For the MIT visiting artist Chloé Bensahel, fabric itself tells the story In 2021, a curator at the Smithsonian contacted Chloé Bensahel, currently the MIT 2023-24 Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence, and told her about some objects that … Continued
A partnership between ACT and MIT.nano, the class “Creating Art, Thinking Science” asks what it really takes to cultivate dialogue between disciplines MIT has a rich history of productive collaboration between the arts and the sciences, anchored by the … Continued
A piano that captures the data of live performance offers the MIT community new possibilities for studying and experimenting with music Seated at the grand piano in MIT’s Killian Hall on a recent October afternoon, Jacqueline Wang ’27 played through … Continued
“I love reading science fiction,” says Nigel Shen, a first-year graduate student in Computational Science and Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. “But the science fiction I love the best is written by people who have a firm grasp on science. That … Continued
Albert Figurt’s residency at MIT CAST has involved Grammy-winning rappers, guerrilla filmmaking, and generating some vapor-rich STEAM from STEM students Cambridge, MA—“Is it possible to make a film without cameras, or to develop a story without sounds?” Albert Figurt … Continued
An MIT panel charts how art and design will be impacted by Artificial Intelligence Few technologies have shown as much potential to shape our future as artificial intelligence. Specialists in fields ranging from medicine to microfinance to the military are … Continued
The iconic sci-fi opera VALIS reboots for a new generation In the mid-eighties, composer Tod Machover came across a copy of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novel VALIS in a Parisian bookstore. Based on a mystical vision Dick called … Continued
“In our increasingly complex society, science and technology can no longer be segregated from their human and social consequences. The most difficult and complicated problems confronting our generation are in the field of the humanities and social sciences.” This declaration, … Continued
On April 30, MIT’s yearlong suite of opportunities for student arts entrepreneurs culminated in the sixth annual Creative Arts Competition, a $15,000 prize for the most promising arts-focused startup at the Institute. Eight teams were selected as finalists (from 23 … Continued
Adam Haar Horowitz, together with Agnes Cameron, Ishaan Grover, Tim Robertson, Owen Trueblood and Gary Zhang, worked with CAST Visiting Artist Agnieszka Kurant at the 2017 Hacking Arts Festival on a “signature hack,” a new feature of the festival that … Continued
Jay Scheib, Professor of Theater at MIT, directs Bat Out of Hell, a rock ’n’ roll musical based on Jim Steinman’s eponymous albums made famous by Meat Loaf. First written over forty years ago, Steinman’s dystopian, futuristic adaptation of the … Continued
“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
The Signature Hack At the 2017 Hacking Arts Festival, MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) Visiting Artist Agnieszka Kurant worked with a team of MIT graduate students and researchers to create a “signature hack,” a new feature of … Continued
The 2017 Hacking Arts Festival, which took place at MIT on November 10-12, centered on a timely theme, “Why human?” A surfeit of recent articles report an increasing skepticism about digital technologies among millennials. As retreating into tech-enabled virtual worlds … Continued
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 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
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
The MIT Grad Arts Forum, a group that encourages artistic collaboration and intellectual discussions among MIT graduate students from different departments, invited the greater Boston community to the 8th Annual Graduate Arts Soirée on March 25, 2017. This event was … Continued
A productive artist residency generally provides the yin to an artist’s yang. If daily life is distracting, for example, an artist may relish solitude. If, on the other hand, the artist is Jacob Collier, a self-contained singer-songwriter-performer-composer-arranger-producer who mostly works … 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
Bio is the New Interface Textile production historically has been a bellwether for innovations in manufacturing—from such technological improvements as the spinning jenny and the flying shuttle at the dawn of the industrial revolution to recent developments in electronic and … Continued
Tod Machover, Muriel R. Cooper Professor at the MIT Media Lab, has been named 2016 Composer of the Year by Musical America, the prestigious classical music publication. Joining the ranks of such illustrious composers as John Luther Adams, Meredith Monk, William Bolcom, Osvaldo Golijov, Arvo Pärt, George Crumb, … Continued
Combined grants provide 8 years of funding, among largest gifts received by the arts at MIT Cambridge, MA, April 22, 2015–The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) has received $1,500,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in support … Continued
“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
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.