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.
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.
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.
