Renée Green by Gloria Sutton
On the occasion of Inevitable Distances, a two-venue retrospective in Berlin, Green traces the serial forms and “ongoingness” in her research-driven, visionary films and installations.
Feb. 3, 2022
News, interviews, and stories about the arts at MIT
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Image courtesy of artist
Emma Yimeng Zhu 朱艺蒙 (SMACT ’21) Brings Ideas to Life
Artist and architect Emma Yimeng Zhu 朱艺蒙 is challenging us to reimagine our world. Emma Yimeng Zhu 朱艺蒙 (SMACT ’21) is fascinated by lines. By the boundaries they form, by the blurring of them, and by how we might … Continued
The Architects Collaborative 1945–1995: Tracing a Diffuse Architectural Authorship. Photo: Chris Grimley.
Council for the Arts at MIT Announces Fall 2021 Grant Recipients
The Council for the Arts at MIT provides funding for arts projects with a special interest in supporting projects that engage the MIT community. The Council’s Grants Committee considers proposals for projects in the fall and spring semesters. Applications for Undergraduate Mini-Grants are accepted on a … Continued
Shige Moriya and Ximena Garnica. Credit: Brandon Perdomo.
Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya
Performance installation exploring the juxtapositions of multiplicities and the power of rising
Nina Young, image courtesy EMPAC
Composer Nina C. Young’s Sonic Architectures
Composer Nina C. Young is equally at ease drawing from Renaissance motets and 21st-century technology to devise her sonic architectures. When she was a senior at MIT, Nina C. Young ’07 took Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor … Continued
Joshua Sariñana MIT PhD '11. Trinity College Dublin Neurohumanities Lecture Series.
Joshua Sariñana (PhD ‘11) Believes in The Poetry of Science
Joshua Sariñana hopes that combining science, poetry, and photography can create new avenues for understanding and advocating for social justice. Joshua Sariñana (PhD ‘11) has always asked big questions. “I wanted to understand consciousness,” Sariñana says of studying neuroscience … Continued
The "first contact" moment of the performance. Pease NH, May 20, 2021. Photo courtesy of Steve Boxall/Zero-G.
Rethinking Our First Encounters in Space
In a new video art piece, MIT alum Rae Yuping Hsu counters traditional narratives of colonization In late May, 20,000 feet above Pease, New Hampshire, a woman dressed as a microbe in a spacesuit inoculated with slime mold bounced around … Continued
Chalk of the Day, Courtesy of Jessie Wang '21 and Jessica Xu '21.
Inspiring Aspiring Artists: CAMIT Undergraduate Mini-Grants
MIT students have continued to perform, compose, draw, dance, build, and make in every imaginable way throughout this past year.
Image: Courtesy of Nancy Valladares, SMACT ’20.
Council for the Arts at MIT Supports Graduate Student Artistic Research
Graduate students and alumni discuss their work at the Council’s Annual Meeting
Rendering of "Lodgers: Serendipity in the Wilderness" by Zhicheng Xu and Mengqi Moon He.
Council for the Arts at MIT Announces Spring 2021 Grant Recipients
The Council for the Arts at MIT provides funding for arts projects with a special interest in supporting projects that engage the MIT community. The Council’s Grants Committee considers proposals for projects in the fall and spring semesters. Applications for Undergraduate Mini-Grants are accepted on a … Continued
Po-Hao Chi, Virtual Confinement. Courtesy of the artist.
The 2021 Schnitzer Prize: Art For and From Our World
Visit the online exhibition of work by the 2021 recipients of the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts. Po-Hao Chi, Chucho Ocampo, Carolyn Tam, and Nina Lutz Artists have always found their subjects and techniques in the world where … Continued
Image: 2021 Sudler Prize recipient Sebastian Franjou. Credit: Amelia Paine.
Sebastian Franjou ’21: Louis Sudler Prize Winner
Music, electrical engineering, and computer science Sebastian Franjou ’21 began studying classical guitar and music theory in his native France, but he chose the United States for his university education so that he could double major—ultimately choosing to pair music … Continued
Image: Kevin Costello. Courtesy of the artist.
Thriving in the Arts at MIT: The 2021 Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Awards
Kevin Costello, Rian Flynn, Gabriel “Tony” Terrasa, and Luisa Apolaya Torres Each year, the Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Awards, which were created in 1979, acknowledge four undergraduate or graduate students, living groups, organizations or activities for their … Continued
2021 CAST Symposium "Unfolding Intelligence"
Unfolding Intelligence
This year’s biannual CAST symposium explores the art and science of computation In the popular imagination, artificial intelligence is either a salve or a menace: a bright panacea to optimize our brains and solve all our problems, or a cold … Continued
Agnieszka Kurant, A.A.I 8, 2015, termite mounds made from colored sand, gold, glitter, and crystals, 63.5 × 66 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
The Never-ending Artwork
A new online exhibit and film explore iterative and generative processes In 1975, artist Sol Lewitt created a list of instructions for drawing red, yellow, and blue lines on a wall. A piece of conceptual art, the wall could be … Continued
Anj Fayemi, ’20 Chemical Engineering, member of Rivet team, winner of the 2021 $15K Creative Arts Competition, accepting prize.
Making the Arts Sustainable: The $15K Creative Arts Competition
There are myriad opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs at MIT—dozens of incubators and accelerators designed to help shepherd the next big thing in robotics or biotech or quantum computing from blackboard to business. Students wishing to launch a venture in the … Continued
Trapped, credit Elaheh Ahmadi.
Opening a Trapped Door
Photography gives graduate student Elaheh Ahmadi a new means of connection, self-expression Taking 4.341 Introduction to Photography and Related Media at MIT was a life-changing experience for Elaheh Ahmadi SB ’20, MEng ’21. It was the fall of 2019, and … Continued
Jenna Sutela and Markus Buehler, film still from Wet-on-Wet, 2021.
Finding the Love Hormone in a Stressed Out World
A new art-science collaboration uses molecular structures as creative medium In MIT CAST Visiting Artist Jenna Sutela’s work, which ranges from computational poetry to experimental music to installations and performance, she enlists microbes and neural networks as co-creators. “I want … Continued
Botanical Ghosts. Credit Nancy Valladares.
How to Talk to Ghosts
In a new online project, MIT alum Nancy Valladares finds phantoms in Honduras’s horticultural past In 1932, the British botanist Dorothy Popenoe died after eating a piece of unripe ackee fruit. The fruit, which originated in West Africa, was grown … Continued
Image: Daniel Chonde. Courtesy of the Martinos Center Researcher.
Daniel Chonde SB ’07, PhD ‘15
For Dr. Daniel Chonde, art, science, and health don’t just enrich each other — they are inextricably intertwined One of the most consequential lessons Dr. Daniel Chonde (SB ’07, PhD ‘15), a third-year resident in radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, … Continued
Thomas Heatherwick. Credit: Elena Heatherwick.
Thomas Heatherwick, 2020 Winner of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts
Finding Connection in Isolation Through Design How can we be together? This is the question that designer Thomas Heatherwick asks. The winner of the 2020 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, renowned for his large-scale public projects around the … Continued
2020 Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts First Place Winner Nicole L'Huillier's Delira, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
Council for the Arts at MIT Announces IAP 2021 Arts Funding Opportunities for Undergrads and Student Groups
The Council for the Arts at MIT will offer two art funding opportunities for IAP 2021 focused on undergraduates and student groups. Special IAP Arts Funding for Undergraduates and Student Groups This one-time special funding opportunity will provide up to … Continued
Screenshot of Misalignments online exhibition. Credit: Dalma Földesi and Jung In Seo.
Misalignments
When MArch’20 graduates Dalma Földesi and Jung In Seo first started taking ceramics classes at MIT’s Student Art Association (SAA), they found a fascinatingly protean substance. Clay could be liquid or solid, heavy and dense or feather-light. Before it hardens, … Continued
Taylor Boes, Prototype 01, Self-Hugging Pillow, 2020.
Council for the Arts at MIT Announces Fall 2020 Grant Recipients
This fall funding from the Council’s Grants Committee will enable MIT’s faculty, staff, and students to pursue new, innovative forms of collaboration, performance, and engagement as well as to advance artistic practices in design, film, installation, artist books, and … Continued
As the 2018–20 Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist, Matthew Ritchie creates a new transmedia work in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of MIT artists, faculty, and students. This new collaborative work takes inspiration from the “invisible college” of MIT: the interactions, discussions, and thought processes that take place outside of the formal classroom and administrative structure of the Institute.
The Invisible College
In the late days of January in 2020, Matthew Ritchie staged a beta version of his VR game, The Invisible College, in the U-shaped atrium of MIT’s Physics building, a former century-old courtyard. On the bright grid-like floor designed by … Continued