Rosa Colón Guerra. Courtesy of the artist.
Visiting Artists
Guillermo E. Brown. Bee Boy, directed by Charlotte Brathwaite, MIT 2017. Credit: Dekoit Pictures.
Bee Boy uplifts in the face of inequity’s sting
The word Ba, represented by a bee-sign in hieroglyphs, meant ‘soul,’ ‘honey’ and ‘bee’ to Ancient Egyptians. This ancient commingling of our fate with bees isn’t lost on MIT assistant professor of theater arts Charlotte Brathwaite, whose new project Bee … Continued
Grace Leslie. Courtesy of the artist.
Evan Ziporyn Discusses “Being Material”
MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte predicted in 1995 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 … Continued
Luciana Souza and Guillermo Klein. Image credit: Souza (left) by Kim Fox and Klein (right). Photo: Courtesy of the artists.
With “Works on Hope,” Latin Jazz Luminaries Guillermo Klein and Luciana Souza Invite MIT Into Their Tribe
Back in the mid-90s, the Brazilian-born singer Luciana Souza, who was living in Boston at the time, would sometimes drive down to New York to sit in on a Monday night session at the legendary Smalls Jazz Club in Greenwich … Continued
Maya Beiser performs "Uncovered" during the 2015-16 MIT Sounding Series. Credit: Justin Knight.
Evan Ziporyn’s ‘Ambient Orchestra’ Honors Bowie With Blackstar Concert
PUBLIC PERFORMANCE Maya Beiser and the Ambient Orchestra perform David Bowie’s Blackstar March 3, 2017 / 7:30pm MIT Kresge Auditorium, W16 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA It has been just over a year since the news of David Bowie’s … Continued
Protein 13 (Postscript 2013) - The Power Plant. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Poetry to survive the end of civilization
The recent spike in sales of George Orwell’s 1984, which hit No. 1 on Amazon’s best-seller list last week, says something about our dystopian times. If the future gets bleaker, we’ll need literature that not only records civilization’s collapse, but … Continued
Going Off-Road with Mugaritz to Explore Creativity
Creativity according to Mugaritz and MIT “When you take the off-road and not the well-traveled road, it is much more painful, but it is exciting and it is worth it, even knowing that I am going to fail by trying … Continued
Nik Bärtsch's Mobile: Modul 8_11 live at EXIL, 2014. Credit: SRF, Swiss Television.
Minimalism Meets Funk In Nik Bärtsch’s MOBILE Ensemble
When he was young, the Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch was obsessed with rhythm. Once, when his father brought him along to a party, he spent the whole evening drumming on an ashtray. Nowadays he is apt to reach … Continued
"Hajanga," is the fourth and final single from Collier's debut album, 'In My Room'.
Behind the Artwork: Ben Bloomberg Creates Live Performance Systems for Virtuoso Multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier
CAST Visiting Artist Jacob Collier is well known for his YouTube videos, which the 22-year-old musical phenom performs and produces in his bedroom in North London. Collier’s work has garnered praise from such jazz icons as Herbie Hancock and Quincy … Continued
"Don't You Know," an original song from Jacob Collier's debut album 'In My Room'. Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Jazz Prodigy Jacob Collier Infuses Technology with Humanity at MIT
Explosively rhythmic music Jacob Collier is not like other YouTube stars. The English 22-year-old rose to fame with inventive video covers of popular songs like Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T.” and Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” the arrangements rendered in dizzying multiplicity … Continued
Sumie Kaneko. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Sumie Kaneko and Gamelan Galak Tika Connect Japan, Bali and the Avant-Garde for MIT’s World Music Day
Sumie Kaneko, an Omnivourous Musician When the Japanese koto and shamisen player Sumie Kaneko was invited to perform with Gamelan Galak Tika for MIT’s World Music Day, she was elated. Kaneko—who holds a degree in traditional Japanese music from Tokyo … Continued
Photograph taken during the creation of Karim Ben Khelifa's The Enemy
Face to Face with The Enemy
Novel Technology When the Lumière brothers screened their 1895 film, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat—so the famous anecdote goes—audiences frightened by the verisimilitude of the image screamed and got out of the way. As we enter a … Continued
Fradreck Mujuru playing the mbira. Courtesy mbira.org.
Fradreck Mujuru and Erica Azim Bring Zimbabwe’s National Instrument, The Mbira, To Cambridge
When Erica Azim and Fradreck Mujuru first met, in 1991, Mujuru was waiting tables in the Zimbabwean capital city of Harare and working as an instrument maker on the side. Azim was visiting the country as a student of that … Continued
Joe Lovano with Gunther Shuller. Courtesy of the artist.
Jazz Legend Joe Lovano Pays Tribute To Gunther Schuller’s Searching Spirit
Back in 2014, the legendary post-bop jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano met his friend and mentor, the great composer Gunther Schuller, for dinner in Boston. At 88, Schuller was in the midst of a particularly fertile period. That year he premiered … Continued
Kaynak Pipers Band. Courtesy of the artist.
The Kaynak Pipers Band Brings A Centuries-Old Bagpipe Tradition Down From The Mountains To The Rest Of The World
Cvetelin Andreev became enamored with the kaba gaida, a type of Bulgarian bagpipe, eleven years ago, after spending several weeks hiking Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountain range alone. “If you stay, let’s say, two weeks, only with yourself, you change a bit,” … Continued
Simon Smith. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Pianist Simon Smith Finds The Nuance In Stockhausen’s Grand Vision
Simon Smith remembers vividly his first encounter with the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The piece was Trans, a composition for orchestra and recorded sound that the German composer, a giant of mid-century contemporary music, wrote in 1971. “It was immediately like … Continued
Pedro Reyes. Photo: Ana Hop.
CAST Announces 2016-17 Visiting Artists in Visual Arts and Writing
The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) is pleased to announce the 2016-17 Visiting Artists in visual arts and writing: Pedro Reyes, Tomás Saraceno, Karim Ben Khelifa, Agnieszka Kurant and Christian Bök. From repurposed and reimagined weapons to … Continued
Nik Bärtsch's Mobile. All rights reserved
© 2015 by Christian Senti and Ronin Rhythm Productions
Nik Bärtsch’s MOBILE
Rigorously conceptual zen-funk
“On the Record: Broadcasting Practices Workshop with NODE Berlin Oslo/Bengler," 2016. Credit: Irina Chernyakova.
Activating an Archive
Now that new media has freed us from the tyranny of print, we can experiment with multiple publishing platforms to collect and disseminate texts and other cultural artifacts. “On the Record,” a series of programs focused on the public side … Continued
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
Rendering of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C. 2014. Photo: Courtesy of Adjaye and Associates.
The Museum of the Future Needs You… and You
Some mixture of encyclopaedic curiosity, revolutionary zeal and noblesse oblige gave rise to public museums in the 18th century. The first of this kind, the British Museum, opened in 1759 with free entry to “all studious and curious persons.” The … Continued
Francis A. Gregory Library, Washington, DC. Adjaye and Associates, 2012. Photo: Courtesy of Ed Sumner.
Is the library the new public square?
David Adjaye and Other Experts Explore the Future of Libraries “The future happens unevenly. It already exists somewhere,” said Ginnie Cooper. “Some piece of it is already happening. Who can you learn from?,” she counseled at a panel discussion about … 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
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