9/4/24 - note change of scheduled days from TR to MW

4.356 U / 4.357 G

Explores ideas and contexts behind moving images through a multifaceted look at cinema's transmutations, emergence on local and national levels, and global migrations. Examines the transformation caused by online video, television, spatial installations, performances, dance, and many formats and portable devices, as well as the theory and context of film's categorization, dissemination, and analysis. Presentations, screenings, field trips, readings, visiting artists, and experimental transdisciplinary projects broaden the perception of present cinema. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

4.341 U / 4.342 G

Introduces history and contemporary practices in artistic photography through projects, lectures, artist visits, group discussions, readings, and field trips. Fosters visual literacy and aesthetic appreciation of photography/digital imaging, as well as critical awareness of how images in our culture are produced and constructed. Provides instruction in the fundamentals of different camera formats, film exposure and development, lighting, black and white darkroom printing, and digital imaging. Assignments allow for incorporation of a range of traditional and experimental techniques, development of technical skills, and personal exploration. Throughout the term, present and discuss projects in a critical forum. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus Willis | Membreno-Canales

This course focuses on the production of artistic experiments catalyzed by research in art, with art and through art. Conceptually it deals with new modes of artistic production that shifts the discussion on artistic research towards critical engagement with the new climatic regime. Titled Climate Visions, the workshop positions artistic intelligence as a way to contribute with aesthetics and criticality to climate science, suggesting new visioning, that is in dialectics with scientific one. Oscillating between pragmatics and fiction this course will probe new perspectivism that enables future narratives of cohabitation with more-than-humans. The workshop will engage the MIT laboratories as a site where utopias for the future forms of environmental citizenship and new climate commons will be prototyped. In conversation with scientists the participants will develop hybrid projects of art and science suggesting an artistic instrumentarium for ecological repair, envisioning, speculation and probing of alternative perspectives, that catalyze a different climate for the future.

A multitude of concepts will be engaged with during this workshop: hybrid habitats and milieu, critical zones and new climatic regime, shadow biosphere and feminist fabulation, sympoiesis and composibility, cohabitation and commensality. Readings related to this subject include those by Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, Gilbert Simondon, Catherine Malabou, James Lovelock, Michel Serres, Georges Canguilhem, Scott F Gilbert, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Andrew Pickering, Isabelle Stengers, Vinciane Despret, Eduardo Viveiro de Castro, Elizabeth Povinelli, Jakob Johann von Uexküll, TJ Demos, and others.

Visits to the class and the field trips may include Diane Borsato, Marjetica Potrč, Fernando García-Dory, Pelin Tan, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, D-Lab, MIT Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

The class is structured with the help of the three conceptual lenses through which participants will look into the artistic project: The Manifesto, The Score and The Instrument. As such these conceptual lenses would (A) connect with pressing concerns on climate crisis — making bridge between community / injustice / climate change, and (B) help to un-earth the underlying (autochthonous) landscape in the city, affected by an extractivist economy and colonization.

In addition to lectures, discussions, crits and individual studio meetings there will be visits to the labs organized facilitated by guest interlocutors, and designed to catalyze explorations and probe what “landing on Earth” (Latour) means in practical terms.

The class will meet as a group on Mondays 9:30 am – 12:30 am for main input: lectures, visits from guest artists, designers and scholars, and discussions of readings, with a Lab work scheduled on Wednesdays 9:30 am – 12:30 am, when individual meetings and/or studio visits and desk crits with the instructor (and guest artists) would be organized. Wednesdays time slot would also be reserved for workshopping of students' ideas, and/or library/archival research.

Students will engage in (3) phases and modalities of work: MANIFESTO, SCORE, and INSTRUMENT.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

Seminar connecting the arts and sciences by exploring methodological similarities and differences across the arts, architecture, engineering, and social sciences. Through targeted reading and exercises, each student develops a collaborative project that engages directly with another discipline. Projects are iterated over the course of the term. Readings, visitors, and lectures expose students to a wide range of practitioners across different fields. Students interrogate the underlying methodologies that unite and separate their disciplines. Presents best-practice models for cultivating collaboration through the use of case studies. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

Note 5/17/24: schedule change from TR 2-5 to TR 9:30-12:30

4.314 U / 4.315 G

The Advanced Workshop in Artistic Practice and Transdisciplinary Research course series examines artistic practice as a form of critical inquiry and knowledge production. It offers opportunities to develop art as a means for addressing the social, cultural, and ecological underpinnings and consequences of technology, building bridges between industry and culture, and challenging the boundaries between public and private and human and non-human. It provides instruction in evaluating models of experimentation, individual research, and collaboration with other disciplines in the arts, culture, science, and technology.

Bioart is an interdisciplinary field that explores the intersection of art and biology, bridging the gap between science, technology, and artistic expression. This undergraduate and graduate-level course introduces students to the theoretical foundations, latest topics, and practical bio-art techniques, fostering creativity, critical thinking, and ethical considerations in creating bio-inspired artworks. Through theoretical discussions, hands-on art studio work, and guest lectures from experts in the field, students will gain a deep understanding of the historical context, ethical implications, and cutting-edge applications of bioart. The hands-on component includes developing artworks that utilize tissue printing, organs-on-chip microfluidic systems, bio robotics, DIY incubators, and liquid handling lab automation systems.

 Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

5/16/24 - note schedule change from lecture W 2-5 to lecture T 2-5 and an added recitation, W 9:30-12:30.

Introduces artistic practice and critical visual thinking through three studio-based projects using different scales and media, for instance, "Body Extension," "Shaping Time," "Public Making," and/or "Networked Cultures." Each project concludes with a final presentation and critique. Students explore sculptural, architectural, performative artistic methods; video and sound art; site interventions and strategies for artistic engagement in the public realm. Lectures, screenings, guest presentations, field trips, readings, and debates supplement studio practice. Also introduces students to the historic, cultural, and environmental forces affecting both the development of an artistic vision and the reception of a work of art.

MIT Certificate protected syllabus

Note: Computation students now register for 4.588 instead of 4.288

Students select thesis topic, define method of approach, and prepare thesis proposal for SMArchS degree. Faculty supervision on an individual or group basis. Intended for SMArchS program students prior to registration for 4.THG.

Introduces critical theories and contemporary practices in the field of urbanism that challenge its paradigms and advance its future. Includes theoretical linkages between ideas about the cultures of urbanization, social and political processes of development, environmental tradeoffs of city making, and the potential of design disciplines to intervene to change the future of built forms. Events and lecture series co-organized by faculty and doctoral students further engage and inform research.

“[I]t has seemed to me that two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these: firstly, what do I know when I’m in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself?” Robert Macfarlane’s twinned questions frame our exploration of the urban form. By walking the city, studying historical and contemporary approaches to life on the streets, and investigation our relationship to our environs through writing and other artistic responses, participants will explore how feet give form to the city.