Golden City Album Cover. Courtesy of Miguel Zenón.
Stories
Ancestral Memory, credit Doug Segars
Ancestral Storytelling: Movement and Memory
This article was originally published by the MIT Media Lab. Ancestral Storytelling: Movement + Memory embodies motion capture techniques for an interactive and immersive movement and sonic healing performance, living video archive, and workshop utilizing traditional ancestral storytelling and folkloric … Continued
MIT Gala 2024, credit Jack Field Studio.
Lights! Camera! Fashion! The 2024 MIT Gala Finds Success On- and Off-Stage
This article was originally published by The Tech. The epitome of fashion and art Students on the second floor of the Student Center peered inside Lobdell, amazed by the sights. Outside, a sparkly photo booth for all guests, dutifully manned … Continued
Ne:Kahwistará:ken Kanónhsa’kówa í:se Onkwehonwe is a site-specific, large-scale multimedia artwork created in the spirit and image of a Haudenosaunee longhouse as a communal virtual experience. Image courtesy of Jackson 2bears.
A Creation Story Told Through Immersive Technology
How Artist Jackson 2bears Reimagines The Haudenosaunee Longhouse and Creation Story In the beginning, as one version of the Haudenosaunee creation story has it, there was only water and sky. According to oral tradition, when the Sky Woman became … Continued
Max Addae demos VocalCords, credit Lane Turner/Boston Globe.
Making The Voice Hands-on
Max Addae’s innovative instrument creates new connections between sound and touch. What if the voice could be manipulated by hand, like so many other musical instruments? That was the question that drove Max Addae, MAS ‘23, to create VocalCords, an … Continued
2024 Wiesner Awards winner Sophia Chen's '24 Infinite Magazine artboard, courtesy of the artist.
Four Honorees Earn 2024 Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Awards
Sophia Chen, Michael Peters, Wuming Theater Club, and Alan Zhu Take Home Prestigious 2024 Wiesner Awards This week the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT) publicly honored four students/groups for their arts-related contributions to campus with the 2024 … Continued
2024 Schnitzer Prize Recipient HONMI's Balconies Balconies Balconies performed in Deer Island. Courtesy of the artists.
The 2024 Schnitzer Prize: Making Art; Making Meaning
All across the MIT campus, researchers in 30 departments and five schools regularly test the boundaries of knowledge. Research at MIT is often empirical—based on quantifiable data gleaned from controlled experiments and observations. But there is another genre of research … Continued
2024 Sudler Prize winner Phoebe Lin '24, credit Phoebe Lin.
2024 Sudler Prize: Phoebe Lin ’24
For Phoebe Lin ‘24, a deep appreciation for music began as a family affair: after starting to learn piano at age 4 and picking up the flute as a teenager, she and her brother, Andrew Lin ‘22, would accompany each … Continued
2024 MIT Arts Startup Incubator, credit HErickson/MIT.
The Business of Creation
The MIT Arts Startup Incubator According to a Unesco survey, there are 671 cultural artforms in danger of disappearing during our lifetimes. Nadine Zaza MS and ME ‘24 wants to change that. “The loss of these artforms means the loss … Continued
Chloe Bensahel, credit Cyrille de La Motte Rouge
Weaving Memory into Textiles
For the MIT visiting artist Chloé Bensahel, fabric itself tells the story In 2021, a curator at the Smithsonian contacted Chloé Bensahel, currently the MIT 2023-24 Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence, and told her about some objects that … Continued
Emily Peckham
Introducing Emily Peckham, Director of the Council for the Arts at MIT
Dear Council Members, I am pleased to announce that Emily Peckham will assume the position of Director of the Council for the Arts on May 6, 2024. Emily has been Development Director for the Points North Institute, home of … Continued
Evan Ziporyn Solo: Moondog, Riley Glass. Credit Caroline Alden
Evan Ziporyn Solo: Moondog, Riley, Glass
Celebrating the connections between minimalism and pop with the clarinet In his recent concert, Evan Ziporyn Solo: Moondog, Riley, Glass, the composer and clarinetist premiered works by three major figures in American minimalism, while also performing arrangements of pop … Continued
"Moving into the Being Mind," credit Amanda Ugorji
Iris Yuting Zeng: Finding the Form Behind the Form
An Unlikely Artist When Iris Yuting Zeng, M.Arch ’24 was in primary school, her teacher told her she didn’t have a gift for drawing. “She told me my drawings were too abstract,” says Zeng, whose charcoal-on-paper drawings are on view … Continued
Students in "Creating Art, Thinking Science," credit HErickson/MIT
Creative Collisions: Crossing the Art-Science Divide
A partnership between ACT and MIT.nano, the class “Creating Art, Thinking Science” asks what it really takes to cultivate dialogue between disciplines MIT has a rich history of productive collaboration between the arts and the sciences, anchored by the … Continued
The Spirio piano at MIT. Still from film by Yari Wolinsky.
Play It Again, Spirio
A piano that captures the data of live performance offers the MIT community new possibilities for studying and experimenting with music Seated at the grand piano in MIT’s Killian Hall on a recent October afternoon, Jacqueline Wang ’27 played through … Continued
The Art and Science of Time Travel course, credit HErickson
Laughing Through Time and Space: The Art and Science of Time Travel
“I love reading science fiction,” says Nigel Shen, a first-year graduate student in Computational Science and Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. “But the science fiction I love the best is written by people who have a firm grasp on science. That … Continued
MIT Museum screening
From The Big Screen to The New Next Best Spot: The Desktop
Albert Figurt’s residency at MIT CAST has involved Grammy-winning rappers, guerrilla filmmaking, and generating some vapor-rich STEAM from STEM students Cambridge, MA—“Is it possible to make a film without cameras, or to develop a story without sounds?” Albert Figurt … Continued
The Eternal Swamp, credit Sarnath Banerjee
Illustrating India’s Complex Environmental Crises
A CAST Visiting Artist project traces the history of cause and effect that have led India to its current crossroads. Abhijit Banerjee, Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics, and CAST Visiting Artist Sarnath Banerjee (no relation) share a similar … Continued
MIT Museum Director Michael John Gorman. Copyright BIOTOPIA Naturkundemuseum-Bayern / Photograph by Andreas Heddergott/CROP
Michael John Gorman Named MIT Museum Director
Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch, the museum’s deputy director, will serve as interim director until Gorman takes up his post this summer. MIT has appointed Michael John Gorman the Mark R. Epstein (Class of 1963) Director of the recently re-imagined MIT … Continued
MIT Music Building Performance Hall. Credit Design Distill/SANAA.
3 Questions: A New Home for Music at MIT
A new facility under construction will feature rehearsal and performance spaces, a recording studio, classrooms, and music technology laboratories. More than 1500 students enroll in music classes each year at MIT. More than 500 student musicians participate in one of … Continued
Disassembled sculpture. Credit Laura Maria Gonzalez
Laura Maria Gonzalez Turns Microbes into Mountains
An exhibit marking the culmination of Gonzalez’s work at MIT demonstrated the potential for microbes and minerals to generate sustainable building materials Laura Maria Gonzalez (SMArchS ’22) came to the Department of Architecture at MIT with a big question about … Continued
Credit Google DeepMind
The Creative Future of Generative AI
An MIT panel charts how art and design will be impacted by Artificial Intelligence Few technologies have shown as much potential to shape our future as artificial intelligence. Specialists in fields ranging from medicine to microfinance to the military are … Continued
Lauren Gideonse and Adriana Giorgis, Come Back And Tell Me Why Things Last, MIT Wiesner Student Art Gallery. Credit: HErickson/MIT.
Architectural Longevity: What Determines a Building’s Lifespan?
A new exhibition at MIT Wiesner Student Art Gallery explores the practicalities and play of architectural aging The average lifespan of a house in the United States is between 50 and 63 years, from construction to demolition. For Lauren … Continued
A Mosaic of the Arts Scene at MIT
Student Voices: Arts on the Radar By Jessica Kim, MIT undergraduate A Friday night party like no other, MIT’s “Arts on the Radar” lit up the Wiesner Building (E15) with a dazzling display of creativity. More than 600 arts … Continued
Kristin Young (Sophia) in VALIS. Credit: Maria Baranova.
Reimagining the Opera of the Future
The iconic sci-fi opera VALIS reboots for a new generation In the mid-eighties, composer Tod Machover came across a copy of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novel VALIS in a Parisian bookstore. Based on a mystical vision Dick called … Continued