M.I.T. For Art Lovers?
The words "art "and "M.I.T." are seldom
uttered in the same sentence. Yet recently I found myself at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology reveling among delights both technological and
aesthetically pleasing.
One enters the museum through a display of robots large and
small, complex and simple. Given my own right-brained propensity for the
humanities, I was more fascinated by robotic design than function–my favorites
being those whose features appealed most to my whimsical and human sides. Don't
ask me how any of them work, but I liked the cartoon and sci-fi-looking ones
and those that had a mad scientist feel about them, like one that reminded me
of Frankenstein's dog.
The occasion for going to M.I.T. was its recent reopening of
a gallery featuring the work of Arthur
Ganson (1955-). It originally opened in 1995, year one of Ganson's
four-year artist-in-residence term with the Mechanical Engineering Department.
If mechanical engineering and artist sound like a contradiction, get thee to
M.I.T. and see the reconfigured exhibition space titled Gestural Engineering: The Sculpture of Arthur Ganson. Ganson is
something of a geek Renaissance man–a sculptor, inventor, musician, and
engineer. I liken him to a more sophisticated version of Rube Goldberg. His
creations have all of Goldberg's whimsy and devotion to because-I-can
impracticality, but Ganson could (if pressed) explain the science behind his
machines. After all, you need to be able to do some serious math to create a
simply row of interlocking gears calibrated such that it will take 13.7 billion
years for the last gear to make one rotation. It also takes contemplation to
make fascinating an installation that is little more than a scoop bucket that
gathers motor oil and dumps it in a thick light-refracting cascade. His title? Machine with Oil–and it doesn't come
with a pretentious artist's statement claiming it to be a metaphor for
anything! Ditto Cory's Yellow Chair,
which is a miniature chair perched precariously upon a stone and dodging a
small plastic cat.
Ganson's kinetic sculptures are also driven by moxie.
Another creation fascinates though it is little more than a gearbox that moves set
of slender rods topped by thin slips of paper. The gears and small jets of air
cause the paper to move like clouds. I stood before it mesmerized, though even
I could see it was a dead simple machine. Other Ganson wonders such as Small Towers of 6 Gears are more overtly
sculptural and delicate and others–such as one that looks as if a wishbone man
is pulling a post- apocalyptic locomotive are deliciously. Ganson is also
fixated on how things come to gather and apart. Another small yellow chair
exhibit is a wall installation in which a yellow chair is prised apart by a
gear arrangement that takes those parts to star points and then snaps them back
together at the blink of an eye. It's akin to a scientist's version of a sand
mandala, except that it repeatedly constructs, deconstructs, and reconstructs.
Go see this exhibit and repeat this mantra: "M.I.T. It's not just for
geeks."
While you're there, check out a small exhibit devoted to
holography. M.I.T. professor Stephen
Benton is often credited with developing the first true hologram—for
Polaroid in 1968, but this exhibit sheds some light—if I may!–on the prehistory
and subsequent development of
holography.
My humanist brain was entertained even more by a gallery
devoted to M.I.T. pioneers in the field of photography. It includes two of my
favorites: Harold "Doc" Edgerton
(1903-90) and Berenice Abbott. Is there anyone who doesn't know Edgerton's
famed photo of a milk splash rising like a white crown? Yeah–but do you know
how he did it? You can both learn about the techniques of strobe lighting and
experiment with making you own images. Pretty cool!
Berenice Abbott
(1898-1991) is among the more famous names in photographic history and any
museum worth its salt has a few of her images in its collection. She is known
for her large format camera work, especially architectural detail, cityscapes,
and Depression Era urban social documents. Lesser known, but just as important,
are Abbott's photos used in science textbooks, especially works bordering on
abstraction that demonstrate physics principles.
This gallery is full of marvels for anyone who has pointed a
lens at a subject and wondered what happens to produce the images. It's small,
but choice and a stroll through photographic milestones from Eadweard Muybridge's
slow-motion shots to the present.
So…the next time you're in Cambridge, Massachusetts, take
the Red Line to Kendall and check out the M.I.T. Museum. M.I.T. for Art? You Bet!
