Alexa Vazquez of WBUR writes about a new MIT Museum exhibit that uses virtual reality to place visitors face-to-face with fighters who have experienced lifelong conflict. “The aim was to go for more kind of intimate conversations that you wouldn’t normally have access to, with people from diverse sides of these diverse conflicts,” says Prof. Fox Harrell, who worked on the VR aspect of the exhibit.
PRI The World’s Lydia Emmanouilidou spotlights a virtual reality exhibit at the MIT Museum by photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa that allows visitors to explore both sides of international conflicts. “What is the point of images of war if they don’t change people’s attitudes towards armed conflicts, violence and the suffering they produce?” says Khelifa of the inspiration for his work.
Six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald is the recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, which includes a residency and public talk by the singer-actress, reports Don Aucoin for The Boston Globe.
David Weininger of The Boston Globe writes about the longest instrumental work composed by Prof. Keeril Makan, a 47-minute movement performed by the New York-based chamber ensemble Either/Or. “Makan creates a succession of fresh and inventive colors, especially when he places two unusual instruments — glockenspiel and cimbalom — in dialogue,” writes Weininger.
Senior Lecturer Ken Urban speaks with HuffPost reporter Michael Levin about the burgeoning theater program at MIT. “There is a lot of institutional support for the arts in all of its forms at MIT and I think it’s because that process of being creative and realizing that it’s super-important for engineers,” says Urban.
Boston Globe reporter Steve Annear spotlights how MIT students have transformed the walls of a pedestrian tunnel that runs underneath Ames Street into a giant work of art. Annear notes that, “in true MIT fashion, they rolled out an app that makes some of the work come to life when it’s viewed through a smartphone screen.”
New York Times reporter Robert Berkvist memorializes the work of A.R. Gurney, a prolific playwright who taught American literature and humanities as a member of the MIT faculty for 36 years. Berkvist writes that in Gurney’s plays “the conventions of the drawing-room comedy became the framework for social analysis.”
MIT was named the top university in the world for the sixth consecutive year in the QS World University Rankings, reports Kyle Scott Clauss for Boston Magazine.
In this video, WCVB Chronicle host Anthony Everett visits Prof. Neil Gershenfeld at the Center for Bits and Atoms to learn about the global network of Fab Labs. Everett explains that Gershenfeld sees Fab Labs as places of “collaboration and networking and mentoring where ideas can literally take form. Where you don’t borrow, but make what you want.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Cate McQuaid spotlights “Gwenneth Boelens: At Odds” and “Charlotte Moth: Seeing While Moving,” two exhibits on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. McQuaid writes that “individual works in the exhibitions prompt bittersweet responses to lost utopias, uncanny associations of place and time, and heightened attunement to the senses.”
Forbes reporter Christina Wallace speaks with MIT alumna Kathleen Stetson about Trill, the app she developed to provide arts recommendations, and why she felt having an MBA would help further her career promoting the arts. Stetson notes that “At MIT, I not only found massive support and encouragement for Trill, but I also co-founded Hacking Arts."
The Atlantic spotlights MIT’s Hacking Arts event, which is aimed at igniting innovation within the creative arts, as part of their "Saturday Night in America" video series. “Something like a hackathon is releasing this pent up hunger, to stretch the imagination, to work with a lot of people, to get down and just build something,” says grad student Helen Smith, co-director of Hacking Arts.
Pimploy Phongsirivech of Boston Magazine writes about MIT’s Hacking Arts Festival, which brought together artists, entrepreneurs, engineers, designers and scientists working at the intersection of art and technology. Phongsirivech writes that the event was a “collaborative effort to not only envision but also to actualize the future.”
MIT has been named the top university in the world in the latest QS World University Rankings, reports Nick Morrison for Forbes. This is the fifth consecutive year that MIT has earned the number one spot in the QS rankings.
In his latest project, Alan Kwan, a student in MIT’s Art, Culture and Technology program, makes umbrellas float through the air like jellyfish using drones, writes Thom Leavy for Popular Science. “People have this perception of drones as weapons and I’m trying to push this work in the direction of the poetic,” says Kwan.