June 17 - September 16, 2026
Registration: FALL Term

To register: Complete the independent study form for subject number 4.394 and email advisor-signed form to Tonya Miller.

This special summer workshop is organized to invite students collectively create an artwork celebrating SA+P’s move. The Living Bucentaur is a processional artwork marking the school's move into the Metropolitan Warehouse. On September 8, somewhere between 100 and 250 students, staff, and faculty will walk the silhouette of MIT's 1916 ceremonial barge from Building 7 all the way to the MET, led by Tim the Beaver, the MIT drummers, and student dancers. You will be one of the designers and makers who dream it up. Together we will invent performative costumes, build gloriously crazy hats, and rig up body instruments, then choreograph the movement, sound, and activities that bring the whole parade to life. We are reframing a Venetian state barge as an ark for coastal species and turning a moving day into an unforgettable public spectacle that the entire school marches through together.

Open to students across MIT and especially geared toward students from all SA+P units (Architecture, ACT, DUSP, AKPIA, and beyond), the workshop runs the full arc of making, from first sketch to final procession to the documentation that outlives it. You will learn how to translate a concept into a wearable design, develop and prototype costumes and headpieces, build and play simple body instruments, choreograph collective movement and sound, fabricate at scale with materials and digital tools , and produce, perform, and document a live public event from start to finish. Apart form gaining fabrication skills and performance-making experience, you will shape a unique and memorable piece of a citywide artwork. Working in an independent study format from mid-June through August, you will add your own creative contribution to the collective ensemble while learning from everyone around you. The fall portion extends into documentation and reflection, where the cohort gets to relive and present what it pulled off.

Hands-on work in the ACT and Luna Lab fabrication spaces. Registration is for the fall term with this 4.394 independent study number. Come help architecture walk under its own power.

This interdisciplinary course fosters collaboration across art, science, and engineering, exploring the intersections of creative practice and research in science and technology. In partnership with MIT.nano and associated laboratories, students are introduced to advanced research environments and work alongside graduate mentors to develop projects that merge artistic vision with scientific methods and tools.

Emphasizing artistic practice as a form of critical inquiry, the course supports experimental research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the development of both individual and collective projects. Students engage with the social, cultural, and ecological dimensions of technology, challenging traditional disciplinary boundaries to create new frameworks for transdisciplinary exploration and innovation.

Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. 

Focused on the practices of varied practitioners — film directors, artists, musicians, composers, architects, designers — whose writings relay a process of thinking and feeling integral to their forms of material production. Testing various ways aesthetic forms and their shifts — historic and contemporary — have relations to still emerging contemporary subjectivities (felt emotion in a human body), the class studies productions created by participants and case studies of varied producers, and generates new work individually and/or collaboratively via diverse media explorations. Includes reading, writing, drawing, and publishing, as well as photographic, cinematic, spatial, and audio operations and productions. Activities include screenings, listening assignments, and guest visits, in addition to readings, discussions, and presentations.

4.341 U / 4.342 G

Section 1 instructor (MW 2-5): H. Membrono-Canales
Section 2 instructor (TR 9:30-12:30) M. Lelic

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. 

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.

This research-intensive class will engage students and postdoctoral researchers in real-world curatorial practice for the 2027 Islamic Arts Biennale. They will work as a collaborative research collective with an international network of over 35 museums and collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Benaki Museum, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, the al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait, the David Collection in Copenhagen, and a range of cultural institutions across Mali, Nigeria, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, and Saudi Arabia. Students will explore innovative ways to present Islamic art from different regions and time periods through three main curatorial goals: telling nuanced stories about Islamic art through objects and their histories, expanding geographies beyond center-periphery models toward polycentric narratives, and creating new display formats using immersive, experiential, and digital methods that go beyond traditional museum practices.

A central collaborative project is creating the MAWSŪʿA: THE INFINITE DICTIONARY to establish a growing vocabulary for Islamic art that honors diverse cultural perspectives and epistemologies. Research areas within this project may include material intelligence in textile, woodcraft, glass, ceramics, and metalworking technologies; knowledge circulation through pilgrimage and trade networks; experimental approaches to manuscripts and devotional objects; multisensory installation strategies; AI applications in museum contexts; integration of contemporary artistic practice with historical collections; and forms of public engagement that bridge historical scholarship with experiential innovation. These explorations will directly inform the curatorial research for the Biennale. Participants' contributions to the MAWSŪʿA project will be featured in the exhibition and on an ongoing global knowledge-building platform.

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. 

UG: 4.354; G: 4.355

Examines the technical and conceptual variables and strategies inherent in contemporary video art practice. Analyzes structural concepts of time, space, perspective, and sound within the art form. Building upon the historical legacy of the moving the image, students render self-exploration, performance, social critique, and manipulation of raw experience into an aesthetic form. Emphasizes practical knowledge of lighting, video capturing and editing, and montage. Presentation and critique of student work, technical workshops, screenings, and reading discussions assist students with final project.

Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

Explores the theory and criticism of intersections between art, culture, and technology in relation to contemporary artistic practice, critical design, and media. Students consider methods of investigation, documentation, and display and explore modes of communication. Students develop projects in which they organize research goals, engage in production, cultivate a context for practice, and explore how to communicate, display, and document work, with artistic practice as a method of critical inquiry/knowledge dissemination. Regular presentation and peer-critiques, reviews with ACT faculty and fellows, and external guest reviewers provide feedback as projects develop. Simultaneously, students prepare for thesis through both foundational texts in contemporary theory and criticism and artist writings, alongside presentations and discussions on methodological perspectives required of interdisciplinary approaches.