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.”
S. I. Rosenbaum of Boston Magazine speaks with the new dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, Hashim Sarkis, about his desire to create a new vocabulary to describe existing habitats. “It is time to come up with a richer lexicon,” says Sarkis.
Russell Platt writes for The New Yorker about Professor Keeril Makan’s music. “The work’s brave exploration of expressive territory makes it memorable. It’s lulling, thrilling, and, at times, downright eerie,” writes Platt of Makan’s piece “Resonance Alloy.”
David Weininger reports for The Boston Globe on the Radius Ensemble’s performance of “Nothing is More Important,” a piece composed by MIT Professor Keeril Makan. “Makan's piece begins with an obsessive focus on a single note, from which it never completely escapes,” writes Weininger.
Writing for The New York Times, Michael Cooper reports on Prof. Tod Machover’s new work about Detroit, “Symphony in D.” “I look forward to working with Detroiters from all backgrounds to create a collective musical portrait of this exciting moment in the city’s history, when everything is being rethought and anything is possible,” says Machover.
Cate McQuaid writes for The Boston Globe about “Reanimation,” a piece of performance art created by Professor Emeritus Joan Jonas. “This densely layered piece deploys drawing, video projection, and passages read aloud from the novel ‘Under the Glacier,’ by Halldór Laxness, the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author,” writes McQuaid.