ppppress Exhibition in Wiesner Gallery
December 6–January 21
Virtual productions by students across MIT engaging with the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative, 2019-2021
Celebrating two years of operation (one and a half of them in a global pandemic), the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative (TSI) of the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) presents an exhibition of student work; beginning with the cellphone video made in the first subject taught with TSI curriculum development funds to the latest AR production that engages the dramatic street demonstrations during the Black Lives Matter protests, bringing these events “home” during the pandemic. Spatialized storytelling brings SA+P’s research into architecture and urbanism together with the expanding technologies of virtual production while TSI students push the boundaries of these tools into new directions and urgent current events.
On display October 18 – November 23, 2021 in the Wiesner Student Art Gallery
Physical Location: Wiesner Student Art Gallery, W20-209
Virtual Location: http://transmedia.mit.edu/unbounded
Architectural modeling was once a 2D affair. New virtual production tools and laser scanned point clouds have brought robust 3D capacities into the hands of makers across disciplines, uniquely capable of benefitting from the convergence of the spatial story-telling capacities of designers and the narrative urgencies of today.
The tools of 3D modeling and storytelling were well-known before the global pandemic, but their use in teaching and production has dramatically accelerated under the pressure of remote learning situations. Students are burning with the desire to create immersive spatialized worlds, bringing their experience as gamers and makers to bear on the social issues they feel passionate about. Projects on exhibition will range from the cellphone that tells the story of its possession by a recycled predecessor suffering as e-waste, to the cinematic split screen that toggles between a pandemic workstation occupied by a human and its clean, virtual clone, to the point-cloud interactive metaverse now associated with memory itself.
Exhibition venue will be the Wiesner Gallery in the MIT Student Center at the heart of campus, a hub of activity for the MIT community of 40,000 students, post-docs, staff, and faculty. Positioned as the main Fall Semester exhibition, Unbounded will include monitor loops of videos documenting 3D and other projects, a full graphic timeline of the 100+ transmedia student projects, and a carefully curated showcase for the best immersive XR and projection works by students in professional graduate programs such as Architecture, visual art (the Art, Culture, Technology program), and Comparative Media Studies.
Participating artists include:
Catherine Lie & Caroline White-Nockelby – Precious
Lily Xie & Melissa Teng – Washing
Kelly Wagman – Feminist Utopias
Stratton Coffman – Crowd Scores
Megan Prakash, Wonki Kang , Wuyahuang Li, Kwan Q Li (SMACT ’22) – Embodying Narrative
Kwan Q Li (SMACT ’22) – Insomniac/Amnesiac
Lauren Gideonse & Adriana Giorgis – Building Longevity
Rae Yuping Hsu (SMACT ’20) – Feline Intelligence
Yaara Yacoby – 03.2020-03.2021
Vijay Rajkumar – Light as a Wave (PT. 2): The Closer You Are
Jeffrey Landman – Screen Time
Ardalan SadeghiKivi – Entosis
Luíza Bastos Lages (SMACT ’20) – Entre Noite, Entre Dia
Ambar Reyes – Amada y Generosa
Produced by the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative, MIT*
* Additional partnership from MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), MIT.nano, MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality, Virtual Experience Design Lab at MIT, The Art, Culture, and Technology program (ACT) at MIT, Department of Architecture at MIT.
