CENTER FOR ADVANCED VISUAL STUDIES

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) offers a teaching and research environment that fosters collaborations between artists, scientists, and technologists. These are typically built around art projects undertaken by resident Fellows, who also conduct seminars and supervise undergraduate participation. An emerging mission of the CAVS is the exploration of the digital arts as a common ground for large-scale collaborative projects.

Stephen A. Benton, E. Rudge (`48) and Nancy Allen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, became Director of the CAVS on July 1, 1996, succeeding Prof. Krzysztof Wodiczko. Prof. Benton has been affiliated with the Center since 1977, and has collaborated with several Fellows in the area of holographic art. He also directs the Spatial Imaging Group at the Media Laboratory, and teaches in the Media Arts and Sciences academic program.

Planning for new quarters for the CAVS were undertaken with the advice of Centerbrook Architects and Planners, of Essex, Connecticut, and renovations have begun on the third floor of Building N52 for occupancy in Fall 1998. Comprehensive digital arts facilities will be installed there as a basis for new work at the Center.

An extensive collaboration with the Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade, of Lisbon, Portugal, and conferences with present and former Fellows of the Center resulted in an extensive proposal to the management of Expo'98 (Lisbon) for a stand-alone public art exhibition for presentation next summer at Expo'98. The overall theme of Expo'98 is "Oceans, a heritage for the future," for which the CAVS is proposing an immersive computer-graphic display of "data art" relating to the oceans. Further development with the USIA (the USA pavilion management) and NASA (for satellite data visualization) is currently underway.

The Center was particularly well represented at the October, 1996, "Holographic Network" art & science conference at the Academie der Künste, Berlin, Germany, by invited presentations by Prof. Benton, Prof. Emeritus Piene (keynote lecturer), Senior Fellows Elizabeth Goldring and Paul Earls, and Affiliate Seth Riskin.

Activities of Fellows during 1996-97 included:

• Paul Earls was elected a Founding Board Member of the International Kepes Society at its First International Light Symposium, Eger, Hungary. Paul is now a Senior Fellow at the Center.

• Susan Gamble completed her work on holographic imaging of textual materials.

• Elizabeth Goldring's work on "visual poetry for the blind" continued in collaboration with Dr. Robert Webb of the Schepens Eye Research Institute, Boston. Ms. Goldring's work has been widely reported, on the "ABC Evening News" and the BBC "Tomorrow's World" programs for example. Elizabeth is now a Senior Fellow at the Center, and Head of its Vision Arts Group.

• Piotr Kowalski completed his "MIT<->Lyon Information Transcript Project," which provided instantaneously translated communication between the Lyon Art Biennale and MIT's Lobby 7 via the Internet.

• Professor Emeritus Otto Piene serves as Director Emeritus, and also as Secretary of the MIT Advisory Committee on Art, Science and Technology (with CAVS sponsorship). Prof. Piene's work is the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the City Art Museum, Düsseldorf, Germany, that opened this year.

• Professor Krzysztof Wodiczko is now Head of the Center's Interrogative Design Group, and with Adam Whiton maintains a small studio within the Wiesner Building, where Media Lab students interact with the questions Prof. Wodiczko's work raises. In the Fall of 1996, Prof. Wodiczko presented "Projekcja Publiczna," a large-scale video projection on the tower of the Town Hall of Krakow, Poland.

• Gloria Brown-Simmons organized a study of "creative visualization" as a tool to permit artists to use scientific data as a starting point for aesthetic explorations.

• Robert Dell installed his unique geothermal sculpture "Reykjavik/MIT/Yellowstone" in the Kresge Oval this Spring.

More information about the CAVS can be found on the World Wide Web at this URL: http://web.mit.edu/mit-cavs/www/

Stephen A. Benton

MIT Reports to the President 1996-97