The List Visual Arts Center is a contemporary art museum at MIT that showcases dozens of special exhibitions annually. When I visited in March, the theme was before projection, and it was showing video cultures from 1974 to 1995. From chatting with the organizers, the curator wanted to show how monitors were used sculpturally, and the purpose was to communicate that while monitor is an old technology, there is still a lot one can do with it. She highlighted that people aren’t limited by technology. Since MIT doesn’t have a fine art program, the space is intended to expose art to the MIT community, including the students, faculty, and staff. On opening day of each exhibit, it can attract hundreds of people, and on any typical day, it sees anywhere from 25 to 75 people.

The exhibit felt quite spacious, so it was easy to walk around the place. There was mostly nothing in the way of traffic, making the path very clear. Each exhibit was also physically separated from each other, so that was a nice touch. The walls were painted a milky white, and they contrasted nicely with the black monitors. The space was very clean and minimal, giving off the feel of a freshly furnished room.

The exhibits were very immersive because most pieces were 3D. I was able to hear sounds coming from each exhibit, and when I was looking at the Video Ping Pong, I almost felt like I was actually playing the game. However, I wasn’t allow to touch anything in the exhibit so I couldn’t actually immerse myself into the exhibit physically. All of the pieces were at least as big as me, and that helped to personify it. From talking to another engineer after he finished walking around the museum, he shared that “it worked for me because it explored the application of technology in an artistic environment. But the one with the water flowing and upside down monitors, I didn’t care”.

The exhibit also felt very busy. While I was looking at the Video Ping Pong, the sounds and light from several other exhibit distracted me from behind. It was really difficult to concentrate on any particular piece because of the contribution from the other pieces.

• It was very spacious! Making it easy to navigate!
• It was clean and minimal! Encouraging me to spend more time there.
• It was immersive because of sound, light, human scale, and 3 dimensions!
• It prohibits flash photography and video! in order to force people to focus, and experience videos through monitors, which was how videos were served for a long time before the digital age.
• It’s free! Since it’s attached to the institute

• Too distracting! It was very difficult to concentrate on any particular piece because of the light and sound distraction from the nearby pieces.
• The exhibits wasn’t immersive enough. Despite the audio and visual outputs, I really wanted to touch the exhibit in order to fully immerse myself. I wanted to feel the edges and understand the texture, but the rules prohibited me from touching. I would have been able to better appreciate the pieces if I could have interacted with it more intimately. Imagine some children coming to the exhibit with their parents, they would be bored out of their mind if they can only look!
• Some pieces appealed to very specific audiences. The engineer that I interviewed said he “didn’t care” about some of the pieces because they lacked interesting technical parts.

• In order to minimize distraction while maintaining the immersive outputs from each display, the outputs should be designed more intentionally. First, the sound should be sent directly to the audience. This can be accomplished through location tracking earphones that activate whenever the user walks into a specific region of the room. This can be implemented by creating an app. Most MIT affiliates probably own a smart phone and earphones, so they can easily download an app with their phones which outputs specific sound files to their earphones based on the location. Another method is through directional speakers that aim at speakers standing at a specific region of the room. This requires a hardware upgrade by the Art Center which can be quite costly.
• The art pieces can be designed to include physical interaction. Some parts of the art can light up or perform some relevant action when the user activate it with some remote input, and become even more beautiful and cool. The input can be a physical button, a digital button, a movement, a voice command… The possibilities are endless, and they would all actively involve the user with the art. The museum goer is no longer just a spectator, but he would become part of the art through the physical connection.

• https://listart.mit.edu/about
• https://listart.mit.edu/exhibitions/projection-video-sculpture-1974-1995
• https://bestwaterproofspeaker.com/best-directional-speakers/