In This Edition

Envisioning the Arts at MIT

Part 1: Exploring Technology/Science as Art

Part 2: Studying the Arts at MIT

Part 3: Making Art at MIT

Questions & Answers

Professor Alan Brody

Felice Frankel

Todd Siler, PhD '86

Jae-Chol Lee, SM '00

Min-Hank Ho '00

openDOOR home

openDOOR Archives

Tell Us What You Think

Art News Read collected arts stories from Tech Talk and other campus publications.

Percent for Art MIT's Percent-for-Art Program sets aside funds from new building construction or renovation budgets for the purchase of art. Now called the Art on Campus Policy, the program has recently commissioned works for the Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center and Simmons Hall, the new undergraduate dormitory.

Exploring Technology/Science as Art

The List Visual Arts Center (LVAC) is doing more than deconstructing architectural space with the current show, Inside Space: Experiments in Redefining Rooms. LVAC is continuing to build its national reputation as the place to find challenging, intellectually inquisitive contemporary art expressed as painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, and architecture/design.

With Jane Farver, a curator of the Whitney Biennial 2000, installed as the director last year, LVAC is poised to expand its on and off campus influence. So far, Farver has hired Bill Arning, an independent critic and curator based in New York, as curator, invigorated the Percent for Arts Program that is commissioning artworks for new campus buildings, and more.

See How Far An Idea Can Go

An idea can go pretty far at the MIT Museum. Consider Bill Parker's plasma sculptures presented as part of the interactive exhibit, Thinkapalooza that allows high tech adventurers of all ages to explore hands-on innovations. Sculptor/inventor Arthur Ganson's whimsical mechanical sculptures embody the qualities least associated with machines. Holography: The Light Fantastic presents selected holograms from the museum's collection--the world's largest--to illustrate the many artistic and scientific facets of the medium.

Learning about technology through art and vice versa is evident in the new Compton Gallery show, Approaching Chaos. This artistic exploration of classical and wave chaos by Harvard physicist E. J. Heller features striking images generated in a attempt to understand quantum physics. His medium is the computer and its vast graphical capability.

Anchored by these two major institutions, community arts activities are coordinated by Associate Provost for the Arts Alan Brody, Professor of Theater. Brody's Office for the Arts builds bridges between MIT's science and technology orientation and the arts through Artist-in-Residence Programs, arts colloquia, and the alumni volunteer Council for the Arts.

"I'm coming to learn that scientists and engineers ultimately ask the same questions that artists do: What is the world really like? How does it work? Once I've imagined something, what structures does that act of imagination generate?" says Brody. "The difference lies in the processes and materials we use to explore the answers to those questions." (Read more in an interview with Alan Brody.)

go on to Part 2: Studying the Arts at MIT

MIT Museum e-gallery Don't miss these capsules of past shows.

Council for the Arts This volunteer group of MIT graduates and friends supports projects ranging from campus sculpture to annual arts awards and a grants program that has supported over 1,000 arts projects.

Leonardo On-Line An MIT Press e-journal, is the web site of Leonardo / the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, which explores the application of contemporary science and technology to the arts.

New from MIT Press
-	Art and Technology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
-	Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology
-	Dialogues in Public Art
-	Bachelors
-	net_condition: art and global media