The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) focuses on the intersections of art, culture, and technology through performance, sound, video/film, photography, interrogative and eco-design, as well as experimental media and new genres. ACT's academic and research initiatives reflect the mission of the program, which is to operate as a critical studies and production-based laboratory connecting the arts with an advanced technological community. ACT emphasizes both knowledge production and knowledge dissemination. In the tradition of artist and educator Gyorgy Kepes, founder of MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) and an advocate of "art on a civic scale," ACT believes in artistic leadership as a vital voice that can initiate change, a critically transformative view of the world, and a civil responsibility to enrich cultural discourse.
ACT is an academic program situated in the Department of Architecture and is also a center that reports directly to the dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. ACT is home to the CAVS archive, hosts ACT research fellows, and organizes public events, exhibitions, and lectures.
The Future/Living Archive Project seeks to preserve and develop publicly accessible materials in the CAVS archive and to expand it by the addition of the Visual Arts Program archive and new content created by the ACT program. The CAVS archive contains historically significant materials concerning collaborative and time-based productions related to the work of nearly 100 internationally recognized artist-fellows over the past 44 years. ACT faculty, fellows, and students engage in advanced visual studies and research by implementing both an experimental and systematic approach to creative production and transdisciplinary collaboration. ACT seeks to connect research and curriculum through thematic clusters such as "Artistic Interventions: Creative Response to Conflict and Crisis," "Art, Culture and Public Sphere," "Interrogative and Eco-design," and "The Future of Body."
For further information, contact ACT, Room E15-212, 617-253-5229, fax 617-253-3977, act@mit.edu.