Arts

Xin Liu SM ’17, art curator for the Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative, speaks with Los Angeles Times reporter Deborah Vankin about her work “Living Distance,” which is on display as part of the “Synthetic Wilderness” installation at Culver City’s Honor Fraser Gallery. “‘Living Distance’ is both a personal fantasy and a serious space mission,” says Liu. “A wisdom tooth is sent to outer space and back down to Earth again. Carried by the crystalline robotic sculpture, the tooth becomes a newborn entity in outer space.”

The MIT List Visual Arts Center has reopened with three new exhibitions, reports Riana Buchman for The Boston Globe. The new installation includes “Andrew Norman Wilson’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.”

Erin Genia ‘19 a multidisciplinary artist, has been honored as one of The ARTery 25, which highlights artists of color in the Greater Boston area who stand out for the work they are making, reports WBUR. “Genia, a tribal member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of South Dakota, sees her artistic mission as one of many efforts to make up for the centuries of assimilation and cultural repression.”

Graduate student Nicole L’Huillier speaks with WBUR’s Jenn Stanley about her multimedia artwork, which “oscillates at the intersection of science, technology and art” and “often explores sound as a means for understanding and navigating different spaces.” L’Huillier says of the inspiration for her artwork: “It's time to rearticulate many things and my work is a lot about that. It’s about encountering other paradigms, it's about being able to be flexible, to vibrate, to oscillate just as sound.”

Boston Globe correspondent Dana Gerber spotlights how eight of the photographs alumna Linda Benedict-Jones captured of Cambridge Rindge and Latin high school students will be on display at the Harvard Art Museums this fall. “I thought of Cambridge Rindge and Latin as a kind of microcosm of society,” said Benedict-Jones. “I figured, there are probably kids in this school who are the sons and daughters of Harvard professors, and there are probably kids in this school who are recent immigrants.”

Prof. Nida Sinnokrot speaks with Artform editor-in-chief David Velasco about his piece KA (Oslo), which is currently on display at the Palestinian Museum. “Hacking technologies and infrastructures of control that give rise to the social, political, environmental instabilities has always been a driving force in my practice,” says Sinnokrot.

Provost Marty Schmidt speaks with TopUniversities.com reporter Chloe Lane about how MIT has maintained its position as the top university in the world on the QS World University Rankings for 10 consecutive years. “I am honored to have been a part of the MIT community for almost 40 years,” says Schmidt. “It’s a truly interdisciplinary, collaborative, thought-provoking place that encourages experimentation and pushes you to expand your mind. I think it’s a wonderful place to call home.”

Students in Prof. Azra Akšamija’s class created Covid-19 masks that reflected their experiences and shared powerful messages with the world, reports 7 News. “Students learn how to articulate problems they see in the world and issues that we are facing,” says Akšamija. “And to communicate that and translate that through their designs.”

As the curator of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, Hashim Sarkis, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, addressed how we can live together and how architecture is responding to longstanding global issues that contributed to Covid-19’s global spread, from climate change and migration to political polarization and inequality, reports Elisabetta Povoledo for The New York Times. “The pandemic will hopefully go away,” said Sarkis. “But unless we address these causes, we will not be able to move forward.”

Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, speaks with DesignBoom about the 2021 Venice Architecture Bienale, which was postponed for a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “The postponement led to open discussions among the participants about tactical things, thematic things, but also how do we respond collectively to a crisis like this?,” says Sarkis. “But then it also led to starting to share ideas about how it is more effective to ship from this port versus that, and using local support rather than shipping everything.”

AP reporter Colleen Barry explores how this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale examines how architecture can address global issues. “More than ever before, architecture is present in our lives, and in our thinking,” says Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and curator of this year’s biennale.

Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, discusses how this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale examines our relationship with the planet and one another, reports Edwin Heathcote for the Financial Times. “The theme and the subjects we are exploring are exactly the same as those that led to the pandemic,” Sarkis says. “The questions around globalization, the erosion of the rural and urban edge, our relationship with other species, climate change, the polarisation of politics, exaggerated economic difference, mass migrations . . . ”

New York Times reporter Sam Lubell spotlights how Hashim Sarkis, dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, addressed the theme of how we live together through this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. “We now have a different set of eyes for how we see the world because of the pandemic,” says Sarkis. “But the issues are still the same. The pandemic helped bring them into focus and accelerate the kinds of responses we had been reluctant to make.”

Hashim Sarkis, dean of SA+P and curator of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, speaks with Cajsa Carlson of Dezeen about how the field of architecture is transforming due to climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic, and efforts to increase diversity and representation. "Talent and imagination are not restricted to advanced development economically,” says Sarkis. “I hope this message comes across in this biennale.”

Fast Company reporter Mark Wilson writes that MIT researchers have developed a new light-sensitive paint, dubbed ChromoUpdate, that makes it easy for people to change the color and pattern on a variety of objects. Wilson notes there are a number of applications for ChromoUpdate, from testing out different colors on a product to “quickly projecting what is essentially data onto everyday objects could make smart homes even smarter, without the use of more screens in your house.”