Art and Social Impact Archives

Ne:Kahwistará:ken Kanónhsa’kówa í:se Onkwehonwe is a site-specific, large-scale multimedia artwork created in the spirit and image of a Haudenosaunee longhouse as a communal virtual experience. Image courtesy of Jackson 2bears.

A Creation Story Told Through Immersive Technology

How Artist Jackson 2bears Reimagines The Haudenosaunee Longhouse and Creation Story In the beginning, as one version of the Haudenosaunee creation story has it, there was only water and sky. According to oral tradition, when the Sky Woman became … Continued

A mural from The House of Correction AR Mural Project. The project is an ongoing collaboration between The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department and several groups at MIT including Music and Theater Arts, The Borderline Mural Project, The Educational Justice Institute (TEJI), and Arts at MIT. Credit Leon Yim.

MIT Students Find Rich Rewards in Working on the HOC AR Mural Project

The community project provided a close up of prison life and revealed the power of art to inspire and transform. When MIT freshman Sherry Xiao and MIT junior Helen Read signed up to participate in the House Of Correction Augmented … Continued

Pedro Reyes, Manufacturing Myschief,Noam Chomsky. Credit: HErickson/MIT.

Object Lesson: Noam Chomsky Puppet

Object Lesson is an ongoing blog series that highlights some of the art, artifacts, machines, devices, books, instruments and tools that give physical form to ideas that enhance the MIT campus and community. What is the Noam Chomsky puppet? This … Continued

The Lightweaver, photomontage of a kinetic light installation for the Future Heritage Lab at the refugee camp Al Azraq, Jordan by Azra Aksamija / FHL. Credit: Azra Aksamija, The Lightweaver, 2017.

Future Heritage Lab Devises Creative Responses to Humanitarian Crises

Artistic Collaboration Between MIT, German-Jordanian University and Refugees in the Al Azraq Camp in Jordan Associate Professor Azra Akšamija, Art, Culture & Technology Program, MIT Department of Architecture, first visited the Al Azraq refugee camp in Jordan in 2016. “Once … Continued

Pedro Reyes, Mexico City–based artist, named the first Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist. Credit: Chris Hind.

In the Making: Pedro Reyes

“My main material is my library. I consider that a very big palette,” says Pedro Reyes, the Mexico City-based artist known for his politically charged participatory and performative installations and multimedia works. “I feed myself materials twice as fast as … Continued

MIT Museum Presents North American Premiere of Groundbreaking Virtual Reality Experience The Enemy by Visiting Artist Karim Ben Khelifa.

CAST Announces 2017-18 Visiting Artists in Visual and Computational Arts

The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) is pleased to announce the 2017-18 Visiting Artists in visual and computational arts: Pedro Reyes, B. Stephen Carpenter II, Agnieszka Kurant, Diemut Strebe, Karim Ben Khelifa, Newton Harrison, Jason Levine and … Continued

"Listening to the City" at Urbano Mobile. Photo: Courtesy of MIT CoLab.

“Listening to the City”: Amplifying voices, shaping sonic infrastructure

Listening is an undervalued act in our civic sphere, where the squeaky wheel routinely gets the grease. But MIT’s Community Innovators Lab (CoLab), a center for planning and development within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), is … 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

Tomás Saraceno, Aerocene, GrandPalais, 2015. Photo: Studio Saraceno.

Behind the Artwork: Tomás Saraceno’s Aerocene Project

“With Lodovica [Illari] and Bill [McKenna], we are trying to reimagine how human beings will navigate around the world,” says artist Tomás Saraceno, describing the lofty goal of his Aerocene project. These emission-free floating sculptures, made from silver and transparent … Continued

A window display showing hanging chains of sun-shaped lights reads "Little Sun: calculated simplicity"

Little Sun installation in the windows of the MIT Museum, 2012. Credit: L. Barry Hetherington.

Little Sun redux with Velux at MIT

Artist Olafur Eliasson, the 2014 McDermott Award Winner, has found MIT an eminently suitable place for collaboration on his Little Sun project. Described as “a work of art that works in life,” Little Sun is a high-quality, portable, solar powered … Continued

Poetry written in Ukranian and Turkish, with English translations.

Still from video accompanying Borderland, 4rd movement. Photo: Christine Southworth.

World Premiere of Borderland: A Cantata for Ukraine by Christine Southworth and Evan Ziporyn

Ukraine means “borderland, edge or outskirts.” Christine Southworth and Evan Ziporyn’s new collaborative project Borderland: A Cantata for Ukraine, which will premiere this week at Kresge Auditorium at MIT in a performance by Grammy-award winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth, operates … Continued

Aerial view of a soccer field painted with an image of a soccer ball.

Vik Muniz, This is Not a Ball, 2014. Credit: VAGA, New York.

This is Not a Ball: New Doc by Visiting Artist Vik Muniz Features MIT Alums

MIT alumni and researchers are spotlighted in Visiting Artist Vik Muniz’s documentary, “This is Not a Ball,” coinciding with the 2014 World Cup.

Gallery display with large wooden boxes and a hanging panel of fabric covered in square photos.

Credit: Judith M. Daniels/ Courtesy of the MIT Museum

MIT Professor Azra Akšamija: Creating Community Amid Conflict

Exhibit by MIT professor Azra Akšamija explores how art and architecture can act as vehicles for community making in contexts of conflict and crisis.

Art And Social Impact Articles