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EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Leah Talatinian
Senior Officer for Marketing and Communications
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
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
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 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
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
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
Composer and MIT professor discusses the enduring legacy of Visiting Artist Alvin Lucier.
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
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
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
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
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
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
Beyond being a book repository, the ancient Library of Alexandria was a working resource for scholars. Joined physically to the Mouseion—a Greek word meaning a place where the Muses are active—the library contained a lecture hall (exedra), a refectory for … Continued
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
“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
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
Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions, on view from October 23, 2015 to December 20, 2015 at Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, is a new production by CAST Visiting Artist Tomás Saraceno that … Continued
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin are Shakespearian in their iconicity. Every serious performer must subject them to study, memorizing a monologue or, in this case, a movement, tracing and retracing the familiar, fleet-footed phrases in the … Continued
Theo Jansen and his Animaris Ordis visit MIT Dutch artist Theo Jansen and two of his Strandbeests visited the MIT Media Lab on September 10, for the first “ML Talk” of the fall 2015 semester, “Theo Jansen in conversation with … Continued
Maya Beiser’s recent album of classic rock covers, cheekily titled “Uncovered,” may come as a surprise to those who know her as a daring cellist primarily focused on new classical works. But the Israeli-born soloist (she now resides in New … Continued
New music series features Maya Beiser, Johnny Gandelsman, the Persona opera, Feldman’s six-hour string quartet, and Pamela Z. The new music series, MIT Sounding, has announced its 2015 and 2016 schedule of innovative performances by some of the world’s leading … Continued
MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology welcomes the following visiting artists to campus in the 2015-16 academic year. From photographers to filmmakers and architects to musicians, these artists will collaborate with MIT faculty and researchers and present public programs … Continued
Award includes $100K prize, artist residency, gala and four public programs at MIT Architect David Adjaye OBE receives the 2016 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT. The $100K prize awarded at a gala in his honor also includes an … Continued
“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