Arts installations and public programs
The MIT Museum and MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) announce their new partnership to present sci/art/tech installations and programs. The collaboration begins in September 2023 with the project Arachnodrone, a multimedia installation based on a spider web, on view at the MIT Museum through spring, which will include related public event programming. Other projects to be presented as part of the CAST x MIT Museum collaboration include a series of MIT open classes about video, and music technology, with artists and scholars such as Albert Figurt, Nick Montfort, and Ian Hattwick, and public presentations by Lynda Barry, Chloe Bensahel, and Joshua Bennett. This co-produced, ongoing series of installations and programs will take place at the MIT Museum, located on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“As CAST recently celebrated its tenth anniversary and the MIT Museum opened a new building at the heart of Kendall Square Cambridge last year, it is an especially fitting time for this collaboration to begin,” said Vice Provost for the Arts Philip S. Khoury. “The work fostered by the Center for Art, Science & Technology which supports more than a dozen projects each year at the intersection of art, science, and technology, and the new museum that aims to “turn MIT inside out,” have missions that complement each other perfectly, and show the best of what is being explored and created in these areas of research at MIT.”
2023 fall/winter CAST x MIT Museum installations and public programs
A spider’s web is both the inspiration and the musical instrument in Arachnodrone, on view on the second floor of the MIT Museum, now through spring 2024. The multimedia installation was created through a multidisciplinary team brought together by CAST, which includes Isabelle Su, PhD ’21; Christine Southworth, ’02; Ian Hattwick, and Evan Ziporyn, Faculty Director of CAST, inspired by collaborations with Tomás Saraceno, CAST Visiting Artist; and Markus Buehler, Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
September 26, 2023, 6pm: Arachnodrone performance and panel discussion “Sonification: Hearing Black Holes, Spiders, and Mycelium” / November 9, 2023, 6–9pm: Meet the Arachnodrone artists and scientists at the MIT Museum After Dark / Dates to be announced: Open classes about Arachnodrone with MIT Lecturer in Music Technology Ian Hattwick.
Public presentations
Joshua Bennett: September 29, 2023, 6–7:30pm
MIT Professor of Literature, poet, and author. Register to attend.
Lynda Barry: November 3, 2023
Painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher. Ticket registration coming soon.
Chloe Bensahel: Date to be announced
CAST visiting artist.
21W.752 Making Documentary—Audio, Video, and More: Date to be announced
Open class with CAST visiting artist Albert Figurt (aka Alberto Angelini)—a video-artisan and new media scholar—and Nick Montfort, MIT Professor of Digital Media.
A major cross-school initiative, the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) creates new opportunities for art, science and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures and publications. Evan Ziporyn, Faculty Director; Leila W. Kinney, Executive Director.
In October 2022, a reinvented MIT Museum opened in a new location in the heart of the Kendall Square Gateway of MIT’s campus at 314 Main Street in Cambridge, MA. The museum aims to make innovation and research available to all by presenting the best of STEAM, and to “turn MIT inside-out,” inviting visitors to take part in on-going research while demonstrating how science and innovation will shape the future of society. Open daily 10am–5pm.