“I try to provide equipment and inspiration, and then I try to get out of her way,” says Higgason, whose own work ranges from stage projections for operas in Milan and Berlin to video and lighting design for Radiolab. Their collaboration later morphed into an Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program. He found the space - a first-floor rehearsal room in the MIT Theater Arts building - and created a laboratory assistant position for her, giving her access to the space and equipment whenever she wanted. In June, shortly before returning to campus, she contacted Higgason to ask for help finding a space on campus where she could work, uninterrupted, on her art. She took the spring 2021 semester off to work on her art, and without an audience or classmates to give feedback, she posted her creations on Instagram and developed a following. She kept up with her MIT coursework through the end of 2020 during that time she learned how to in an urban design class. Those few spring weeks Nakamura intended to spend in Tokyo became months, extending through fall and winter. “And working from Japan, she produced a brilliant final project, a digital collage of analogue images and textures that responded to frequencies of notes she played on the piano.” “Before she left, we met on the steps of her dorm and I handed her a motion-sensing camera,” says Higgason, a video, lighting, scenic, and interactive designer and a technical instructor in MIT’s Theater Arts program. In March, Nakamura flew back to Japan for what she thought would be a few weeks. That changed in the spring of her first year when she enrolled in Joshua Higgason’s course “Interactive Design and Projection for Live Performance.” Because of Covid-19, the course soon became virtual. Nakamura came to MIT in 2019 intending to study physics or history. It was only on the first night of the show that I saw everything complete.” So much had to be planned and estimated beforehand. With this project, there were only a few opportunities for me to actually see it on the Simmons’ façade. “Working inside, projecting onto a blank wall, I have all the time I need to experiment and revise. “This project was different from anything I’d done before,” says Nakamura, who spends much of her time on campus in a first-floor rehearsal space in W97 experimenting with technologies, software, and materials. There were many challenges and technical hurdles to overcome. The ambitious project was supported with funding from the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT) with additional support from the Music and Theater Arts Section and the Arts at MIT. The pixels, together, composed shifting, colored forms and shapes that flickered across the façade as if on an old low-resolution computer monitor. Each metal frame on Simmons became an individual pixel. The projectors, in turn, sent animated images onto the façade. The captured audio was transformed into digital data and channeled to a computer controlling three projectors. Working from a table in Briggs field about 100 feet from the dorm designed for MIT by Steven Holl Architects, with a generator to power her equipment, Nakamura invited viewers to speak into a microphone. She titled her installation projection “116 x 31,” after the numbers of horizontal and vertical squares that form Simmons’ metal frame. “I didn’t know if we would get permission to project onto Simmons,” says Nakamura, who on three successive evenings in April projected dynamic pixelated images onto Simmons’ windowed façade. New entrance will remove current bottleneck and improve heating and cooling in the main building.It’s known on campus as “The Sponge.” But last month, undergraduate design major Karyn Nakamura transformed the iconic façade of Simmons Hall into a scintillating interactive canvas. Redesigned Entrance and 1st Floor An addition to the front of the building will add seating and provide a 24 hour study space. The 4th floor will be removed and a large student area that includes group study rooms will be constructed. Government Documents and other collections will be moved from the 3rd and 4th floor. Need for quiet, comfortable study niches.Older areas of the Library are dingy and poorly lit.Designated quiet areas and seating designated for group interaction are adjacent or poorly defined.Private space for small groups is limited.Noise, particularly near the front entrance.Morgan Library Renovation and Expansion Current Building Issues: $16.8 million student funded renovation and expansion of Morgan Library Nov.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |