Stories about students at MIT and the projects they undertake, whether pushing the limits of 3D video technology, painting a mural with prison inmates and augmenting it with digital animations, or performing alongside visiting artists.
The Schnitzer Prize was established in 1996 through an endowment from Harold and Arlene Schnitzer of Portland, Oregon. Harold Schnitzer, a real estate investor, graduated from MIT in 1944 with a degree in metallurgy. The prizes—a first prize of $5000, … Continued
There is common misconception that all MIT students prioritize psets over practicing piano, performing Shakespeare, drawing, painting, dancing or designing lighting cues. The 2017 recipients of the Wiesner Student Art Awards—Jacob Gunter, Nathan Gutierrez, Rachel Osmundsen and Hallie Voulgaris—counter this … 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
On May 1, MIT’s yearlong suite of opportunities for student arts entrepreneurs culminated in the fifth annual Creative Arts Competition, a $15,000 prize for the most promising arts-focused startup at the Institute. Eight teams, comprised of undergraduate and graduate students … 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
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
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
“We’re not just talking about the future of the arts—we’re creating it,” says Helen Smith, MIT Sloan MBA Class of 2017 and co-chair of Hacking Arts 2016. Igniting cross-disciplinary innovation, Hacking Arts brings together artists, engineers and entrepreneurs to take … Continued
CAST Visiting Artist Jacob Collier is well known for his YouTube videos, which the 22-year-old musical phenom performs and produces in his bedroom in North London. Collier’s work has garnered praise from such jazz icons as Herbie Hancock and Quincy … Continued
It’s a hard slog in the studio, battling with materials, suppressing self-doubts, cultivating a vision, destroying false starts and ultimately creating something new. To emerging artists, seeing work outside the confines of their studios and in a gallery setting is … Continued
Election day is finally here. MIT residents can vote at a polling station in the Lobby of Kresge Auditorium, and afterward reflect on political thuggery in a production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, directed by Jay … Continued
A jetty, concrete tunnels, salt lakes, small towns, and long drives. Day one on the Landscape Experience Field Trip proved as expansive and jam-packed as the itinerary proposed. By Jessica Varner Laying out a plan for a trip collapses time … 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
How underwater photography serves conservation efforts Coping with climate change is such a profoundly new part of the human experience that a new word, solastagia, has been coined to describe the emotional distress caused by violations against the planet. Underwater … Continued
After cruel April’s deluge of exams and critiques, May brings showers of praise. Now is the jubilant time in the academic calendar when the Council for the Arts at MIT recognizes the achievements of the Institute’s student artists with the … Continued
When he was six years old, Daniel Parker saw his sister perform in a choir concert. Afterward, he sat down at the piano and began to sound out the what her ensemble had sung. “When my mom saw that, she … Continued
Amphibian advances the field of VR while exploring the relationship between diving and disability “My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly,” Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote in his agonizingly beautiful account of living with severe … Continued
The lyrics to many alma maters celebrate their colleges’ resplendent places—the “hallowed halls” and “time-honored walls,” the surrounding “golden orchards” or “sunlit slopes.” There is no mention of that well-lit basement lab, or secluded corner for thinking and napping, or … Continued
The words “school” and “leisure” are etymologically linked, yet it is all too easy to forget this association of learning with enjoyment, given all the beastly competition in academe and the unremitting pressure to keep up your GPA. The Independent … 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
Bettering student life one pot at a time For half a century, the MIT Arts Studios (previously the Student Art Association or SAA) has been offering non-curricular studio art courses to the MIT community, and its popularity has increased with … Continued
The Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts is awarded annually to undergraduate and graduate students at MIT for excellence in a body of artistic work. The Schnitzer Prize was established in 1996 through an endowment from Harold … Continued
ACT Professor Azra Akšamija framed her Spring 2015 section of Foundations in Art, Design, and Spatial Practices (4.302), around the idea of Wunderkammer, or cabinets of curiosities. These wonder-rooms gained popularity in Europe in the sixteenth century and typically comprised encyclopedic … 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
Forget the balsa wood and foam core of yesterday’s design classes. Students in Skylar Tibbits’s innovative studio course are using everything from gummy bears to glass to rubber to foam, to create three-dimensional representations of the generative drawings they produced … Continued