Albert Figurt
2023–24 Visiting Artist
Exploring the many lives of the Desktop Narrative format
About the Project
Video-artisan and new media scholar Albert Figurt (aka Alberto Angelini), together with MIT Professor of Digital Media Nick Montfort, collaborate on the “retroduction” of a new screencast movie—a film entirely unraveling within the borders of a computer screen. The movie is produced using historical computing technology from the late 1990s, well before the earliest “desktop movies” were actually shot and released for a broader mainstream audience.
Albert Figurt comes to MIT in 2023-24 as a visiting artist in the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology, a lecturer in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, and a residential scholar at MIT’s New Vassar residence hall. Throughout the fall semester and Independent Activities Period (IAP), he will share his expertise in desktop cinema and new media studies through teaching, student workshops, and a public lecture.
A former Fulbright Scholar at MIT, Albert Figurt previously collaborated with CAST Visiting Artist and MIT MLK Scholar Lupe Fiasco on the music video for “Precious Things.”
Schedule
Upcoming Events
Artist Lecture
Fall 2023
Biography
Albert Figurt (aka Alberto Angelini) is an Italian video-artisan, multi-instrumentalist, and independent researcher. He produces words, notes, images, crossmedia happenings, and fuzzy thoughts while being happily obsessed with the socio-anthropological and perceptual side effects of online video. His recent work includes guerrilla filmmaking workshops, lectures on screencast narratives, desktop documentary projects, and classes about nonlinear storytelling, expanded video editing, and digital cultures.
Website: D E S K T O P I A
Social: Vimeo
Collaborators at MIT
Nick Montfort, professor of digital media in MIT’s Comparative Media Studies/Writing department, examines creative computing and develops computational art and poetry. Montfort founded and directs the Trope Tank, a DIY research lab/studio, based at MIT and in New York City, that undertakes scholarly and aesthetic projects and offers material computing resources. His computer-generated books of poetry include #!, the collaboration 2×6, Autopia, The Truelist, and, most recently, Golem. His digital projects include The Deletionist and Sea and Spar Between. His MIT Press books, collaborative and individual, are: The New Media Reader, Twisty Little Passages, Racing the Beam, 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities, and The Future.
Biography: MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Website: nickm.com
