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    • Comparative Media Studies/Writing
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    • Music and Theater Arts
    • Open Documentary Lab
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Alumni Articles

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Departamento del Distrito, When Models are Systems, produced for the 2022 Architectural League of New York Prize. Image credit: Adriana Hamui

Thinking On a Big Scale

Drawing from geography and history, Nathan Friedman’s vision of architecture extends beyond buildings   When asked what architects do, most people tend to think that they design buildings. And of course, that is part of their purview. But many architects … Continued

A person holding strings on top of a mirror.
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

Man presents in front of a screen with an image of the brain
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

Person upside down in zero gravity
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

Woman giving online presentation
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

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

Daniel Chonde smiles directly at the camera while wearing a colorful bowtie and suit jacket.
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

Toward a Transhumanist Future: Miriam Simun, Media Lab ’18

The video opens under an expanse of murky green water, as two swimmers clasp each other and slowly pinwheel in place to the somber notes of a piano sonata. A voiceover says, “The world record for human breath-hold underwater is … Continued

Devi Lockwood SM '19. Courtesy of Devi Lockwood.

Beside Still Waters: Devi Lockwood SM ‘19

Devi Lockwood was wandering down the Infinite Corridor in the Fall of 2018 when she noticed a sheaf of brochures perched on the door of a small office to her left. The brochures had information about grants awarded by the … Continued

Being Material, MIT Press, 2019. Credit: HErickson/MIT CAST.
Being Material, MIT Press, 2019. Credit: HErickson/MIT CAST.

Being Material, an Introduction

By Marie-Pier Boucher, Stefan Helmreich, Leila W. Kinney, Skylar Tibbits, Rebecca Uchill, and Evan Ziporyn The following excerpt is from the publication Being Material (2019 MIT Press).   At the intersection of art, science, and technology, the book Being Material … Continued

Four men pose with a large check reading "Teach to Learn."
First Place 2019 $15K Creative Arts Competition team Teach to Learn. Credit: HErickson/MIT.

$15K Creative Arts Competition 2019

Teach to Learn wins $15,000 first prize Mark Adams (Sloan School of Management ’19) worked in agriculture in Zambia. Derek Beckvold taught music in a refugee camp outside of Erbil in Iraq. Robert Jordon gave piano lessons to young people … Continued

Image: Artist Jorge Otero-Pailos. Credit: Paula Lobo.

Jorge Otero-Pailos ‘02 Connects Art and Architecture in Surprising Ways

The international artist attributes his diverse career to MIT’s open culture. Jorge Otero-Pailos ’02 attributes his unique artistic vision to his experience at MIT, where he earned a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture at the MIT School of … Continued

Image: Ray Zepeda. Courtesy of Ray Zepeda.
Image: Ray Zepeda. Courtesy of Ray Zepeda.

Ray Zepeda ‘88 Recalls his Rich Musical Mentors at MIT

The mechanical engineering graduate followed his muse as musician and composer. The roads to MIT are many and circuitous. For Ray Zepeda ‘88, the route was straight east. A lifelong Californian, Zepeda’s cross-country trip was motivated by dual interests. “Studying … Continued

Flock. Credit LNichols.
Flocks. Credit LNichols.

Transforming a Rough Childhood in Rural Louisiana into a Graphic Novel

L. Nichols will present a reading of his new work “Flocks,” 
an autobiographical graphic novel, on Tuesday, November 27, 2018 from 5:00-6:15pm in the MIT Wiesner Student Art Gallery. The reading will include an introduction by Stephen Tapscott, Professor, Literature and … Continued

2017 $15K Creative Arts Competition Workshop. Credit Lenny Martinez.
2017 $15K Creative Arts Competition Workshop. Credit Lenny Martinez.

In Good Company: MIT Alumni in Creative Industries

Bose, BuzzFeed, E*Trade, Gillette, Huffington Post, Texas Instruments, Zipcar—those are just a few familiar companies founded by MIT alumni. With MIT’s “lab to market” ethos, it may come as no surprise that thousands of alumni have turned their research findings … Continued

Sarah Hulsey's studio. Photo: Sharon Lacey.
Sarah Hulsey's studio. Photo: Sharon Lacey.

Sarah Hulsey, Picturing Language

Language is the defining trait of being human, yet a deep knowledge of how it works did not develop until the 20th century. Pioneering linguists like Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, MIT Institute Professors emeriti, were instrumental in the development … Continued

Vision in Neuroscience and Art. Students conduct visual experiments. Credit: Seth Riskin.
Vision in Neuroscience and Art. Students conduct visual experiments. Credit: Seth Riskin.

Q&A with Seth Riskin

Seth Riskin, SM ’89, came to MIT in 1986 to coach the women’s gymnastics team, before applying to the graduate program in Visual Studies at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), then under the direction of German artist Otto … Continued

September 55 VR piece, installation view, Istanbul, 2016. Photo: Courtesy of Deniz Tortum.
September 55 VR piece, installation view, Istanbul, 2016. Photo: Courtesy of Deniz Tortum.

VR through a long lens: Deniz Tortum lends historical perspective to a new medium

“The central story I was thinking about when developing the idea of ‘embodied montage’ [for my SM Thesis in Comparative Media Studies at MIT] was the myth of Orpheus. Eurydice dies and Orpheus goes back to hell to save her. … Continued

'Mytho? Lure of Wildness,' 2016. Photo: Paula Court.
'Mytho? Lure of Wildness,' 2016. Photo: Paula Court.

Actor-Director-Physicist Adam Strandberg

Adam Strandberg graduated from MIT in 2014 with a degree in physics. While a student, he was in 20 theatrical productions, from David Mamet’s Speed­-the­-Plow to Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He received the Wiesner Student … Continued

Adam Strandberg, Anna Martel, Anna Kohler. Credit: Caleb Hammond.

Anna Kohler plays with sensations in Mytho? Lure of Wildness

“It’s a tender portrait of a scary thing,” says Anna Kohler, describing her latest theatrical project, Mytho? Lure of Wildness. Kohler’s play explores the fearsome reality of getting old, in particular how aging transforms beauty and affects the senses: “It’s … Continued

Joan Jonas, They Come to Us without a Word still, 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.

The Enduring Influence of Joan Jonas at MIT and Beyond: Part V

Professor Emerita Joan Jonas taught at MIT from 1998–2014, and her pioneering performance, video, and installation works from 1960 onward have secured her a place in art history’s firmament. Influence, however, is a more personal and earthly matter; it occurs … Continued

A woman pulls a dog on a wheeled trolley.
Joan Jonas, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, 2005. Credit Paula Court.

The Enduring Influence of Joan Jonas at MIT and Beyond: Part IV

Professor Emerita Joan Jonas taught at MIT from 1998–2014, and her pioneering performance, video, and installation works from 1960 onward have secured her a place in art history’s firmament. Influence, however, is a more personal and earthly matter; it occurs … Continued

Joan Jonas, "Lines in the Sand," performance, 2002-2004, Kitchen, NYC, NY. Courtesy of the artist and ACT archives. Photo credit: Werner Maschmann.

The Enduring Influence of Joan Jonas at MIT and Beyond: Part III

Professor Emerita Joan Jonas taught at MIT from 1998–2014, and her pioneering performance, video, and installation works from 1960 onward have secured her a place in art history’s firmament. Influence, however, is a more personal and earthly matter; it occurs … Continued

Two performers on a stage with an image projected in the background.
ACT Professor Emerita Joan Jonas, Reading Dante. Cell Block Theatre, Sydney, 2008. Photo: Greg Weight. Copyright Joan Jonas. Image courtesy of the artist.

The Enduring Influence of Joan Jonas at MIT and Beyond: Part II

Professor Emerita Joan Jonas taught at MIT from 1998–2014, and her pioneering performance, video, and installation works from 1960 onward have secured her a place in art history’s firmament. Influence, however, is a more personal and earthly matter; it occurs … Continued

Alan Pierson and Elena Ruehr with the Alabama Symphony, 2015. Photo: Courtesy of the Alabama Symphony.

Vivaldi goes in a time machine (and then to Alabama)

Hearing Vivaldi’s Spring piped over the stereo at an upscale department store in Chestnut Hill Mall, MIT composer Elena Ruehr had an epiphany. It was winter 1995, and she was working on a piece for strings commissioned by Metamorphosen for their … Continued

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