With the announcement of the new MIT Morningside Academy for Design, MIT is looking to create “a hub of resources for the next generation of designers, integrating areas of study such as engineering and architecture in the process,” reports Dana Gerber for The Boston Globe. “This is really going to give us a platform to connect with the world around problems that communities are facing,” explained Prof. John Ochsendorf, who will serve as the academy’s founding director.
Prof. Emily Richmond Pollock speaks with Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker about how some Western institutions have cancelled performances by Russian artists following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Some of the discussion of these issues has fallen into some old patterns of thinking that we as musicologists are alert to,” says Pollock, “and want to warn against, which includes reacting to these kinds of bans by insisting that music is apolitical, or that there’s something fundamentally and inherently apolitical about music, which is a really problematic and untrue statement, and a knee-jerk response.”
MIT has announced the creation of a new multidisciplinary center, called Morningside Academy for Design, which is intended to serve as a “focal point for design research, education, and entrepreneurship,” reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.
MIT has announced the establishment of the MIT Morningside Academy for Design, reports Susan H. Greenberg for Inside Higher Ed. The new center “aims to foster collaboration and innovation across academic disciplines – including engineering, science, management, computing, architecture, urban planning and the arts – to address such pressing global issues as climate change, public health, transportation, and civic engagement,” writes Greenberg.
Sculptor Matthew Angelo Harrison and artist Raymond Boisjoly will both have art installations on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center this upcoming spring, reports Pamela Reynolds for WBUR. Reynolds notes that Boisjoly’s “latest work continues the artist’s practice of working with text, photography and images in consideration of how language, culture and ideas can be framed and transmitted.” Harrison, “has frozen union organizing artifacts into chunks of resin,” writes Reynolds.
Assia Boundaoui, a fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, writes for The Los Angeles Times about her experience as a Muslim American filmmaker. “Despite the many ways we have been marginalized within the film industry, Muslim and Middle Eastern filmmakers will continue to tell our stories – stories where our humanity is assumed, not a subject of debate,” writes Boundaoui.
Boston Globe reporter Peter Keough spotlights artist JR’s new documentary “Paper and Glue,” which will be screened at the MIT List Visual Arts Center on Jan. 20. “JR takes on trouble spots around the globe, where he involves oppressed communities in creating the blown-up, immersive photo installations that are his oeuvre and which make a strong case that art can” change the world, writes Keough.
WBUR reporter Pamela Reynolds spotlights a new exhibit of Sharona Franklin’s work, which will be on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center this coming February. “Franklin presents a new installation combining the themes of chronic illness with bioethics, environmental harm and holistic approaches to healthcare,” writes Reynolds.
MIT startup Formlabs has announced a new pair of 3D printers featuring an exposure and printing speed increase that is up to 40% faster than previous models, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The Form 3+ is the next iteration designed to help users go from idea to part in hand as quickly and easily as possible,” says CEO Max Lobovsky MS ’11.
Gramophone contributor Laurence Vittes spotlights Prof. Tod Machover’s “Death and the Powers,” an opera about robots and humans that has recently been released as an “electrifying surround-sound thriller.” Vittes writes that “Machover’s arsenal of music stands triumphantly on its own, fusing and defusing technoflash from the composer’s MIT Media Lab with rich writing for Gil Rose’s Boston Modern Orchestra ensemble.”
The Boston Globe highlights three new exhibits on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. New installations include “Andrew Norman’s two video pieces ‘Impersonator’ (2021) and ‘Kodak’ (2019); Sreshta Rit Premnath’s sculpture show ‘Grave/Grove’; and, in this era of stops and starts as we lurch from lockdown to reopening, the serendipitously named ‘Begin Again, Again,’ by the pioneering video artist Leslie Thornton.”
Graduate student Olumakinde “Makinde” Ogunnaike and Josh Sariñana PhD ’11 join Boston Public Radio to discuss The Poetry of Science, an initiative that brought together artists and scientists of color to help translate complex scientific research through art and poetry. “Science is often a very difficult thing to penetrate,” says Sariñana. “I thought poetry would be a great way to translate the really abstract concepts into more of an emotional complexity of who the scientists actually are.”
In a new exhibit by Sreshta Rit Premnath, currently on display at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, “nine pieces perform as a sort of breviloquent visual haiku, touching on pressing social themes outside museum walls,” reports Pamela Reynolds for WBUR. “I’m very aware that the area that I'm living in always enters into my work, sometimes in more abstract ways,” says Premnath.
New York Times Style Magazine reporter Zoë Lescaze explores the work of artist Agnieszka Kurant and her new installation at MIT. “Looping black lines composed of high-tech lights were designed to simulate the flow of ink scrawl across the facades of two new buildings, as though an invisible hand were repeatedly signing the walls,” writes Lescaze. “Kurant worked with computer scientists to create two collective signatures — one for the scientific and academic community at MIT and another for Cambridge residents.”
MIT researchers have developed a new fiber, dubbed OmniFibers, that could potentially be used to help regulate breath, reports Ray White for Mashable. “When sewn into clothing, the fiber can sense how much it’s stretched. It then gives tactile feedback to the wearer via pressure, stretch or vibration.”