Gary Van Zante, Curator, MIT Museum, Teresa Neff, Lecturer in Music
Enrollment: Advance sign-in preferred
Sign-up by 01/02
Limited to 25 participants
Attendance: Attendance at all preferrred
Museums are mostly about visual experience and increasingly about interactive and immersive learning environments that engage visitors with objects and their history. Conceptualizing and designing exhibitions about music presents a special challenge.
Descriptions of a musical performance can be supplemented by documents, graphics, and visual material, but the “artifact” is not a physical object, but the experience of listening. The only records of most historical music performances are musical scores, reviews, and commentaries. When describing these performances, it can be difficult to engage the imagination without resorting to technical terminology, which can alienate a general audience.
Listening is at the heart of music and if the focus is music of the past, then how can we experience this in a museum or any other setting? Can a past performance be recreated? Can participants (other than the curator) manipulate elements of a performance to fit their idea of what a performance from the past might have been? Can the participant be part of that performance?
This IAP class will begin to develop a dynamic application for interactive historical performance. Utilizing Messiah performances by the Handel and Haydn Society, we will recreate and manipulate these performances in reverse chronological order ending with 1815. And we will investigate whether this same process can be used not only in museum settings, but to disseminate live concerts in a more enticing way today.
Sponsor(s): MIT Museum, Music and Theater Arts
Contact: Teresa Neff, 10-263, 617 452-3212, TNEFF@MIT.EDU
| Jan/09 | Thu | 01:00PM-03:00PM | 4-160, Bring your own laptop |
| Jan/16 | Thu | 01:00PM-03:00PM | 4-160, Bring your own laptop |
| Jan/23 | Thu | 01:00PM-03:00PM | 4-160, Bring your own laptop |
| Jan/30 | Thu | 01:00PM-03:00PM | 4-160, Bring your own laptop |
This IAP class will begin to develop a dynamic application for interactive historical performance. Utilizing Messiah performances by the Handel and Haydn Society, we will recreate and manipulate these performances in reverse chronological order ending with 1815. And we will investigate whether this same process can be used not only in museum settings, but to disseminate live concerts in a more enticing way today.
Gary Van Zante - Curator, MIT Museum, Teresa Neff - Lecturer in Music