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CAST Faculty Projects Articles

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Tony Torn stars in Dan Safer's Spider Rabbit, MIT W97 Theater Building. Photo: HErickson/MIT.

Down the Spider Rabbit Hole

MIT’s Dan Safer directs Tony Torn in a surreal anti-war play bound for New York “Hiii-iii! I’m Spider Rabbit.” The man wearing white coveralls, floppy paper ears, and chalky face paint beams out at the crowd. With the jollity of … Continued

Golden City Album Cover. Courtesy of Miguel Zenón.

Golden City

An extended musical composition for Large Ensemble, inspired by California’s rich and complex history.
Two people performing at a stage in the center of a. crowed room colorfully lighted by projections on each wall.
Ancestral Memory, credit Doug Segars

Ancestral Storytelling: Movement and Memory

This article was originally published by the MIT Media Lab. Ancestral Storytelling: Movement + Memory embodies motion capture techniques for an interactive and immersive movement and sonic healing performance, living video archive, and workshop utilizing traditional ancestral storytelling and folkloric … Continued

Illustrating environmental crises in India
The Eternal Swamp, credit Sarnath Banerjee

Illustrating India’s Complex Environmental Crises

A CAST Visiting Artist project traces the history of cause and effect that have led India to its current crossroads.   Abhijit Banerjee, Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics, and CAST Visiting Artist Sarnath Banerjee (no relation) share a similar … Continued

Kristin Young (Sophia) in VALIS. Credit: Maria Baranova.

Reimagining the Opera of the Future 

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

Testbeds at MoMA. Credit Michael Vahrenwald / Esto.

Transforming a Wasted Resource for Public Good

Jaffer Kolb and his collaborators are working to turn architectural waste into shared community infrastructure When Jaffer Kolb, a lecturer in the Department of Architecture at MIT, refers to himself and his collaborators as “garbage people,” he’s talking about the … Continued

Rendering of Floatlab by höweler + yoon.
Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Floatlab, 2022. Courtesy of höweler + yoon.

FloatLab

A platform for engagement with the environment
Cast members in the workshop of Ken Urban's The Immortals.
Ken Urban, The Immortals Workshop, 2019. Credit: Melissa Blackall.

The Immortals

Tapping theater’s ability to transform
Installation view of humans in space from the Hammer and the Feather exhibit.
The Hammer and the Feather is an immersive audio and visual installation, developed at MIT by technical instructor Christian Frederickson and visual artist and filmmaker Greg King. Bridging humanistic and scientific inquiry, the piece uses gravity as a poetic and conceptual departure point for musical, visual, and sonic material. Photo by Danny Goldfield https://bit.ly/3a8YjxW Please ask before use

The Hammer and the Feather

Exploring the sonic poetry of gravity
A dopamine still from Jenna Sutela and Markus Buehler's wet-on-wet image.
Jenna Sutela and Markus Buehler, film still from Wet-on-Wet, 2021.

Wet-on-Wet

A new art-science collaboration uses molecular structures as creative medium
Proton Animation. Courtesy of James LaPlante, Sputnik Animation. © MIT and Jefferson Lab, 2021, All Rights Reserved.

Visualizing the Proton

Illustrating the subatomic world
MIT Museum Studio, light demonstration by Seth Riskin in the Vision and Art in Neuroscience Class, MIT Museum Studio, 2018.
Pawan Sinha, Seth Riskin and Sarah Schwettmann. Vision in Art and Neuroscience Course. MIT Museum Studio, 2018. Credit: Seth Riskin.

Vision in Art and Neuroscience

Vision in Art and Neuroscience
Hans Tursack, Understorey, University Design Research Fellowship Pavilion, Exhibit Columbus, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.

Understorey: University Design Research Fellowship Pavilion for Exhibit Columbus

Toward a twenty-first century ecological design
Lerna Ekmekçioğlu's Twelve Faces of Armenian Feminism, 1860s to 1960s.
Lerna Ekmekçioğlu's Twelve Faces of Armenian Feminism, 1860s to 1960s.

Twelve Faces of Armenian Feminism

A project of recovery and reclamation focused on 12 unsung change-makers
Composited photo of multiple hands close to the camera reaching up toward surreal centipede-like insects and green ambiguous amoeba-like graphics floating in the air over a waterway in Venice with large buildings to either side.
Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas. The Swamp Observatory AR App. Powered by Hoverlay (2022). Photo by Jonas Žukauskas.

The Swamp School and The Swamp Observatory

A project of imagination and non-material architecture
Jay Scheib, The Silence, 2019. Credit: Jay Scheib.

The Silence

Dream worlds collide with real worlds in an endless spiral down
Black and white rendering of exhibition, The Planet After Geoengineering.
Rania Ghosn/DESIGN EARTH, The Planet After Geoengineering, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

The Planet After Geoengineering

Speculative futures for planet Earth
A theme of five actors from Jay Scheib's In the Jungle of Cities.
Jay Scheib, In the Jungle of Cities, 2019. Credit Juliet Dombrowski.

In the Jungle of Cities

A works/process presentation inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s genre-smashing play
Maya Beiser and Wendy Whelan perform The Day at Jacobs Pillow. Credit: Hayim Heron. Courtesy of Jacobs Pillow.
Maya Beiser and Wendy Whelan perform The Day at Jacobs Pillow. Credit: Hayim Heron. Courtesy of Jacobs Pillow.

The Day

Artists collaborate on a sensory exploration of life and the eternal
The Lorelei Ensemble performs Elena Ruehr's Songs from Extrasolar Spaces. Credit: Danny Goldfield.
The Lorelei Ensemble performs Elena Ruehr's Songs from Extrasolar Spaces. Credit: Danny Goldfield.

Songs from Extrasolar Spaces

Translating the cosmos into music
Close up view of black and white porous stone.
Tectonics of Wisdom. Courtesy of Cristina Parreño Alonso.

Tectonics of Wisdom

Expanding architecture’s temporal sensibilities through the material ancient wisdom of the library
Ian Condry at the MIT Computing Exposition, 2019. Credit HErickson/MIT.

Sound, Learning & Democracy

New musical and sonic works created specifically for a 360-degree environment
Black and white illustration of two people having a fist fight while others watch.
Water Wars: Episode 2, The Eternal Swamp. Illustration by Sarnath Banerjee

Water Wars

Demystifying social science through creative storytelling
Amanda Crider and Lacey Dorn preforming in Persona workshop at MIT. Credit: L. Barry Hetherington.

Persona

Visceral operatic adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s classic film
Prathima Muniyappa (with camera) and other class members examine a student demo. Credit: Graham Jones.
Prathima Muniyappa (with camera) and other class members examine a student demo. Credit: Graham Jones.

Paranormal Machines

Detecting and measuring the paranormal
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