I am a lifelong martial artist who grew up training in both taekwondo and karate. During a pivotal point in graduate school, I realized that the study of martial arts helped me better understand political philosophy ' and that revelation inspired this course. Southern California contains a unique hub of martial artists, many of whom studied with Bruce Lee. When I was working on my doctorate at The Claremont Colleges, I discovered an exceptional school just down the street from campus and began to study Filipino martial arts, Lee's Jeet Kune Do, and Rickson Gracie Jiu Jitsu. My teacher, Guro Jason Cruz, refined the method of training the body with the training of the mind in a way that is still unmatched. At the time, I was studying political philosophy and education in ancient Greece, including the significance of the 'palaestra' and the 'gymnasia,' which were sites for boxing, wrestling and the pankration ' a practice akin to mixed martial arts today ' but also intellectual cultivation....
Artist and designer Es Devlin is the recipient of the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT. The $100,000 prize, to be awarded at a gala in her honor, also includes an artist residency at MIT in spring 2025, during which Es Devlin will present her work in a lecture open to the public on May 1, 2025. Devlin's work explores biodiversity, linguistic diversity, and collective AI-generated poetry, all areas that also are being explored within the MIT community. She is known for public art and installations at major museums such as the Tate Modern, kinetic stage designs for the Metropolitan Opera, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics, as well as monumental stage sculptures for large-scale stadium concerts. 'I am always most energized by works I have not yet made, so I am immensely grateful to have this trust and investment in ideas I've yet to conceive,' says Devlin. 'I'm honored to receive an award that has been granted to so many of my heroes, and look forward to collaborating closely with the brilliant minds at MIT.'...
The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of global leaders concluded last month in Davos, Switzerland. The timely transition from this global dialogue into Black History Month celebrations each year offers a chance to explore how the significant impact of Black individuals and communities can further empower African and Afro diaspora peoples on global discourse concerning the key issues of our time. Effective advocacy and diplomacy are key to leveling the playing field in global cooperation. Through sharing cultural heritage, such as arts, literature and events, nations can foster mutual understanding and strengthen diplomatic ties that could be further leveraged for national interest. Cultural leaders and global artists also have a crucial role to play through arts and culture. They can provide visions of the world that can cut through the limitations of short-term or linear thinking and help towards solving collective global issues. The Korean Wave, or Hallyu, for example, has contributed to South Korea's soft power and increased its global influence via K-pop music, K-drama and other cultural exports that have captivated global audiences, leading to improved international cooperation. The widespread appeal of K-pop has led to cultural exchanges, joint ventures and collaborations between South Korea and other countries....
Often, science and art are described as starkly different things. That narrative can start early on, with kids encouraged to pursue a STEM ' short for science, technology, engineering and math ' education that may or may not include an arts education. As a professor of acting, I'd never thought much about the STEM fields until I received a fellowship to integrate the arts into STEM educational models. I used the opportunity to write and direct a play for elementary schoolers that showed how the arts can improve upon and extend work in STEM fields when properly integrated ' but it wasn't an easy process. The origins of STEM education can be traced to as early as the Morrill Act of 1862, which promoted agricultural science and later engineering at land grant universities. In 2001, the National Science Foundation pushed a focus on STEM education in order to make the U.S. more competitive globally. A Biden-Harris initiative launched in December 2022 called You Belong in STEM offers support of more than US$120 billion for K-12 STEM education until the year 2025. But, starting in 2012, the United States Research Council has explored the idea of a STEAM education....
Sketch a doodle of a drum or a saxophone to conjure a multi-instrumental composition. Look into a webcam, speak, and watch your mouth go bouncing across the screen ' the input for a series of charmingly clunky chain reactions. This is what visitors to the MIT Lewis Music Library encounter when they interact with two new digital installations, 'Doodle Tunes' and 'Sounds from the Mouth,' created by 2022-23 Center for Art and Technology (CAST) Visiting Artist Andreas Refsgaard in collaboration with Music Technology and Digital Media Librarian Caleb Hall. The residency was initiated by Avery Boddie, Lewis Music Library department head, who recognized Refsgaard's flair for revealing the playfulness of emerging technologies. The intricacies of coding and machine learning can seem daunting to newcomers, but Refsgaard's practice as a creative coder, interaction designer, and educator seeks to open the field to all. Encompassing workshops, an artist talk, class visits, and an exhibition, the residency was infused with his unique sense of humor ' a combination of lively eccentricity and easygoing relatability....
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we bring you three stories exploring how the arts help people deal with the challenges life throws at them. Weâll hear about a photography project in Sydney bringing people back together as COVID restrictions lift, the importance of storytelling and humour in Indigenous art in Australia, and why the second world war led to the birth of public arts funding in Britain.
First, we head to the City of Parramatta, a diverse suburb of Sydney, Australia, thatâs changing fast as it undergoes a vast amount of construction and development. It was also an area hit hard by the COVID pandemic and subject to a hard lockdown. Reporter Olivia Rosenman went to Parramatta in mid-December to join a photoshoot organised by Cherine Fahd, associate professor at the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney, for a new project: Being Together: Parramatta Yearbook.
Fahd has been commissioned by C3West, an arts programme in western Sydney run by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, to take portraits of people in the style of a school yearbook, amid the changing landscape of Parramatta. Some of the photos will be put on display in public in 2022 and compiled together in a printed yearbook. Fahd tells us that the project helps mark a moment in time, âa way of us coming back together after a period of social distancing and being apartâ....
Something seemed quite strange when the results came in for the 2022 edition of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for arts and humanities subjects. Topping the list of the best universities in the world for a group of subjects including history, philosophy, performing arts, language, literature, theology and architecture, were two institutions world-renowned for science, technology and engineering. Stanford University, the institution at the heart of Americaâs Silicon Valley whose students have spawned Google, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Yahoo and Netflix, took first place in the world. It was closely followed by its east coast counterpart, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Other top tech schools have also marched up the arts and humanities rankings: Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands moved up from 65th last year to 42nd; The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (known as ETH Zurich) rose from 53 to 49; while Georgia Tech (Georgia Institute of Technology) rose from the 151-175 band into the world top 150....
In this ongoing series, MIT faculty, students, and alumni in the humanistic fields share perspectives that are significant for solving climate change and mitigating its myriad social and ecological impacts. Nadia Christidi is a PhD student in MIT HASTS, a program that combines research in history, anthropology, science, technology, and society. Her dissertation examines how three cities that face water supply challenges are imagining, planning, and preparing for the future of water. Christidi has a particular interest in the roles that art, design, and architecture are playing in that future imagining and future planning process. MIT SHASS Communications spoke with her on the ways that her field and visual cultures contribute to solving issues of climate change.
Q: There are many sensible approaches to addressing the climate crisis. Increasingly, it looks as if weâll need all of them. What perspectives from the HASTS fields are significant for addressing climate change and its ecological and social impacts?...
