Podcasts about mit museum

What if a museum were more like a laboratory? What if our exhibits were experiments? What if our galleries were more about questions, rather than answers? What if we didn't fear failure as much? What if scientists, artists, and technologists all created exhibitions together? What happens when you edit an exhibit about editing DNA? Should every project have a post-opening contingency — in addition to the normal kind? Ann Neumann (Director of Galleries and Exhibitions, MIT Museum) joins host Jonathan Alger (Managing Partner, C&G Partners) to discuss “Museum as Lab.” Along the way: circadian rhythms, robots, maritime paintings, and a huge spiderweb you can play like a musical instrument.Talking Points:1. The MIT Museum2. Scientists, Artists, and Technologists3. Editing the Genetics Gallery4. Spiderweb Concert5. Circadian Biology: Lighten Up6. Moving 1,500,000 ObjectsHow to Listen:Listen on Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/making-the-museum/id1674901311  Listen on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/6oP4QJR7yxv7Rs7VqIpI1G  Listen at Making the Museum, the Website:https://www.makingthemuseum.com/podcast  Links to Every Podcast Service, via Transistor:https://makingthemuseum.transistor.fm/ Guest Bio:Ann Neumann, Director of Galleries and Exhibitions at the MIT Museum, leads conceptual planning of museum exhibitions presenting MIT's research, collections, and innovation in science, art, design and technology in the heart of the biotech corridor. Her focus is on the museum as an experimental test bed for ideas, conversations and experiences that reflect the critical issues of culture and society. She's the recipient of numerous awards for her work and named a Blooloop Museum Influencer in 2024. Her experience developing museums and science centers in the US and internationally reflect a commitment to expanding the human experience and science understanding through interdisciplinary collaborations, visual communication and the built environment.  About Making the Museum:Making the Museum is hosted (podcast) and written (newsletter) by Jonathan Alger. MtM is a project of C&G Partners, the exhibition and experience design studio.Learn more about the creative work of C&G Partners:https://www.cgpartnersllc.com/ Links for This Episode:Ann by Email:neumanna@mit.edu Ann on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-neumann MIT Museum:https://mitmuseum.mit.edu Links for Making the Museum, the Podcast:Contact Making the Museum:https://www.makingthemuseum.com/contactHost Jonathan Alger, Managing Partner of C&G Partners, on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanalger Email Jonathan Alger:alger@cgpartnersllc.comC&G Partners | Design for Culture:https://www.cgpartnersllc.com/Making the Museum, the Newsletter:Liked the show? You might enjoy the newsletter. Making the Museum is also a free weekly professional development email for exhibition practitioners, museum leaders, and visitor experience professionals. (And newsletter subscribers are the first to hear about new episodes of this podcast.)Join hundreds of your peers with a one-minute read, three times a week. Invest in your career with a diverse, regular feed of planning and design insights, practical tips and tested strategies — including thought-provoking approaches to technology, experience design, audience, budgeting, content, and project management.Subscribe to the newsletter:https://www.makingthemuseum.com/

Explore the life and legacy of graphic design pioneer Jacqueline Casey, whose bold, modernist posters defined MIT's visual identity for decades — with insights from designer Michael Bierut, we uncover how Casey infused Swiss design principles with American ingenuity, led campus-wide design efforts, and created work that remains timeless and influential._______Support this podcast with a small donation: Buy Me A CoffeeThis show is powered by Nice PeopleJoin this podcast and the Patreon community: patreon.com/womendesignersyoushouldknowHave a 1:1 mentor call with Amber Asay: intro.co/amberasay_______Sources:Article: Eye Magazine Feature "Jacqueline Casey. Science and design"Article on Thérèse MollAbout Jacqueline (Jackie)Jacqueline Casey was a pioneering graphic designer whose work defined the visual identity of MIT for over three decades. Born in 1927 in Quincy, Massachusetts, she studied fashion design and illustration at MassArt before finding her way into graphic design. In 1955, her lifelong friend Muriel Cooper recruited her to the MIT Office of Publications, where Casey absorbed the principles of Swiss modernism and gave them her own twist—infusing wit, visual metaphors, and bold typography into her work.As Director of MIT's Design Services Office, she led campus-wide design efforts, creating posters and materials for scientific conferences, exhibitions, and cultural events. Her ability to simplify complex ideas with elegance and playfulness made her work timeless and celebrated globally. Today, her posters are held in the collections of MoMA, the Cooper Hewitt, and the MIT Museum, solidifying her as a quiet yet powerful force in modernist design history. About MichaelMichael Bierut is one of the most influential graphic designers of our time. A partner at Pentagram since 1990, his work spans iconic logos, brand identities, and campaigns for clients like The New York Times, Mastercard, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Bierut has been a longtime educator at Yale, co-founded Design Observer, and authored celebrated books, including How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things. His work is held in the permanent collections of MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt, and his thought leadership continues to shape the design world.Follow Michael:Instagram: @mbierutWebsite: Pentragram.comThreads: @mbierut ____View all the visually rich 1-min reels of each woman on IG below:Instagram: Amber AsayInstagram: Women Designers Pod

Revive nuestro primer evento en vivo de Mi Última Neurona, realizado el pasado 25 de septiembre en el MIT Museum, como parte del Cambridge Science Festival.

Fittkau, Ludger www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de, Fazit

In honor of the March 2024 Playwright Marketing Binge, here is the replay of Patrick Gabridge's interview where he describes the ways playwrights can make their submissions stand out. In this episode, we discuss:Why he started the Playwright Submission BingeTONS of tips on how playwrights can market themselves betterResources MentionedPlaywright Submission BingePlays in PlaceNYCPlaywrightsAbout Our GuestPatrick Gabridge is an award-winning writer and theatre-maker who has written a number of adaptations and also has a special talent for creating site-specific plays. With his company, Plays in Place, he's created plays in partnership with many museums & historic sites, including Mount Auburn Cemetery, Boston's Old State House, the Roosevelt Cottage on Campobello Island, & the MIT Museum. His full-length plays have been produced in the US & South Korea, and his short plays and have received more than 1,000 productions from theatres and schools around the world. He's been involved with helping playwrights market their work for many years—he started the publication Market InSight for Playwrights back in 1993, and founded & still runs the Playwright Submission Binge, an online community focused on marketing. He's also a screenwriter, novelist, & a writer of audio plays.Connect with Our Guestgabridge.comNew Play ExchangeThe Writing Life x 3InstagramConnect with host Melissa Schmitz***Sign up for the 101 Stage Adaptations Newsletter***101 Stage AdaptationsFollow the Podcast on Facebook & InstagramRead Melissa's plays on New Play ExchangeConnect with Melissa on LinkedInWays to support the show:- Buy Me a Coffee- Tell us your thoughts in our Listener Survey!- Give a 5-Star rating- Write a glowing review on Apple Podcasts - Send this episode to a friend- Share on social media (Tag us so we can thank you!)Creators: Host your podcast through Buzzsprout using my affiliate link & get a $20 credit on your paid account. Let your fans directly support you via Buy Me a Coffee (affiliate link).

Gabrielle Lamb is a choreographer and 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, is based in NYC, where she directs Pigeonwing Dance, described by The New Yorker as “eccentric…playful…curious”. Her work has also been presented by the American Ballet Theatre Incubator, the New York Choreographic Institute, the MIT Museum, BalletX, the Juilliard School, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Ballet Collective, Whim W'HIM, Jacob's Pillow, and Dance on Camera at Lincoln Center. She has won fellowships and competitions at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Milwaukee Ballet, and the Banff Centre, as well as the S&R Foundation's Washington Award and a Princess Grace Award. A native of Savannah, GA, she trained at the Boston Ballet School and was a longtime soloist at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, later performing with Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company and Pontus Lidberg Dance in NYC. She has been lauded by DANCE Magazine as “a dancer of stunning clarity who illuminates the smallest details—qualities she brings to the dances she makes, too." www.pigeonwingdance.com 

Recorded live at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA on 9/18/23: Heavy Metal frontman and horror movie expert Spencer Charnas chats with psychologist Dr. Sarah Rose Cavanagh about his favorite horror movies, why we like to be scared, the difference between fictional and real violence, monster theory, recreational fear lab research and more.

Spencer and Sarah field questions aplenty from the sold out crowd at the MIT Museum on 9/18/23. Lots of territory covered including favorite on-screen monsters, what we fear most, scary music, and how to take a class with Sarah in Boston.

September is one day away, and that means it's time once again for the Playwright Submission Binge! Melissa chats with playwright and producer Patrick Gabridge about this twice annual event where playwrights gather in an online community to share submission opportunities with each other and support one another during the intense month of marketing. This interview is part of a larger conversation from Ep. 18 called Playwright Marketing with Patrick Gabridge. Listen to that episode here.In this episode, we discuss:What the Playwright Submission Binge is and how it got startedWhat he's learned from leading the Submission Binge for yearsHot tips on how to improve your submissionsAnd more!Resources MentionedPlaywright Submission BingeDramatists GuildNYCPlaywrightsAbout Our GuestPatrick Gabridge is an award-winning writer and theatre-maker who has written a number of adaptations and also has a special talent for creating site-specific plays. With his company, Plays in Place, he's created plays in partnership with many museums and historic sites, including Mount Auburn Cemetery, Boston's Old State House, the Roosevelt Cottage on Campobello Island, and the MIT Museum. His full-length plays have been produced in the US and South Korea, and his short plays and have received more than 1,000 productions from theatres and schools around the world (16 countries so far). He's been involved with helping playwrights market their work for many years—he started the publication Market InSight for Playwrights back in 1993, and founded and still runs the Playwright Submission Binge, an online community focused on marketing. He's also a screenwriter, novelist, and a writer of audio plays. In his spare time, he likes to farm and garden and fix up old houses.Connect with Our Guestgabridge.com Read & Recommend Patrick's plays on New Play ExchangeThe Writing Life x 3InstagramConnect with host Melissa Schmitz***Sign up for the 101 Stage Adaptations Newsletter***101 Stage AdaptationsFollow the Podcast on Facebook & InstagramRead Melissa's plays on New Play ExchangeConnect with Melissa on LinkedInWays to support the show:- Buy Me a Coffee- Tell us your thoughts in our Listener Survey!- Give a 5-Star rating- Write a glowing review on Apple Podcasts - Send this episode to a friend- Share on social media (Tag us so we can thank you!)Creators: Host your podcast through Buzzsprout using my affiliate link & get a $20 credit on your paid account. Let your fans directly support you via Buy Me a Coffee (affiliate link).

On Wednesday, April 19, TILclimate will host its first live event at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts! Reserve your seat at tilclimate.org to watch a live recording and join the questions as your host Laur Hesse Fisher sits down with MIT lecturer and former Special Assistant to the President for Manufacturing and Economic Development Dr. Elisabeth Reynolds about “America's big year of climate action” and the course set for U.S. climate policy in 2021-22.

In this episode, we discuss architecture, sustainable design, upcycling, and augmented reality with Zoey Zhu.  Zoey Zhu is a designer and creative technologist at IDEO based in the bay area. Working in the intersection of design, emerging technology, education, and sustainability, she creates physical and digital objects to reflect and communicate the relationship between humans and the built environment. Her practices have been notable in several platforms, including NYC Climate Week, MIT Museum, Bandung Biennale, International Design Conference (IDC), Design Museum Week, etc. Prior to IDEO, Zoey studied architecture and computer science at MIT.  You can find her at https://iam-zy.com/. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/business-today/support

On display at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts is a small clear plastic box, filled with electrical components and used in a legendary scheme to deceive Las Vegas Casinos. How was it used...and does it actually work? At the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is an unusual accessory to a regulation US military weapon. The concept behind this strange contraption is that pigeons - acting as pilots - will sit inside a nosecone that fits into the head of a missile- but how will pigeons be trained to steer a warhead? And at the Museum of the City of New York, an elegant souvenir trowel is linked to one of the most bizarre and chilling disasters in Gotham history. What role did it play in helping rebuild Manhattan's first skyscraper?For even more Mysteries at the Museum, head to discovery+. Go to discoveryplus.com/mystery to start your 7-day free trial today. Terms apply.

Patrick Gabridge came highly recommended because of his Playwright Marketing Binge, which he leads twice a year with many other playwrights as a way to get their name and work seen and potentially produced. He was kind enough to stop by the show and tell us about that and also how he created his niche genre and production opportunities with his company, Plays in Place.   (And some behind-the-scenes scoop: Melissa's sound cut out with just a few minutes to go, and Patrick was a total pro and answered the remaining questions that Melissa typed to him, and the audio was seamlessly edited in post. Whew.) In this episode, we discuss:How Patrick got started with his site-specific historical playsWhy sometimes it's better to write plays that can only be produced under a full moonWhy he started the Playwright Submission Binge  TONS of tips on how playwrights can market themselves betterAnd more!Resources MentionedPlaywright Submission Binge Plays in Place Dramatists GuildNYCPlaywrightsAbout Our GuestPatrick Gabridge is an award-winning writer and theatre-maker who has written a number of adaptations and also has a special talent for creating site-specific plays. With his company, Plays in Place, he's created plays in partnership with many museums and historic sites, including Mount Auburn Cemetery, Boston's Old State House, the Roosevelt Cottage on Campobello Island, and the MIT Museum. His full-length plays have been produced in the US and South Korea, and his short plays and have received more than 1,000 productions from theatres and schools around the world (16 countries so far). He's been involved with helping playwrights market their work for many years—he started the publication Market InSight for Playwrights back in 1993, and founded and still runs the Playwright Submission Binge, an online community focused on marketing. He's also a screenwriter, novelist, and a writer of audio plays. In his spare time, he likes to farm and garden and fix up old houses.Connect with Our Guestgabridge.com Read & Recommend Patrick's Connect with host Melissa Schmitz***Sign up for the 101 Stage Adaptations Newsletter***101 Stage AdaptationsFollow the Podcast on Facebook & InstagramRead Melissa's plays on New Play ExchangeConnect with Melissa on LinkedInWays to support the show:- Buy Me a Coffee- Tell us your thoughts in our Listener Survey!- Give a 5-Star rating- Write a glowing review on Apple Podcasts - Send this episode to a friend- Share on social media (Tag us so we can thank you!)Creators: Host your podcast through Buzzsprout using my affiliate link & get a $20 credit on your paid account. Let your fans directly support you via Buy Me a Coffee (affiliate link).

Artificial intelligence, robotics and gene sequencing are the stuff of headlines, science fiction and sometimes even our worst fears. It's all on view at the new MIT Museum. A place where the latest scientific advancements fill galleries, but only really work with your input. Special correspondent Jared Bowen of GBH Boston looks at this artistic frontier for our arts and culture series, "CANVAS." PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Artificial intelligence, robotics and gene sequencing are the stuff of headlines, science fiction and sometimes even our worst fears. It's all on view at the new MIT Museum. A place where the latest scientific advancements fill galleries, but only really work with your input. Special correspondent Jared Bowen of GBH Boston looks at this artistic frontier for our arts and culture series, "CANVAS." PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Artificial intelligence, robotics and gene sequencing are the stuff of headlines, science fiction and sometimes even our worst fears. It's all on view at the new MIT Museum. A place where the latest scientific advancements fill galleries, but only really work with your input. Special correspondent Jared Bowen of GBH Boston looks at this artistic frontier for our arts and culture series, "CANVAS." PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Today's episode was hosted by the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts and recorded in front of a live audience as part of an ongoing collaboration with Sing For Science. We discuss the Manhattan Project, the ethical implications of nuclear energy, climate change, quantum entanglement, quantum computing and more!

For more info, interviews, reviews, news, radio, podcasts, video, and more, check out ComputerAmerica.com!

Today on Boston Public Radio: We started the show by hearing our listener's reactions to the news that NASA had successfully launched a satellite into an asteroid to test its ability to redirect the paths of objects in space. Trenni Casey discussed how Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka's year-long suspension for having an inappropriate relationship with a female staff member impacted the official launch of the C's season. Casey also discussed how replacement coach Joe Mazzulla's relative inexperience could affect the team's prospects. Trenni is an anchor and reporter with NBC Sports Boston, and a Boston Public Radio contributor. Nancy Gertner discussed the upcoming Jan. 6 insurrection hearing scheduled to take place on Wednesday, Sept. 27, which was subsequently postponed due to the impending Hurricane Ian. Gertner also examined the six legal cases former President Donald Trump is facing and whether or not he could actually be criminally prosecuted. Nancy Gertner is a retired federal judge in Massachusetts and a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School. Jared Bowen recounted his visit to the grand opening of the MIT Museum and whether art made with artificial intelligence is a toy or a weapon — or even art at all. He also covered the latest production of “La Bohéme,” which is playing at Boston Lyrical Opera. Jared Bowen is GBH's Executive Arts Editor and host of the TV series Open Studio, airing Friday nights on GBH 2. Corby Kummer discussed New York City's delayed attempts to ban foie gras; Katz and other “old-school delis” having their moment in the spotlight; and California's farm labor bill. Corby Kummer is executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. John King discussed how polling is still fluid ahead of the upcoming midterms, creating a hazy picture for who will control Congress come January. John King is CNN's chief National Correspondent and anchor of Inside Politics.

Deborah Blum, Director of the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT and the Publisher of Undark magazine, is a Pulitzer-Prize winning science journalist, columnist and author of six books, most recently, The Poison Squad, a 2018 New York Times Notable Book. That book, as with all her recent books, focuses on influential moments in the history of science. She has worked as a science columnist for The New York Times, a blogger for Wired, and has written for other publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to Mother Jones, The Guardian to Lapham's Quarterly. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Science Writing, Best American Nature Writing, and Best Science On-Line. Before joining MIT in the summer of 2015, she was the Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a position she held for 18 years. Previously, she worked at five different newspapers, including as a staff science writer for The Sacramento Bee, where she won the Pulitzer in 1992 for her reporting on ethical issues in primate research. She received her A.B.J. from the University of Georgia in 1976 and her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison's School of Journalism in Mass Communication in 1982. Deborah is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers and a former board member of the World Federation of Science Journalists. She serves on the advisory boards of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, Chemical and Engineering News, Spectrum, The Scientist and the MIT Museum. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a lifetime associate of the National Academy of Sciences, both in recognition of her work in public understanding of science. Larry Keener, C.F.S., P.A., P.C.Q.I., is President and CEO of International Product Safety Consultants Inc. (IPSC), based in Seattle, Washington. IPSC is a global leader in providing food safety and food technology solutions to the food processing industry for a broad client base of Fortune 500 food companies, academic research institutes, and government agencies. IPSC is engaged in the conformity, risk assessment, and food safety verification business. Larry is an internationally regarded microbiologist and process authority in the food industry. His areas of expertise range from applied food microbiology to the development and application of novel preservation technologies including: high pressure processing (HPP), microwave, pulsed electric field (PEF), high-powered ultrasound, atmospheric plasma, and low-energy electron beam technology. He is a past president of IFT's Nonthermal Processing Division. Larry is a 2013 Fellow of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), a board-certified food scientist (International Food Science Certification Commission), and a 2018 recipient of an International Union of Food Science and Technology's (IUFoST) lifetime achievement award for his work in microbiology and food safety. He is a two-term past president of Tuskegee University's Food and Nutrition Sciences Advisory Board. Larry is also a 2022 inductee into the George Washington Carver Society. He has received numerous other awards and honors, and he has published more than 100 papers on subjects related to food production and food safety science. Larry is a frequently invited speaker to food industry, business and scientific conferences, workshops, and seminars. He is also a member of the Editorial Advisory   Board of Food Safety Magazine. In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak with Deborah [04:18] about: The shocking discoveries Deborah made about food safety in the 19th century while writing her book, The Poison Squad, which chronicles the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act How the unregulated food industry's prioritization of profits over public health led to food being one of the top ten causes of death during the latter half of the 19th century, which is also sometimes referred to as the period of the “Great American Stomachache” The different kinds of risk associated with food in urban versus rural environments The issues of adulteration and the lack of labeling requirements in the 19th century The questionable ethics of the Hygienic Table Trials that were conducted by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Chief Chemist Dr. Harvey Wiley, in an effort to convince industry, regulators, and the public that the compounds being added to foods were harmful to human health The impacts that Dr. Wiley's experiments had on public perceptions of food safety and the progression of U.S. food regulation, and the role that media played in disseminating Dr. Wiley's findings How behind-the-scenes relationships between food industry regulators, politicians, and the scientific community may weaken the law, both in present day and the 19th century Deborah's biggest revelation from researching and writing The Poison Squad—a grim case of formaldehyde in milk. We also speak with Larry [59:42] about The Poison Squad from industry's point of view, including conversations about: Possible reasons why the food industry neglected to ensure the safety of substances it was adding to food products in the 19th century, including a lack of technical capability and regulation Changes in regulations and public sentiment around food safety over the last century, and how the general approach to food safety has been guided by discordant views among different stakeholder groups How the antagonism that occurred at the highest levels of the federal government during the events chronicled in The Poison Squad set in motion a series of events that gave passage to future food safety legislation The successes that scientifically minded food safety advocates in the U.S. have made since the enactment of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, and improvements that need to be made regarding international harmonization Results that can arise from the friction between industry's need to turn a profit versus the drive to do right by consumers, as well as the economic value of ensuring food safety versus cutting corners. Food Safety Education Month Resources CDC FDA USDA The Partnership for Food Safety Education Food Safety Magazine  ​ We Want to Hear from You! Please send us your questions and suggestions to podcast@food-safety.com

What does the future of fashion look like? Jane & Jimmy discuss metafashion, wearables and latest controversy surrounding the artist Mason Rothschild and Hermès. We're joined by two experts in the space, Kate Reed & Johanna Kepler. Kate Reed is a Boston based designer growing new interfaces to connect humans, computers and the natural world. Her designs and inventions have been featured at the White House, New York Fashion Week, Museum of Design Atlanta, the Hackaday Superconference, MIT Museum, and more. https://www.biomimetic.io/ Johanna Kepler is a visual and performing artist based in New York City. Currently Kepler is co-founding a digital decentralized fashion house called Digital Drip with her business partner Kyle Sonlin based in Miami Florida.

What you'll learn in this episode: What material culture is, and how we can understand history through its lens Why people tend to save their shoes even if they don't wear them How high heels relate to women's sense of power—or powerlessness Why Colonial-era shoe and breeches buckles are still a popular jewelry material How the Colonial shoe industry can help us understand northern complicity in the slave trade  About Kimberly Alexander Dr. Kimberly Alexander teaches museum studies, material culture, American history and New Hampshire history in the History Department of the University of New Hampshire. She has held curatorial positions at several New England museums, including the MIT Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum and Strawbery Banke. Her most recent book, entitled "Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era" traces the history of early Anglo-American footwear from the 1740s through the 1790s (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). Dr. Alexander was Andrew Oliver Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society (2016-2017) and is guest curator of “Fashioning the New England Family,” (October 2018- April 2019) at MHS. Her companion book, "Fashioning the New England Family," was published in 2019. Additional Resources: Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era  https://pwb02mw.press.jhu.edu/title/treasures-afoot  Fashioning the New England Family  https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5368    Photos: Treasures Afoot - book stack with c. 1780s silk satin shoe, made in Boston, MA Silver and paste stone shoe buckles, c. mid-18th century, French or English; in original 3shagreen, silk lined case. Collection of the author. Silver thread embroidery with spangles. Collection of the author. Advertisement for gold lace, 1734 James Davis, shoemaker, near Aldgate, London, c. 1760s, Courtesy Metropolitan Museum, public domain. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/112645 Transcript As an architectural historian with a relatively small shoe collection, Professor Kimberly Alexander didn't anticipate becoming an expert on Georgian shoes. But when she encountered a pair of mid-18th century shoes with a curious label, she quickly realized the potential that shoes have to help us understand history and material culture. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the commonalities between shoes and jewelry, why shoes are a powerful way for women to express themselves, and how the historical shoe industry can help us understand the Colonia era in America. Read the episode transcript below.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, while we're still talking about jewelry, we're looking at it from a different angle. My guest is Kimberly Alexander, author of “Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era.” Kimberly is a historian and Professor of Material and Museum Culture at the University of New Hampshire. We'll hear all about her own journey as well as some of the history she tells of shoes in early America. Kimberly, welcome to the program. Kimberly: Thank you so much for inviting me, Sharon. I'm very excited to talk to you today about something that's been a fairly consuming interest and passion for quite some time, so thank you.  Sharon: I'm so glad to have you, and it has been. I was just rereading your introduction and acknowledgements. You say you've been doing this for the past eight years, so that's quite a journey. Can you tell us what material culture is and how you got into this study? It's so interesting that you're a professor. Kimberly: I'd be happy to do that. Material culture, in its broadest terms, is any item, artifact, object that is created by human endeavor, by human hands. It covers a broad swath of materials, from the work of indigenous peoples with beads and ceramics to shoemakers, which is where I've spent a tremendous amount of my interest and time, but also those who produce textiles, glass, furniture, paintings. All of those would be examples of a human endeavor to create an object. If you think about the early cave paintings and petroglyphs, that's also part of a creative process which involves a human endeavor to create an object or a story. As we continue to explore these ideas of material culture, what I'm particularly interested in is the ability of material artifacts and objects to tell stories that are wrapped up in these elements of human endeavor. I think stories stay with us in ways that other types of information don't always, because we can relate to it; we can put a hook on it. We can understand something more about someone else's perspective or point of view from the study of material culture. I teach material culture and museum studies and these very much go hand-in-hand throughout public history.  My own journey was an interesting one. I completed my master's and my Ph.D. in art history with a focus in architectural history. Some people who've known me for a long time are curious as to how I got from being an architectural historian to writing a book about Georgian shoes, and it's actually not as surprising as you might think. I worked as a curator at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, where I was curator of architecture and design. From there I went to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, and then to the Strawbery Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was at Strawbery that I worked not only with buildings, but also archeological finds and what they would tell us about the buildings themselves and human habitations. I worked with a wide of variety of different types of collections, and I found that it was more of a way that you envision the world around you. For me, if you think of a shoe as needing to support someone in their daily activities for a special event, it's not that much different to think about how a skyscraper works. We need to have a good foundation on which to build. For me, it's been a natural evolution.  The shoe that got me started on this sojourn, if you will, is the one that's on the front cover of my book. It's in the collection at the Strawbery Banke Museum. It is a mid-18th century Georgian shoe that's been quite well worn, seen a lot of damage through time and wear, but inside was pasted a simple paper label and it read, “Rideout and Davis Shoemakers near Aldgate in London.” That made me immediately wonder, “How did this shoe end up in this collection in Portsmouth, New Hampshire? What was its journey?” That's really what sent me on this eight-year—and I'm still working on it even though the book's published, so now I'm up to 10 or 11 years on this topic, but that was the question that I started with. How did people acquire shoes and why were they saved? How was this shoe saved for all this time? I found over the course of my research there's a lot more relevance even to how we organize today's lives. You might keep a pair of shoes that you wore to run a marathon or that you wore to get married or for your first job interview. You may never wear them again, but they're small, they're portable and they are infused with some fiber of you and your experience. That's what makes shoes so exciting.  Sharon: That's really interesting. I'm thinking about the parallels between that and antique jewelry. As I've been culling my own collection, I look and say, “I may never wear that again, but I bought it here and I want to keep it as a keepsake.” I was looking at a piece I bought in Cuba and thought, “I may never wear it again, but it's the only thing I've really bought from Cuba.” Kimberly: Right. Sharon: Why do people keep shoes? They're small, they're portable and they have memories, but why do they love shoes so much?  Kimberly: That is an interesting question. I had the chance to do some work with the Currier Museum in Manchester, New Hampshire, about five or six years ago. They were hosting an exhibition that originated in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. “On Killer Heels” was the name of the exhibition—a fabulous show—but one of the things they did at the Currier was put out notebooks for women to write about their experiences with shoes. One notebook was “What were your best experiences?” or “What shoes do you remember?” and the other one was about shoes and feminism and wearing high heels. I went through them and eventually I hope, with the help of the Currier, to publish an article about it, because it's really quite interesting.  Women who wrote about high heels in many cases wrote about them as being part of how they perceive themselves in power. Some women did see them this way as well as something that was uncomfortable that they were forced to wear at a certain time in their lives. Other women saw them as something that was part of their role as a professional in a male-dominated world. One woman, for example, wrote that she loved her three-inch heels with her business suits because everybody could hear her coming; they knew she was on her way and people scampered to find something to do. She also said, “It put me on this eye level with men in a way that, if I wasn't wearing heels, I wouldn't be.” That was one example that I thought was really interesting. Another example from a woman of roughly the same age talked about the fact that she had foot problems and had to turn in her high heels for flats because they were uncomfortable. This is all paraphrasing, but she said, “The change-over to flats made me feel invisible, like I'd given something up. I was wearing shoes like my mother or grandmother would wear.” I don't know if I really answered your question with these few examples, but I think shoes mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. As we're moving through this Covid year-and-a-half pandemic, I think shoes have taken on an even different role again, as has fashion. People are used to their soft clothes. I was reading something recently on Instagram where somebody said, “Oh, I can't believe I have to go to a meeting in person and put on hard pants.” I think the issue of levels of comfort has changed. They were already changed; I think they changed even more in this pandemic era. But, why do women love shoes? Any number of different reasons, and I've spoken to hundreds of women because I find it a fascinating topic.  By nature, you might not know this, but I'm actually a somewhat shy person; I have a lot of social anxiety. Once I started working on shoes, I found I could always ask a question about shoes, and everybody piles on and I don't need to continue saying much more. I guess everybody has something, and in these notebooks from the Currier, there were these incredibly detailed responses to people responding to their worst experience in shoes. There was one young woman who wrote about going to this college party in her Candies, which were these wooden shoes, terribly uncomfortable, but they were all the rage as I recall. She had hot pink Candies with open toes. She just loved them and she knew she looked like a million bucks, but she ended up with the biggest blisters on her feet. I was an “I didn't care because I knew I looked great” kind of thing. There's a lot of self-image, for some people, wrapped up in something that seems as mundane as shoes.  The pair of shoes that I've kept out of my own collection and that I've carried with me—I grew up in Maryland; I'm now in New Hampshire—is a pair of Nikes from when I was on the cross-country team. I started at a private school, St. James, for my last two years of high school. I couldn't even run the length of a football field. By the end of the semester, I was running five-milers and competing competitively. Those Nikes were symbolic of something really important, and I still have them. They are falling apart, but I still have them. What people decide to collect is also really interesting in terms of what people collect and save and the stories that go with those. Sharon: That's interesting. I'm not sure I have any shoes that I've saved. I've tossed them out and I might have had a sentimental pang, but I don't think I have anything I've saved. I especially did not save from decades ago my three-inch heels, which I can't even imagine. When I see women walking on those now, I'm like, “Oh, my god, how did I ever do that?” The shoes you focus on, you focus on the Colonial Era in America. Why is that, especially because you're talking about shoes that came from London? Kimberly: What it brought up for me, when I first started looking at the labels in women's shoes from London, is that British Americans, in the time before the Revolution, there was a huge consumer culture revolution. You still conceived of yourself as British, so you wanted to be stylish as you would have been back home, not out on the periphery somewhere. So, you have these shoemakers in London who are exporting thousands and thousands of pairs of shoes to the colonies of all different types, from very, very high-end, some of which I show in my book, to examples for those who are not as—pardon the pun—well-heeled. The idea of this reliance on the market also meant there were shoes being made for everyday people and everyday wearers.  In the book, I talk a good bit about the growth of the shoe industry starting particularly in Lynn, Massachusetts, and the switch during the Revolution. There's this pivotal decade from 1760 to the 1770s where Americans start saying, “Look, don't be buying your shoes from Britain. Why are you going to be sending your money to the Crown and to British merchants and shoemakers? Why aren't you supporting your local shoemaker and local businesses and putting money in the coffers of your neighbors?” It becomes a huge political issue, and we even seen Ben Franklin talking about that during the Stamp Act controversy, where he says that Americans are going to hold onto their clothes until they can make themselves new ones. Even something that might seem as straightforward as shoes becomes highly politicized during this time period.  All of this was of tremendous interest to me, but part of the reason I selected this time period and these shoes is that they are handmade—this is all obviously before the advent of machine sewing—and it also gave me a chance to talk about women's voices, women's perspectives that had previously been unheard. We read so much about the founding fathers and a few elite women, but what about the everyday person, the everywoman, everyman? Using shoes was a way I could talk about women who we otherwise would never have heard of. We would just know when they were born and when they died and possibly that they had a child, because that's how the shoes came to us. It was sort of a reverse creating a genealogy or a biography and trying to give women a voice they didn't have, because I had an object I could work with. Sharon: Whatever you said brought to mind the fact that the pictures, the photos in here are just beautiful. I want to say the name of the book again, “Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era” and tell everybody listening that it's a beautiful book and an easy read. It's history, but it's a very easy, interesting read, especially if you have any interest in shoes. We also talked about the fact that with jewelry, taking something like antique shoe buckles and transforming them into bracelets or other pieces of jewelry has become so popular. Why do you think that is? Kimberly: First, I do want to give a plug to my publisher. It's Johns Hopkins University Press, if any of you are interested in the book. There are over a hundred illustrations in the book, most of which have never been seen before, that were taken specifically for this project. I have a huge debt of gratitude to 30 different museum collections around the world, so thank you for bringing up the visual qualities. It was a really exciting opportunity to be able to have that many color illustrations.  Back to your question about shoe buckles, for one thing, you didn't have to have a pair of buckles for every pair of shoes; you could interchange some. Again, it goes back to things that you can save easily. You get a lot of pavé stone buckles more so than gemstones, although very, very rich people—the Victoria & Albert has a pair of shoe buckles, I think they were Russian in origin, that have actual sapphires and diamonds and rubies. I mean, wow. But what most people had would have been pavé stones that would have been set in silver or some other metal. Then they move onto leather.  One of the biggest things that happens is that there were so many buckles because you had shoe buckles for men and women. You also had breeches buckles for men, which would go at their knees for their breeches. You actually have a pretty large number of buckles which can be reused. By looking at the size, you can generally determine whether they were breeches buckles or shoe buckles, but that's often a cataloguing error that you find about what the pieces were. A small breeches buckle, for example, can be wonderfully remade into a pin if you've got the pair. They're very small. I'm sorry. We're doing this over the phone and I'm doing hand gestures— Sharon: No, no. Kimberly: At any rate, they are smaller, so they're very easy to convert into jewelry. They're easy to save. You can pick them up online everywhere from eBay to Etsy. Now, the other thing is that there was a huge Georgian revival of shoes, of course, in the 1910s and 1920s, and you start having shoes that either have attached shoe buckles or occasionally are using shoe buckles again. So, you have a wide expanse of this sort of shoe jewelry, if you will, and it's not just buckles; there were also shoe roses and flowers, things you could attach to your slippers to spiff them up. The idea of reusing these objects, the way people do with silk ribbon flowers, which appear on so many 18th century and early 20th century gowns, makes a tremendous amount of sense. I would say there are certainly as many pieces of jewelry that have been made from buckles as buckles that actually survived. Sharon: I never realized there were breeches buckles. I guess it's all lumped together in a sense. Kimberly: The breeches buckles were smaller, and they would have attached to the knee tabs for men's breeches. A man could have both breeches buckles and shoe buckles, and then occasionally you'll see trends in the 19th and 20th centuries of buckles being used as hat ornaments and things like that. The versatility, I think, is probably what has kept them around. Plus, anytime you're dealing with shoes, you're dealing with the fragility of textiles and that's a big thing. Sharon: I'll have to look more closely next time I look at what I think is a shoe buckle and say, “Oh, it's possible it's a breeches buckle.” It's interesting when you talk about the trends, because in the past few years it's been pearls. You've seen pearls in heels, and I think you have a couple of pairs of shoes where there are lots of rhinestones.  Kimberly: Yeah, if you want to take the idea of jewelry as it connects to footwear, many of the 18th century—well, 17th and 18th century—shoes were embroidered with metallic threads. You actually have real gold spun around a linen thread, which is then woven into the fabric of the shoes. You end up with this amazing amount of gold on your foot. You've got the shine—and again, this is largely elite wearers—but you have brocaded metallic threads in a shoe. Then you've got a shoe buckle. Hose and stockings often will have down the side of the leg what was known as a clock, which might be done in metallic threads. So, you also have precious metals being used as part of the textile process.  Sharon: It's interesting to me that when you describe material culture, it's such a broad subject and you homed in on shoes, and then even more specifically a certain period, the Georgian Era, the Colonial Era. Are you working on something now? What else is on your mind? Kimberly: I have a book coming out this fall based on an exhibition I was very fortunate to curate at the Massachusetts Historical Society which is called “Fashioning the New England Family.” It looks at a wide variety of textiles from the 17th century, from what is known as a buff coat, a lightweight military—well, relatively speaking—coat from the 1630s, up through pieces in the early 20th century based on their collection.  What I'm really interested in is this idea of storytelling, of reading textiles like text. What can you discern? Everything from why they were maintained to how they were made, and it's astonishing the things we've been able to uncover.  As far as shoes go, I've been looking at issues of northern complicity in the shoe trade. Around the time of the Revolution, a number of shoe manufacturers in New England basically blossom from doing several hundred pairs of shoes to doing thousands of pairs of shoes. There's one company in particular that I found during my research—I think I talk about it in the very end of my book—that started shipping thousands and thousands of shoes and I thought, “Well, that's odd in this three-year time.” As it turned out, they were selling—the coded language was “for the southern trade” or “the Indies trade”—but essentially, they were selling shoes to enslaved field workers in the South. The coded language was “coarse, sturdy, cheap,” and so on.  When I started researching where the shoes were shipped, they were being shipped to Baltimore, to Norfolk, to Charleston, in this case from Salem and Boston. There are entire towns in New England that owe their existence and their lucrative businesses to being part of the slave trade. These things are true in the textile mills as well, but I've been focusing on shoes. This is very coded language, and I've been able to locate a few pairs of shoes that were actually made for enslaved workers, and we have letters from enslaved workers who talk about how uncomfortable those northern shoes were. They preferred in some cases to go barefoot; they were that uncomfortable. So, I'm working on that now as well as another publication. Sharon: Wow! I look forward to seeing that. It sounds very interesting, and it really makes you think in terms of how they were supporting abolition and at the same time shipping the shoes down, right? Kimberly: Right. You realize just how much these are no longer separate economies. It's a national economy. They're sending cotton up from the South to the North where it's being processed into clothing and then being sent back down to the South or being sent to customers. It's really complicated and some amazing scholarship is being done in this area. Sharon: As you're talking about the shoes and how you're telling history through shoes, it makes me think about how hard it is to describe to people when you say you really love jewelry. They think you love big diamonds, but there's so much history attached to jewelry, why it was done in a certain metal and at a certain time. There's a whole journey behind it.  Kimberly: Yes, exactly. People assume I have a big shoe collection myself. I don't. I have a few pairs of shoes that I really like, and people give me shoes now. For my classes, I've gotten some really fancy designer shoes that people picked up at yard sales. I use the textiles I have and the shoes I have in my classes so that students can actually hold things, touch things, examine them and learn from them, because you can't walk into a museum and say, “Hey, let me hold onto that 1785 pair of silk pumps.” Sharon: Right. I look forward to seeing your book when it comes out. That's around the corner, and hopefully you'll come back on and tell us more about that. Thank you so much for being here today.  We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you again for reading. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

Today I welcome David Nunez, director of technology at the MIT Museum. David Nuñez is the Director of Technology and Digital Strategy at the MIT Museum. He leads the Museum's digital transformation as it prepares to reboot in a new location in the Spring of 2022. David sits on the Board of Directors of the Museum Computer Network, an organization that seeks to digitally empower museums and museum professionals. Before the MIT Museum, David was the Managing Partner for Midnight Commercial, a design, strategy, and innovation consultancy that invented new products, experiences, and artwork for global brands. His current research seeks to illuminate the humanity existing in computation as he builds projects to explore source code marginalia, speculative human-computer interfaces, and augmented personal productivity systems.

 On this episode of Out of Office: A Travel Podcast, Kiernan takes us back to Massachusetts for the second installment of the Great Boston Trilogy. With the big blockbuster attractions behind us, Kiernan covers his personal favorite parks, museums, and universities. Warning: he does mention Harvard excessively. Things we talked about in today’s podcast: Emerald Necklace Conservancy https://www.emeraldnecklace.org/  Franklin Park Zoo Remains https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/massachusetts/abandoned-zoo-ma/  Minuteman National Park https://www.nps.gov/mima/index.htm Minuteman Poster by Paul Rand https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/minute-man-35737  Arnold Arboretum https://arboretum.harvard.edu/  JFK Presidential Library Coconut https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/coconut-bearing-rescue-message-mo-634852   New England Aquarium https://www.neaq.org/  Museum of Science https://www.mos.org/  “The Alchemist” at MIT https://listart.mit.edu/public-art-map/alchemist  MIT Great Dome http://museum.mit.edu/150/70  MIT Campus Map https://whereis.mit.edu/  Sol LeWitt at MIT https://listart.mit.edu/public-art-map/bars-color-within-squares-mit  MIT Museum https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/  3 Lies on John Harvard https://blog.dce.harvard.edu/summer/3-lies-harvard  Harvard Art Museums https://harvardartmuseums.org/  Rothko at Harvard https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/watching-them-turn-off-the-rothkos   Harvard Natural History Museum Glass Flowers https://hmnh.harvard.edu/glass-flowers  Northlandz Trainset https://northlandz.com/  New River Gorge National Park https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/travel/national-park-new-river-gorge.html 

Wrapping up the month of October, Natalie and Alex share the details of their recent visit to MIT Museum's " The Polaroid Project, Part II" exhibit. Your hosts delve into some instant film history in order to provide context regarding several aspects of the museum. Alex, then, explores the idea of a future Polaroid run by Disney- a prediction he hopes to be disproven! Concluding with their "Focus On" segment, Natalie shares how she has begun to use her camera as an excuse to practice bravery, while Alex divulges his latest use of the Polaroid Pocket Printer. Please let us know your thoughts and how we can improve this community resource to better serve the needs of its members. Episode recorded 11/1. Research gathered the week of 10/26-11/1/2020. Instagram accounts and #tags referenced in this episode include: @mitmuseum @anibalcatalanstudio @polaroid #shareyourmagic @picturemanbob @derailthesnail --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/passionthrupolaroids/message

Friday, November 8, 2019 This professional forum will explore different types of academic museums as potential models for collaboration, iteration and public exchange. Digital roles in academic museums are highly collaborative while serving the needs of stakeholders from across their institutions. Participants from other types of museums can learn from how they operate as digital roles leverage their unique position in a broader organization. Academic museums are platforms for public interchange with a wide variety of disciplines, and they operate as “laboratories” of a sort in which digital roles are well suited to the “start small and scale up” models of development. The discussion applies to the conference theme as it focuses on digital roles in academic museums that are at the center of public interchange with a variety of disciplines. Digital roles in academic museums are uniquely positioned to collaborate with a variety of internal and external communities. Session Type60-Minute Session (Professional Forum or Hands-on Demonstration) TrackStrategy Chatham House RuleNo Key Outcomes After this session, participants will be able to: *Identify how their museum might collaborate with museum technologists in academic museums to leverage their abilities to work with a variety of disciplines. *Think about how their museum could look to digital in academic museums as a model for how they develop projects. *Know how digital roles can be supported in academic museums. *Identify opportunities for positioning their own museums as a resource for researchers from academic institutes to engage in public discourse. Speakers Session Leader : Max Evjen, Department of Theatre/Digital Humanities Coordinator, Michigan State University Co-Presenter : Chad Weinard, Independent Museum Technology Strategist, Independent Co-Presenter : Megan Reel, Assistant Collections Manager - Ethnology, Museum of Texas Tech University Co-Presenter : David Nunez, Director of Technology and Digital Strategy, MIT Museum

Ani Liu uses scientific processes to create art pieces that delve into the diverse aspects of humanity and our ever-evolving culture. These fringe art experiments have taken the form of biologically-modified plants, mind controlled sperm, a "forced" happiness lab (using science to induce positive feelings), and much, much more. Through all these art explorations, Ani questions, in this technologically mediated age, what does it mean to be human?-About Ani Liu-Ani Liu is a research-based artist working at the intersection of art & science. Her work examines the reciprocal relationships between science, technology and their influence on human subjectivity, culture, and identity.Ani's work has been presented internationally, and featured on National Geographic, VICE, Mashable, Gizmodo, TED, Core77, PCMag, FOX and WIRED. Her work has been shown at Ars Electronica, the Queens Museum Biennial, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Asian Art Museum, MIT Museum, MIT Media Lab, Mana Contemporary, Harvard University, and Shenzhen Design Society. She is the winner of the Princeton Arts Fellowship (2019-2021), the S&R Washington Prize (2018), the YouFab Global Creative Awards (1st place, 2018), the Biological Art & Design Award (2017). She is currently teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and is on critique panels at Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, NYU, UNC Charlotte, Pratt, Parsons. At MIT, she is on the committee of Art Scholars. Ani has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, a Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Master of Science from MIT Media Lab.Ani continually seeks to discover the unexpected, through playful experimentation, intuition, and speculative storytelling. Her studio is based in New York City. Learn more about Ani at studio@ani-liu.comFollow here @ani.liu.studio

John Durant, Director of the MIT Museum, discusses the origins of the Cambridge Science Festival, the first of its kind in the United States. Now in its 13th year, the Festival attracts more than 100,000 visitors annually, hosts events in more than 70 different venues from Cape Cod to Central Massachusetts, and works with more … Continue reading "Episode 76: Celebrating Science and Technology in the Community, for the Community"

Ani Liu is an research-based artist working at the intersection of art & science. Her work examines the reciprocal relationships between science, technology and their influence on human subjectivity, culture, and identity. Ani's work has been presented internationally, and featured on National Geographic, VICE, Mashable, Gizmodo, TED, Core77, PCMag, FOX and WIRED. Her work has been shown at Ars Electronica, the Queens Museum Biennial, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Asian Art Museum, MIT Museum, MIT Media Lab, Mana Contemporary, Harvard University, and Shenzhen Design Society.

In a desperate gamble to encourage the USA to come to Britain's aid during their most desperate of days of WW2, Churchill dispatched Sir Henry Tizard to America bearing a small metal box... Tizard's Trunk.  Inside were some of the most closely guarded technological secrets that Britain had to offer.     Images displayed under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Science Museum London and the MIT Museum.

Everyone is familiar with MIT and the university's reputation as a serious force in the world of science, tech, and research, but how many are aware of MIT's legacy in the arts? Did you know that MIT's founder had envisioned incorporating the arts from the very beginning?In this episode we speak with Leila Kinney and Evan Ziporyn of MIT's Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST) about MIT's culture of creativity and exploration, the institution's mission to humanize science and tech, and the exciting projects that have emerged from CAST, like Tomás Saraceno's Arachnid Orchestra.-About Leila Kinney-Leila W. Kinney is the Executive Director of Arts Initiatives and of the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), working with Associate Provost Philip S. Khoury, the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P), the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), the Creative Arts Council, the Council for the Arts at MIT, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the MIT Museum, to advance the arts at MIT in the areas of strategic planning, cross-school collaborations, communications and resource development.Kinney is an art historian with experience in both SA+P, where she was on the faculty in the History, Theory and Criticism section of the Department of Architecture (HTC) and SHASS, where she taught in the Program in Women’s Studies and in Comparative Media Studies. She specializes in modern art, with an emphasis on media in transition, arts institutions and artists’ engagement with mass culture. She is a member of the Executive Committee of a2ru (Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities) and of the Advisory Committees of the Catalyst Collaborative at MIT, the MIT List Visual Arts Center and the MIT Museum.-About Evan Ziporyn-Evan Ziporyn makes music at the crossroads between genres and cultures, and between East and West. He studied at the Eastman School of Music, Yale University, and UC Berkeley with Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, and Gerard Grisey. He first traveled to Bali in 1981, studying with Madé Lebah, Colin McPhee’s 1930s musical informant. He returned on a Fulbright in 1987.Earlier that year, he performed a clarinet solo at the First Bang on a Can Marathon in New York. His involvement with Bang on a Can continued for twenty five years. In 1992, he co-founded the Bang on a Can All-stars (Musical America’s 2005 Ensemble of the Year), with whom he toured the globe and premiered over one hundred commissioned works, collaborating with Nik Bartsch, Iva Bittova, Don Byron, Ornette Coleman, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Thurston Moore, Terry Riley, and Tan Dun. He co-produced their seminal 1996 recording of Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports,” as well as their most recent CD, “Big Beautiful Dark & Scary” (2012).Ziporyn joined the MIT faculty in 1990, founding Gamelan Galak Tika in 1993, and beginning a series of groundbreaking compositions for gamelan & Western instruments. These include three evening-length works, 2001’s “ShadowBang,” 2004’s “Oedipus Rex” (Robert Woodruff, director), and 2009’s “A House in Bali,” an opera which joins Western singers with Balinese traditional performers, and the Bang on a Can All-stars with a full gamelan. It received its world premiere in Bali that summer and its New York premiere at BAM Next Wave in October 2010.As a clarinetist, Ziporyn recorded the definitive version of Steve Reich’s multi-clarinet “New York Counterpoint” in 1996, sharing in that ensemble’s Grammy in 1998. In 2001, his solo clarinet CD, “This is Not A Clarinet,” made Top Ten lists across the country. His compositions have been commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road, Kronos Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Maya Beiser, So Percussion, Wu Man, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with whom he recorded his most recent CD, “Big Grenadilla/Mumbai” (2012). His honors include awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2011); The Herb Alpert Foundation (2011); USA Artists Walker Fellowship (2007); MIT’s Gyorgy Kepes Prize (2006); the American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship (2004); as well as commissions from Meet the Composer/Commissioning Music USA and the Rockefeller MAP Fund. Recordings of his works have been been released on Cantaloupe, Sony Classical, New Albion, New World, Koch, Naxos, Innova, and CRI.He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT. He also serves as Head of Music and Theater Arts, and in 2012 was appointed inaugural Director of MIT’s Center for Art Science & Technology. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with Christine Southworth, and has two children, Leonardo (19) and Ava (12).-About MIT CAST-The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) creates new opportunities for art, science and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures and publications. The Center is funded in part by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Although some listeners may be new to thinking about science communication, it's not at all a new field. Our latest podcast guest, Dr. John Durant, puts current science engagement practices in its historical context. John has been involved in science communication science the 1980's and is an expert in formulating and measuring best practices for science communication as Director of the MIT Museum in Boston. He has led the charge on many science engagement practices, including founding the International Science Festival Alliance and being the founding Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed publication, "Public Understand of Science". Check out our show links at www.publichealthunited.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at PHUpodcast.

Part 1: MIT Museum education coordinator Faith Dukes wonders if there’s something wrong with her when she fails to couple up. Part 2: Cara Gael O'Regan is startled when she tests positive for syphilis. Faith Dukes is the Education Coordinator at the MIT Museum where her passions for inspiring the next generation of innovators and learning about the latest in science and technology collide. There, she creates interactive sessions for middle and high school students to explore using MIT’s exhibitions, collections and current research. Her dedication to outreach has extended to the local community where she chairs the Boston Blueprint Conference for Middle and High School Girls. Faith credits failed experiments during graduate school for helping her find the greatest coping tool ever, boxing. Today she teaches a weekly kickboxing class in Cambridge and calls the gym her meditation space. Faith earned her PhD in Chemistry from Tufts University and her BS from Spelman College. Cara Gael O'Regan is an artist, health advocate, and podcaster who has more than two decades of lived experience with complex chronic illness and the chronic uncertainty that comes along with it. Her painting, Syndrome, was published in the Fall 2015 issue of The Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine. She is a Clue Ambassador for menstrual + reproductive health, and a 2016 Stanford Medicine X ePatient Delegate. Cara's podcast, In Sickness + In Health, features interviews with people about their relationships with their bodies and discussions about the intersections with chronic illness, disability, healthcare, and mortality. She tweets about life and living with chronic illness @bimpse, and you can find the podcast @InSicknessPod and at insicknesspod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are currently busy preparing for a Kickstarter launch. One of the requirements is to create a video. So, we are making a trailer by chiseling through past podcasts. It's interesting what happens to context when you remove supporting sentences. Please enjoy Episode 1, AI for everyone, sliced and diced, making it sound even more ominous than the original.   Photograph taken by Polimerek in MIT Museum during Wikimania 2006

Heidi talks with Arthur Ganson, a renowned kinetic sculptor and mechanical artist. Ganson has long been the hero of a cult following of technologists and artists. With more permanent work than any other artist or innovator inside the hallowed halls of the MIT Museum, Machine with Paper and Machine with Grease are quiet, complex kinetic sculptures that mesmerize the viewer and pull on both the mind and the emotion. Ganson's playful, wry humor was captured in Randall Okita's award winning film “Machine with Wishbone.”

The Paris climate talks are scheduled to go ahead despite the terrorist attacks, and attendees hope to sign an international agreement on climate change. A BBC reporter covering the meetings tells us what we can expect from the conference. Also, it's unclear whether Pope Francis himself will travel to the City of Light, but his encyclical may have already influenced the talks there. A historian considers whether the Church's acceptance of climate change represents a departure from its historical positions on science. Galileo, anyone? Plus, Hollywood may have stretched the science facts to maximum effect in its cli-sci thriller, The Day After Tomorrow, but find out why the film may not be pure fiction.  And why the developing world may take most of the hit as the planet warms. Guests: Sybren Druifhout – Physical oceanographer and climate scientist, Netherlands Meteorological Institute and the University of Southampton, U.K.  Virginia Burkett – Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change at the United States Geological Survey, and one of the Nobel Prize winning authors of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fourth assessment report  John Durant – Director of the MIT Museum and teacher in the MIT Science, Technology and Society program Matt McGrath - Environment correspondent for the BBC, based in London Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Paris climate talks are scheduled to go ahead despite the terrorist attacks, and attendees hope to sign an international agreement on climate change.  A BBC reporter covering the meetings tells us what we can expect from the conference. Also, it’s unclear whether Pope Francis himself will travel to the City of Light, but his encyclical may have already influenced the talks there.  A historian considers whether the Church’s acceptance of climate change represents a departure from its historical positions on science.  Galileo, anyone? Plus, Hollywood may have stretched the science facts to maximum effect in its cli-sci thriller, The Day After Tomorrow, but find out why the film may not be pure fiction.  And why the developing world may take most of the hit as the planet warms. Guests: Sybren Druifhout – Physical oceanographer and climate scientist, Netherlands Meteorological Institute and the University of Southampton, U.K.  Virginia Burkett – Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change at the United States Geological Survey, and one of the Nobel Prize winning authors of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report  John Durant – Director of the MIT Museum and teacher in the MIT Science, Technology and Society program Matt McGrath - Environment correspondent for the BBC, based in London

This class first covers research findings involving common unfoldings of boxes. Several examples of kinetic sculptures and machines are shown, including Theo Jansen's Strandbeests and Arthur Ganson's works at the MIT Museum.

Today, scientists are familiar to us, but they weren’t always. Even the word “scientist” is relatively modern, dating from the Victorian Era. And it is to that era we turn as we travel to the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its College of Science with a show recorded in front of a live audience. Find out how the modern hunt for planets around other stars compares to our knowledge of the cosmos a century and a half ago. Also how faster computers have ushered in the realm of Big Data. And a science historian describes us what major science frontiers were being crossed during the era of Charles Darwin and germ theory. It’s then versus now on Sesquicentennial Science! Recorded at the Eck Center at the University of Notre Dame, February 4th, 2015 Guests: •   Justin Crepp – Professor of physics, University of Notre Dame •   Nitesh Chawla – Professor of computer science and engineering and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Network Sciences and Applications at Notre Dame •   John Durant – Historian of science, director of the MIT Museum

Live from the 2014 Cambridge Science Festival at the MIT Museum, this special episode features Dr. Sam Madden, co-director of MIT's Big Data Initiative. Trying to guess about Dr. Madden's work are comedians Nikki Glaser, Myq Kaplan, and Lori Strauss. Hosted by Chris Duffy. Technical Direction by Kevin Brunswick.

In this session, we focus on turning a passion into a business.  Our guests are Randall Levere owner and founder of Erba Cycles, Nadeem Mazen co-founder and co-owner of danger!awesome and the CEO of NimbleBot.com, and Arthur Ganson, a sculptor. Joining in the discussion were  Shirish Ranjit, a former entrepreneur and now software developer with MIT Lincoln labs, Mark Thirman, director of partnerships with Vodafone and former cofounder of AirPring Networks, Sanjay Manandhar, CEO of Aerva Inc, and Dave Powsner, a patent lawyer and partner with the Boston law firm Nutter, McClennen & Fish LLP Nadeem Mazen, Co-Founder/Co-Owner, danger!awesome, CEO, NimbleBot.com Nadeem has had the good fortune to work professionally along many of his passions: he has led education teams in innovative research, directed award-winning viral music videos, created commercial animations, programmed software, and generated digital and interactive media for Discovery, Showtime, and CNN. His next venture brings a low-cost, disruptive education platform to market.  For the present, though, Nadeem is a co-founder/co-owner of danger!awesome, a laser cutting and engraving studio, based in Central Square, Cambridge. danger!awesome’s aim is to bring high-end fabrication equipment to the community. Nadeem is also the CEO of NimbleBot.com, a design and consulting firm that works in strategy & interactive media, video production, and web app design & development. Arthur Ganson, Kinetic Sculptor Arthur Ganson began making kinetic sculpture in 1977. Since receiving a BFA degree at the University of New Hampshire in 1978, his work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums in both the United States and Europe. He has held residencies at a number of institutions including the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where he has maintained an ongoing exhibition of his sculpture since 1995. His work has been featured in numerous magazines, including Smithsonian Magazine and The New York Times Magazine. In 2005 his work was profiled on Nova: Science Now by WGBH television in Boston, and in 2003 where he appeared as an animated bear on the cartoon series Arthur. He has been a guest speaker at universities and conferences throughout the country, including the TED Conference in 2004 and the Long Now Foundation in 2010. Besides making and exhibiting sculpture, he occasionally teaches classes in mechanics and wire bending. For the past 13 years he has been the ringleader of the MIT Museum’s Friday After Thanksgiving Chain Reaction, a community event in which families and students of all ages assemble a giant chain reaction. He is the inventor of the children’s toy Toobers and Zots. Randall Levere, Owner/Founder, Erba Cycles Randall is the founder and CEO of Erba Cycles, a Boston-based manufacturer of hand-built bicycles made from bamboo and natural fibers for city and comfort cruising. From the time he raced them as a child, Randall has had a passion for bicycles. His early business career began with stints in engineering and internet marketing. On a lark, Randall decided to try making a bicycle from bamboo—-mostly, as a night/weekend project—-having been impressed trial rides on bamboo bikes made by others. That project became a passion and, then, a business. Randall started Erba Cycles and has been making bamboo bikes, which sell worldwide for $2000 and up, at their South Boston facility since 2009.

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist, writer, and community organizer who believes that bridging culture and grassroots politics brings about innovative forms of social change. Marisa is the co-editor of Recipes for an Encounter, co-edited by Berin Golonu and Candice Hopkins and most recently edited Byproduct: On the Excess of Embedded Art Practices, a book that “investigates art practices that embed themselves within other non-artworld institutions (the government, industries, electoral politics), using the language and logic of their host to produce the artwork—or byproducts of the system.” Marisa’s work has been presented in public spaces in the US, Canada, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Estonia, Honduras, and Turkey and in venues such as the MIT Museum, ICA Philadelphia, The New Museum (New York), ISEA/Zero One, Eyebeam (NYC), the National Fine Art Museum of Taiwan, and in San Francisco at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2009 and 2010, Marisa was an artist-in-residence at MIT’s Media Lab, an artist teacher with Center for Urban Pedagogy, and designer-in-residence at Street Vendor Project, an organization that advances an agenda of economic opportunity, social justice, and civil rights for street vendors in New York City. As an art educator working with underrepresented youth since 1998, Jahn has partnered with and built award-winning education programs with organizations worldwide and was recognized by UNESCO in 2006 as a leading art educator. From 2000-2009, Marisa and Steve Shada co-directed “Pond: art, activism, & ideas,” a gallery-based non-profit organization dedicated to experimental art. In 2010, Marisa, with Stephanie Rothenberg and Rachel McIntire, co-founded REV-, a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering socially engaged art, design, and pedagogy. Marisa is also the deputy director of People’s Production House, an organization that empowers teens and historically excluded communities with skills to become journalists and media justice advocates. Marisa studied at UC Berkeley Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her work as an artist and activist has been featured in international media including Art in America, Los Angeles Times, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor Magazine, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Make Magazine, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, The Wall Street Journal, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. www.peoplesproductionhouse.org | www.marisajahn.com | www.rev-it.org

A discussion about the inducement of pleasure, fantasy fulfillment, and the mediation of intimacy in a socially-networked gaming paradigm such as World of Warcraft (WOW) this event was held in conjunction with the exhibition SHADA/JAHN/VAUCELLE, “Hollowed,” which includes the WOW Pod, a collaborative project by Cati Vaucelle & Shada/Jahn. Panelists included Jean-Baptiste Labrune, Postdoctoral Associate at the Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Lab; Raimundas Malasauskas, Curator, Artists Space (NYC); Henry Jenkins, Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program; Marisa Jahn, Artist in Residence, MIT Media Lab; Steve Shada, artist collaborator; Cati Vaucelle, PhD candidate Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Lab; and Laura Knott, Curatorial Associate, MIT Museum.

Zigzag through just a few of the energy-related activities and research initiatives going on around campus. Check out Energy Night at the MIT Museum, find out about an exciting new energy storage device, the nanotechnology-enhanced ultracapacitor, and roll up to the Stata Center with the AltWheels caravan of alternatively-powered vehicles.