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repurposed art: sun catcher
Image by jessica wilson {jek in the box}
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MIT+150: FAST (Festival of Art + Science + Technology): FAST LIGHT — String Tunnel
Image by Chris Devers
Quoting from the official pamphlet:
FAST LIGHT • May 7 + 8, 2011, 7 pm – 10 pm
Contemporary pioneers in art, science, and technology have come together at MIT to create one of the most exhilarating and inventive spectacles metro Boston has ever seen. On May 7 and 8, 2011, visitors can interact with 20+ art and architectural installations illuminating the campus and the Charles River along Memorial Drive at MIT.
Installations scattered around campus (we didn’t quite see all of them), again pasting from the official flyer:
• aFloat
MIT Chapel • Saturday, May 7th ONLY
Inspired by water in the Saarinen Chapel’s moat, a touch releases flickers of light before serenity returns as a calm ripple.
By Otto Ng, Ben Regnier, Dena Molnar, and Arseni Zaitsev.
• Inflatables
Lobby 7, Infinite Corridor
A dodecahedron sculpture made of silver nylon resonates with gusts of air, heat from light bulbs, and the motions of passersby.
By Kyle Barker, Juan Jofre, Nick Polansky, Jorge Amaya.
• (now(now(now)))
Building 7, 4th Floor
This installation nests layers of the past into an image of the present, recursively intertwining slices of time.
By Eric Rosenbaum and Charles DeTar.
• Dis(Course)4
Building 3 Stair, Infinite Corridor
A stairwell transformed by a shummering aluminum conduit inspired by the discourse between floors and academic disciplines.
By Craig Boney, Jams Coleman and Andrew Manto.
• Maxwell’s Dream
Building 10 Community Lounge, Infinite Corridor
An interactive mural created by magnetic fields that drive patterns of light, Maxwell’s Dream is a visually expressive cybernetic loop.
By Kaustuv De Biswas and Daniel Rosenberg.
• Mood Meter
Student Center & Building 8, Infinite Corridor
Is the smile a barometer of happiness? Mood Meter playfully assesses and displays the mood of the MIT community onsite and at moodmeter.media.mit.edu
By Javier Hernandez and Ehsan Hoque.
• SOFT Rockers
Killian Court
Repose and charge your electronic devices using green solar powered technology
By Shiela Kennedy, P. Seaton, S. Rockcastle, W. Inam, A. Aolij, J. Nam, K. Bogenshutz, J. Bayless, M. Trimble.
• LightBridge
The Mass. Ave Bridge
A dynamic interactive LED array responds to pedestrians on the bridge, illustrating MIT’s ties to both sides of the river. Thanks to Philips ColorKinetics, CISCO, SparkFun Electronics.
By Sysanne Seitinger.
• Sky Event
Killian Court, Saturday, May 7th ONLY
Immense inflatable stars soar over MIT in celebration of the distinctive symbiosis among artists, scientists and engineers.
By Otto Piene.
• Liquid Archive
Charles River
A floating inflatable screen provides a backdrop for projections that highlight MIT’s history in science, technology, and art.
By Nader Tehrani and Gediminas Urbonas.
• Light Drift
Charles River
Ninety brightly glowing orbs in the river change color as they react to the presence of people along the shore.
By Meejin Yoon.
• Unflat Pavilion
Building 14 Lawn
This freestanding pavilion illuminated with LEDs flexes two dimensions into three. Flat sheets are bent and unfurl into skylights, columns, and windows.
By Nick Gelpi
• Gradated Field
Walker Memorial Lawn
A field of enticing mounts create a landscape that encourages passersby to meander through, or lounge upon the smooth plaster shapes.
By Kyle Coburn, Karina Silvester and Yihyun Lim.
• Bibliodoptera
Building 14, Hayden Library Corridor
Newly emerged from the chrysalis of MIT’s diverse library pages, a cloud of butterflies flutters above, reacting to the movement of passersby.
By Elena Jessop and Peter Torpey.
• Wind Screen
Green Building Facade, Bldg 54
A shimmering curtain of light created by micro-turbines displays a visual register of the replenishable source of wind energy.
By Meejin Yoon.
• String Tunnel
Building 18 Bridge
A diaphonous tunnel creates a sense of entry to and from the Infinite Corridor and frames the surrounding landscape.
By Yuna Kim, Kelly Shaw, and Travis Williams.
• voltaDom
Building 56-66 Connector
A vaulted passageway utilizes an innovative fabrication technique that creates complex double curved vaults through the simple rolling of a sheet of material.
By Skylar Tibbits.
• Night of Numbers
Building 66 Facade & E15 Walkway
A lighting installation enlivens MIT architectre with numbers that hold special or historical significance to the Institute. Can you decode them all?
By Praveen Subramani and Anna Kotova.
• Overliner
Building E-25 Stairwell
Taking cues from a stairwell’s spiraling geometry, Overliner transforms a familiar and busy passageway into a moment of surprise and repose.
By Joel Lamere and Cynthia Gunadi.
• Chroma District
Corner of Ames and Main Streets.
Lanterns react to visitors by passing sound and color from one to another, increasing in intensity along the way and illuminating the path to MIT’s campus.
By Eyal Shahar, Akito van Troyer, and Seung Jin Ham.
The Gates of Hell
Image by kern.justin
The portal to The Inferno.
Through me the way is to the city dolent;Through me the way is to eternal dole;Through me the way among the people lost.
Justice incited my sublime Creator;Created me divine Omnipotence,The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.
Before me there were no created things,Only eterne, and I eternal last.All hope abandon, ye who enter in!.
– Canto III, The Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Part one of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, known more affectionately by those who have read it as "The Inferno," was something close to required reading for college students at The University of Chicago. Dogeared copies of the most recent verse translations were a staple of tables throughout the library. As far as I could tell, every humanities course (a requirement for all students) included at least part of this master work. Much discussion as to its literary merits and political references surely followed, but I think what connected with students was Dante’s vision of the deepest, darkest levels of hell as miserably cold rather than blazingly hot. To an undergraduate facing finals in the depths of January’s arctic grip, this vision of a cold hell continually resonates. So much so that, during my ten years on campus, I could always spot a college student sporting a homemade t-shirt with the slogan "University of Chicago – The level of hell Dante forgot," or "Hell does freeze over." Beyond the delightfully geeky literary reference to Alighieri, these shirts were also remarkable for displaying a table of temperature lows for the dates of the winter quarter.
Such a table for the temperatures on Stanford’s campus through the corresponding period of time would paint a far sunnier picture. Imagine my surprise then, when I discovered that the Gates of Hell are actually on the Stanford Campus. The Gates of Hell is a massive sculpture by Auguste Rodin inspired by the famous poem; it, and many other of Rodin’s works, is a fixture of the B. Gerald Cantor Rodin Sculpture Garden. The illustrious sculptor worked to create this masterpiece over the course of nearly four decades, until his death. The word massive fails here to convey the size of the gate – it stands at nearly twenty feet tall and over thirteen feet wide. It is imposing without being utterly frightening. Rodin included some of his most famous sculptures within The Gates of Hell – notice the thinker jutting out at you far overhead at the center of the doors. He also included some unexpected things, like The Kiss within the doors and perhaps that little bit of romance and sweetness is the reason that we are not terrified of this massive vision of Hell’s Door.
112 megapixels of The Gates of Hell.
I created this image as a massive panorama for two primary reasons. One, because the sculpture defies the small-format photographer to capture its essence and requires a high-resolution approach. Two, because I have been working diligently to produce a workflow of image capture and processing that I will call "Large Format DSLR Photography." You will notice that the above image isn’t just properly exposed and very high-resolution, but it is also perfectly corrected for perspective. Look at the gates, follow the vertical and horizontal lines – you will notice they are all perfectly parallel to the edges of the frame. The door doesn’t shrink at the top where the subject is further from the camera, and it doesn’t expand at the bottom. All this is possible thanks to a very special tripod head (more details on that later) and some careful computation. You’ll be seeing more high resolution images like this and learn more about how to make "large format" digital images like this in the coming weeks and months – stay tuned. I’ve also included a smaller version of the image below so those of you who like to see the whole image all at once can do so. And if you were looking for another indication of scale here – that placard on the right of the frame is about four to five feet from the ground.