Takahiko Iimura, TV for TV, 1983. Two identical TV monitors face to face, dimensions variable. Credit: Courtesy the artist and Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn.

Henriette Huldisch on Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995

“The history of time-based art and technology are entwined,” notes Henriette Huldisch, Director of Exhibitions & Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center, in her catalogue for Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995. Yet, we rarely pause to consider how the physical … Continued

Notes On Blindness, Arnaud Colinart

Hacking VR, 7 ways

Ever since Ivan Sutherland, PhD ’63, developed Ultimate Display in 1965—a forerunner to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) that uses tactile stimuli to mimic the physical world—MIT researchers have been engineering new forms of immersive media. Today, the … Continued

The Livable panel, (from left) Bettina Stoezer, Bill Maurer, Tal Danino, Claire Pentecost, and Rebecca Uchill (co-convener of the symposium). Credit: L. Barry Hetherington.
The Livable panel, (from left) Bettina Stoezer, Bill Maurer, Tal Danino, Claire Pentecost, and Rebecca Uchill (co-convener of the symposium). Credit: L. Barry Hetherington.

CAST’S “BEING MATERIAL” SYMPOSIUM HIGHLIGHTS THE CONVERGENCE OF BITS AND ATOMS

Twenty-two years ago Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab co-founder, predicted that “being digital” would lead to a future with fewer material constraints. “Being Material,” the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology’s second biennial international symposium, used Negroponte’s Being Digital … Continued

Matthew Ritchie with collaborators on The Long Count / The Long Game (clockwise from top left: Evan Ziporyn, Aaron Desner, Shara Worden, Bryce Dessner, Kelley Deal, Matthew Ritchie), ICA, Boston, 2015. Photo: Courtesy of the ICA.

Creation myths and the creative process: Matthew Ritchie at MIT

“The project started with a general interest in creation myths”; that is how artist Matthew Ritchie describes the genesis of his multimedia performance piece, The Long Count/ The Long Game. He further explains his approach to such grand narratives began … Continued

People climb on large inflated transparent sheets in an atrium space.
Tomas Saraceno’s “On Space Time Foam,” Hangar Bicocca Milan, 2012. Photo: Barry Hetherington.

Saraceno: Conversations on Cosmology

In Tomás Saraceno’s most recent installation On Space Time Foam, visitors are invited to enter three clear membranes of plastic suspended 25-meters in the air. The installation creates a new bodily experience, transforming everyday perceptions of space and one’s relationship to others. In this work, he takes as his material and inspiration the basics of physics: mass, energy, space, and gravity. At MIT, he had the opportunity to share his work with physicists Jerome Friedman and Robert Jaffe, Edward Farhi, and Alan Guth from MIT’s Center for Theoretical Physics.

Clusters of clear orbs float in a blue sky.
Tomás Saraceno, Flying Garden/Air-Port-City, 2005. Image courtesy of Tomás Saraceno; pinksummer contemporary art, Genoa. Installation view: Villa Manin, Center for Contemporary Art, Codropio. Credit: Sillani.

Saraceno: Conversations on Atmosphere

The dream of Saraceno’s ongoing project, “Cloud City,” is not only to live among the clouds but also to create cities more like clouds – changeable, mobile, and responsive to atmospheric shifts. His experimental sculptures, expressing an aerial vision for the future, are often prototypes for incubating an interconnected existence in the sky. At MIT, Lodovica Illari, Adrian Dalca and Michael Rubinstein, and John Hansman shared with Saraceno their expertise on atmosphere and flight, representing the exciting possibilities in hinging visionary thinking to technical expertise, imaginative speculation to material realities.

A complex irregular network of many black fibers in a white gallery space.
Tomás Saraceno, 14 Billions, 2010. Credit: Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Saraceno: Conversations on Biomimicry

When asked who the audience was for his work during a public lecture here at MIT, Tomás Saraceno replied, “spiders!” Here we explore the artist’s ongoing interest in biomimicry –- the creative application of natural systems and processes towards human solutions -– through the work of several MIT researchers. Like Saraceno – whose aerial installations take inspiration from spider webs, soap bubbles, neural circuits, and cosmology – faculty Markus Buehler, Neri Oxman, and Dörthe Eisele are similarly interested in harnessing the power of nature to create new materials for a more sustainable future.