The MIT Visual Arts List has released details about Professor Emerita Joan Jonas’ upcoming video presentation at the Venice Biennale, writes Meredith Goldstein for The Boston Globe. Jonas “will present a new video performance, ‘They Come to Us Without a Word II,’ three times from July 20 to 22, with live musical accompaniment.”
In an article for The Boston Globe, Meredith Goldstein writes that MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology’s will receive a $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The funding “will pay for concerts, artist residencies, courses, and other programs that bring together the arts, science, and technology,” Goldstein explains.
Boston Globe reporter Jeremy Eichler reviews the final concert performed this year as part of Sounding, a new annual concert series at MIT, which featured a celebration of American experimental music. The annual series concluded on Saturday night with a “roiling and joyful 80th birthday tribute to minimalist pioneer Terry Riley,” Eichler writes.
MIT’s List Visual Arts Center is displaying a collection of Prof. Emerita Joan Jonas’ video art, writes Sebastian Smee for The Boston Globe. “The selection adds up to a fascinating overview of Jonas’s achievement, which is as rich and complex as it is disarming and improvised,” Smee writes.
Lisa Cohen writes for The New York Times Style Magazine about the work of MIT Professor Emerita Joan Jonas, who has been selected to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale. “If the idiosyncratic qualities of Jonas’s work have made it inscrutable to some, its power is undeniable,” writes Cohen.
Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney writes about “Images of Discovery: Communicating Science Through Photography,” an exhibit at the MIT Museum featuring three MIT-affiliated photographers. The show also includes “interactive stations where museumgoers can create digital versions of the sorts of images seen in the gallery.”
In an article highlighting the 35 “must-see” arts events in New England, Sebastian Smee of The Boston Globe features the Joan Jonas exhibition organized by the MIT List Visual Arts Center. “The List will present an exhibition in Cambridge that features seven of the artist’s seminal film and video works, surveying the breadth of her career,” Smee writes.
New York Times reporter Hilarie Sheets spotlights Paul Ha, director of the List Visual Arts Center, and his successful efforts to increase awareness of the arts at MIT. Associate Provost Philip Khoury says that Ha has been “getting students and faculty over to the List and building up its reputation.”
Adam Rutherford of BBC Radio 4 speaks with Prof. Nicholas Makris about his work examining the evolution of violin design during the 17th and 18th centuries. Makris explains that, “if you go over that roughly 200 years you see that the F-hole length was increasing over that time period,” an adjustment that increased the violin’s acoustic power.
The Boston Globe reports that the MIT List Visual Arts Center has received a gift of $200,000 from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation to support Joan Jonas’ presentation at the Venice Biennale. Jonas is developing a new multimedia installation for the Biennale incorporating video, drawings, objects and sounds.
Kevin Hartnett writes for The Boston Globe about “Drawing Apart,” a new exhibition on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. The exhibit “deals with the fragmented way distant yet familiar places live on in our imaginations,” explains Hartnett.
The Naked Scientists feature Prof. Nicholas Makris explaining his research on the evolution of violin design and performing on the lute. Makris explains his finding that the violin’s “F-hole length increased from the Amati time period to the Guarneri time period," making the instrument's sound more powerful.
The Economist writes about a new MIT study examining the development of violin design, which was found to have evolved by chance. The researchers also found that the shape and length of the violin’s “f-holes” give the instrument its acoustical power.
Devin Coldewey of NBC News writes about new MIT research into the evolution of violin design. The researchers found that “the characteristics of the instruments underwent changes surprisingly like evolution by natural selection,” Coldewey explains.
Artist Pawel Romanczuk, who performed at MIT last week, has been working with MIT students to make instruments from different materials. Romanczuk explains to Boston Globe reporter Kevin Hartnett that his work is about “finding a new way for making music, searching for new sources of sound.”