation Art as Artistic Research

Anyone who rides public transportation has likely experienced this breach of commuter etiquette: fellow passengers’ oblivion to the tinny blare emanating from their headphones. Students enrolled in “The Harmonic Archive: Music, Sound & Installation Art as Artistic Research” have used … Continued

Still from video accompanying Borderland, 4rd movement. Photo: Christine Southworth.

World Premiere of Borderland: A Cantata for Ukraine by Christine Southworth and Evan Ziporyn

Ukraine means “borderland, edge or outskirts.” Christine Southworth and Evan Ziporyn’s new collaborative project Borderland: A Cantata for Ukraine, which will premiere this week at Kresge Auditorium at MIT in a performance by Grammy-award winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth, operates … Continued