MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte predicted in 1995 that “being digital” would have us entering a realm increasingly unconstrained by the materiality of the world. Two decades later, our everyday lives are indeed ever more suffused by computation and calculation. But unwieldy … Continued
When I was an art student in New York in 1999, David Bowie visited our school and offered to host images of our work on BowieNet, an ISP he had launched the previous year. Glimpsing Bowie was enough to blow … Continued
MIT Theater Arts professor Jay Schieb directs Bat Out of Hell, a new multimedia musical, which premiered at the Manchester Opera House in March 2017 and ran in Manchester through April 8, 2017. It moved on to the London Coliseum … Continued
The program for this year’s MIT Symphony Orchestra concert can be traced back to the day that John Harbison first encountered the music of Joseph Haydn. “I was a string player as a kid. I played violin, but I wanted … Continued
Adam Strandberg graduated from MIT in 2014 with a degree in physics. While a student, he was in 20 theatrical productions, from David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow to Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He received the Wiesner Student … Continued
A statement from the symposium conveners: “BEING MATERIAL—and being digital, for that matter—demands that we be with science and engineering, both in the sense of standing with the scientific method and its results as well as in the sense … Continued
“It’s a tender portrait of a scary thing,” says Anna Kohler, describing her latest theatrical project, Mytho? Lure of Wildness. Kohler’s play explores the fearsome reality of getting old, in particular how aging transforms beauty and affects the senses: “It’s … Continued
As the MIT 2016 celebrations commence this month, commemorating a century of MIT’s Cambridge campus, we are exploring some of the obscure, overlooked or forgotten pockets of artistic activity at MIT from 1916-2016, beginning with this installment on the Department … Continued
Michelangelo had the Medicis, Picasso had Gertrude Stein, and Pollock had Peggy Guggenheim. It is difficult to imagine art history without the support of its most celebrated patrons. For the artistic community at MIT, the vision and financial support of … 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
Professor Emerita Joan Jonas taught at MIT from 1998–2014, and her pioneering performance, video, and installation works from 1960 onward have secured her a place in art history’s firmament. Influence, however, is a more personal and earthly matter; it occurs … Continued
Anna Kohler (Senior Lecturer, MTA) spent a good portion of the Spring semester merrily knocking idols off pedestals. With comical derision, she toppled eminent poets Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and took a couple of her own heroes, Bresson and Matisse, … Continued
“An enemy ended my life, took away my bodily strength; then he dipped me in water and drew me out again, and put me in the sun where I soon shed all my hair. The knife’s sharp edge bit into … Continued
Professor Emerita Joan Jonas taught at MIT from 1998–2014, and her pioneering performance, video, and installation works from 1960 onward have secured her a place in art history’s firmament. Influence, however, is a more personal and earthly matter; it occurs … Continued
Hearing Vivaldi’s Spring piped over the stereo at an upscale department store in Chestnut Hill Mall, MIT composer Elena Ruehr had an epiphany. It was winter 1995, and she was working on a piece for strings commissioned by Metamorphosen for their … Continued
Professor Emerita Joan Jonas taught at MIT from 1998–2014, and her pioneering performance, video, and installation works from 1960 onward have secured her a place in art history’s firmament. Influence, however, is a more personal and earthly matter; it occurs … Continued
Lontano Ensemble: Rowland Sutherland, flute; Peter Furniss, clarinet; Caroline Balding, violin; Clare O’Connell, cello; Mary Dullea, piano; Odaline de la Martinez, conductor. The famed London-based Lontano Ensemble returns to MIT on March 15 to perform works by MIT composers in … Continued
At this year’s Armory Show in New York (March 5-8), Art Jameel and Edge of Arabia will present the latest iteration of CULTURUNNERS, as part of the fair’s regional focus on MENAM (Middle East, North Africa, and Mediterranean). The Armory … Continued
Samuel Johnson’s shortsighted critique of Tristram Shandy, an 18th century novel unmatched in its day for its experimental use of typographic layout and print technology, was that “nothing odd will do long.” Nick Montfort’s new book of poems #! (pronounced … Continued
Exhibit by MIT professor Azra Akšamija explores how art and architecture can act as vehicles for community making in contexts of conflict and crisis.
We recently caught up with MIT Lecturer and TED Fellow Skylar Tibbits before he headed out to Ars Electronica as a recipient of the [The Next Idea]: Voestalpine Art and Technology Grant for his collaborative project Hyperform.
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.
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.