Arts

BBC Click reports on a system developed by CSAIL researchers that creates 3-D motion sculptures based off of 2-D video. The technique, say the researchers, “could help dancers and athletes learn more about how they move.”

Keith Powers highlights Prof. Tod Machover’s new opera, Schoenberg in Hollywood,” in WBUR’s guide to the most innovative operas being performed in Boston this fall. Powers writes that in the opera, Machover “investigates the improbable but true story of Schoenberg, the leader of the Second Viennese School, who actually did flee to Hollywood to escape the Nazis.”

Boston Globe reporter Jeremy Eichler spotlights Prof. Tod Machover’s new opera, “Schoenberg in Hollywood,” which looks at the life and work of the composer Arnold Schoenberg. Eichler writes that the opera is “at once an earnestly admiring tribute and an unconventional biographic fantasia.”

Writing for The Boston Globe, Cate McQuaid highlights Delia Gonzalez’s new exhibit at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. McQuaid notes that Gonzalez turns to “ancient civilization in search of meaning — specifically the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii, in the year 79.”

Boston Globe reporter David Weininger highlights a recording of three new works by Prof. Peter Child. Weininger writes that the new pieces, “demonstrate the MIT composer’s remarkable stylistic diversity.”

The Boston Globe reports that Prof. Emerita Joan Jonas has been awarded the 2018 Kyoto Prize. The prize honors “important figures in the fields of advanced technology, basic sciences, and arts and philosophy.”

Prof. Tod Machover speaks with Mary Louis Kelly and Audie Cornish of NPR’s All Things Considered about capturing the everyday sounds featured in his latest symphony, “Philadelphia Voices.” When recording the Commonwealth Youth Choir, for example, Machover explains that he “asked them to each sing the word Philadelphia in a way that showed something about how they felt about Philadelphia and also something about themselves.”

Prof. Tod Machover details his experience creating “Philadelphia Voices,” which is “the latest in a series of Machover symphonies inspired by cities,” writes Michael Cooper for The New York Times. “To help organize his library of Philadelphia sounds he used software developed at M.I.T. called Constellation, which can analyze hundreds of sound files by volume, frequency and shape, then visually display them.”

Mark Feeney writes for The Boston Globe about the exhibit “György Kepes Photographs: The MIT Years, 1946-1985,” which is on display at the MIT Museum through July 2018. This is the second show in a two-part series that celebrates the 50^th anniversary of MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, which Kepes founded as an Institute professor.

World-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma will deliver an on campus talk titled "Yo-Yo Ma: Culture, Understanding and Survival" as part of MIT's Compton Lecture series. “Ma is a prolific performer who has recorded more than 100 albums and has worked to promote collaboration among artists from different cultures,” notes the Associated Press.

Prof. Martin Marks hosted a conversation with Audra McDonald, the 2018 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient, where she spoke about her personal experience as a Tony Award-winning actress and shared advice with the gathered students, writes Sophie Cannon for The Boston Globe. “Realize you have value and you have worth and what you maybe don’t have is experience but that is what you are here to get,” McDonald said.

Prof. Martin Marks hosted a conversation with Audra McDonald, the 2018 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient, where she spoke about her personal experience as a Tony Award-winning actress and shared advice with the gathered students, writes Sophie Cannon for The Boston Globe. “Realize you have value and you have worth and what you maybe don’t have is experience but that is what you are here to get,” McDonald said.

Alexa Vazquez of WBUR writes about a new MIT Museum exhibit that uses virtual reality to place visitors face-to-face with fighters who have experienced lifelong conflict. “The aim was to go for more kind of intimate conversations that you wouldn’t normally have access to, with people from diverse sides of these diverse conflicts,” says Prof. Fox Harrell, who worked on the VR aspect of the exhibit.

PRI The World’s Lydia Emmanouilidou spotlights a virtual reality exhibit at the MIT Museum by photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa that allows visitors to explore both sides of international conflicts. “What is the point of images of war if they don’t change people’s attitudes towards armed conflicts, violence and the suffering they produce?” says Khelifa of the inspiration for his work. 

Six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald is the recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, which includes a residency and public talk by the singer-actress, reports Don Aucoin for The Boston Globe.