The Galleries at MIT.nano

Location:
First and second floor, south-side hallways at MIT.nano (map)

Hours:
9 AM to 6 PM, daily

GALLERY 1: First floor

West:

GUTBOX VM
Aubrie James & Caitlin Morris
AR model with sound | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

How do we cultivate intimacy with entities and spaces that exist at incomprehensible scales? In GUTBOX VM, we use augmented reality to enter the black box of the nanotechnology lab, only to discover a performative simulation of the inner workings of our own guts. Such perceptual inversion allows us to contemplate a scale, not just particles manipulated in the meticulously controlled environment of MIT.nano’s cleanroom, but also bits and pieces of the scientists’ invisible bodies protected by white bunnysuits.

VIBRATIONS
Lili Sun | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program
Risograph prints on paper

To protect decisive microscopes from outside interference, MIT.nano’s Characterization floor utilizes advanced technology to stabilize and shelter the building’s expected conditions. Most of the incoming vibrations from the neighboring subway station and the highway that reaches the facility are embodied within the lower spectrum – between 20 and 200 Hz. Lili Sun uses Chladni plate experiments to visualize this incoming energy, displaying low-frequency Chladni plate patterns printed on thin, fragile paper sheets suspended from the corridor ceiling. Scarcely noticeable vibrations are translated into subtle but visible space interventions.

One.MIT
Permanent installation celebrating the contributions of the people of MIT, from 1861 to the present.

MIT News on One.MIT  Visit the One.MIT website

East:

SEED (INNER LANDSCAPE)
Alejandro Medina
Video on LCD monitor | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

SEED (INNER LANDSCAPE) collects microscopic footage of various plant seeds at different optical scales, particularly food crops used for human nutrition that are currently at risk of extinction. The video slowly pans through the outer layer of seeds, like a flight over an alien landscape, while the seed image blossoms and sheds new skin. Displayed on monitors between regular MIT.nano announcements, it reminds the viewer that standing on the frontier of knowledge is always a precarious endeavor.

OBSCURED INVISIBILITY
Hyun Woo Park
Two-photon polymerization (2PP) sculpture, silicon wafer | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

OBSCURED INVISIBILITY reflects upon our overreaching reliance on visual sensing in producing knowledge and understanding of art and science. With the help of the Portela Research Group, Hyun constructed a nanoscale sculpture with visibility further obscured and mystified by nesting a sculpture upon a divine message to prevent a sneak peek from even the most decisive microscopes. What is left to the viewer is a seemingly empty wafer, a flat pedestal for invisible sculpture, a simple object of contemplation.

BACTERIAL CONSENT
Ishraki Kazi
Backlit photographic print on canvas | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

This work investigates the complexities of accessing the consciousness of microorganisms using synthetic biology to probe human and non-human engagement via biotechnology and also questions the modalities through which science begins to observe, analyze, and represent bacterial consciousness and agency.

🝡, 🜶, 🝮
Ardalan SadeghiKivi 
3D printed PLA object, googly eyes, inkjet print | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

In the series Epitaxy, animal figures hidden in graphs are the pareidolic prima materia brought to life through computational transmutation. The graphs are obtained from an experimental laboratory in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT that studies spin dynamics and spin-electronics in nanoscale magnetic materials and devices.

GALLERY 2: Second floor

West:

INFINITE REPLICAS
Kwan Q Li
Acrylic prints with slimline case | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

INFINITE REPLICAS delves into the immense visibility bestowed by new scientific and technological imaging tools and asks, “what is (not) to be seen?” This project probes the dichotomy and yet resonance of visual surveying between art and science by returning to one of their earlier convergences: life drawing. A life drawing session was hosted by the artist in the machinal room of MIT.nano, alongside a series of modeling portraits in the cleanroom gowns of the artist herself, which together explores evolving tension amongst body politics, art representations, and technological advancements. 

GROWTH FACTOR
James Lough
Inkjet print on textile | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

GROWTH FACTOR questions how life and death are visually identified and understood on different scales, from the cellular to the population level. Using a superimposed microscope and satellite images, this project compares protein-induced and protein-deprived cell growth to societal inequalities amongst contrasting communities in the United States: Palo Alto, CA, and Flint, MI. 

Micromosaics

Presentation of centuries-old mosaics, using tiny pieces of glass whose color is derived from nanoscale particles.

IRIDESCENT CONCRETE
Vijay Rajkumar
concrete tiles | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

When daylight floods this corridor, the black concrete tiles that form this work come alive in an iridescent multi-colored glow. Like in the wings of a morpho butterfly, the eye of a peacock feather, and the back of a CD disc, iridescence in these concrete tiles results from structural coloration. The micro-geometry of the surface of these tiles, which is invisible to the human eye, causes light to diffract and split into its component colors. No films or additives are applied. This work responds to both the changing lighting conditions throughout the day and the viewer’s movement.

Cast your phone’s flashlight over the tiles’ surface for the iridescence to emerge.

East:

A CHROMOSOME X BITE OF A BANANA
Grant Knappe 
Inkjet print | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

As humanity generates more data at faster speeds, silicon-based technologies will soon fail to store this data, and storing information in biological media could supplement silicon. This work explores the accelerating industry of biological information storage by mapping information from a banana’s DNA to color code.

MAY I PLEASE MAKE YOU SOME SOUP?
Simone Lassar
Booklet, Prints on paper | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program
This project experiments with the limits of performing everyday acts and bringing ordinary ingredients into a scientific setting of MIT.nano cleanroom through a cookbook that illustrates and narrates different phases of making a vegetable soup that uses pieces of equipment such as a Cryostat, Fluorescing microscope, and CT scanner.

IS YOU DANCING OR IS YOU STRETCHING?
Christopher Joshua Benton
AR model with sound, inkjet print on textile | Part of the zero.zerozerozerozerozerozerozerozerozero exhibit by the MIT Art, Culture, & Technology Program

Using motion capture and photogrammetry as a point of departure, The Chocolate City Dance Map is a cartography of Black somatic choreographic movements assembled in collaboration with MIT.nano’s Immersion Lab. At the intersection of art, science, technology, and social practice, The Chocolate City Dance Map will come to life in this installation titled IS YOU DANCING OR IS YOU STRETCHING? as an immersive AR experience that captures and superimposes frames of a dancer’s movement encapsulated in a sculptural form.