Matthew Wisnioski: Aesthetic Virtue in the Defense Institute

Matthew Wisnioski studies the many collaborations between artists, engineers, and scientists in the 1960s from the engineers’ and scientists’ perspective. His paper will examine the dramatic transformations in MIT’s art scene in the postwar period, when the Institute created art courses for engineers, opened the Hayden Gallery, established a faculty Committee on the Visual Arts, and pioneered art/science/technology collaboration in the Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He argues that for scientists and engineers, art was not a neutral or incidental pursuit; it conjured contradictory values of hybridity and purity; elite expertise and participatory democracy; the neutrality of knowledge and its inherent politics. Scientists, engineers, and artists alike shared the discordant desire to make technology human. This presentation was part of "Systems, Process, Art, and the Social" a FAST event held on February 4, 2011, as part of MIT’s 150th Anniversary.

Channel: MIT TechTV Video Length: 21m 37s Date Found: Fri, Jun 03 2011 9:12 AM Category: Educational Date Produced: Thu, Jun 02 2011 2:23 PM View Count: 0