ALBERSxMIT

Anni Albers’s 1959 exhibition, Pictorial Weavings, held at The New Gallery in MIT’s Charles Hayden Memorial Library marked an important moment in her career and a crossing of the paths of two significant approaches to material and technology. Continuing the fundamental material investigation at the heart of MIT and of Anni and Josef Albers’s teaching and artmaking, four scholars and artists from the Albers Foundation will pair with faculty and students from MIT for this one-day program of talks and workshops.

Material as Inquiry, Technology as Vision in Motion

Zach Lieberman, Associate professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Future Sketches Group, Chloe Bensahel, affiliate researcher at the Media Lab, Gediminas Urbonas, Associate Professor in the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, and Fritz Horstman, Education Director at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, will explore the rich pedagogical lineage of Material Studies—from the experimental curriculum of the German Bauhaus, through Black Mountain College, and into the research culture of MIT. Reflecting on figures such as Anni and Josef Albers, György Kepes, and László Moholy-Nagy, the conversation draws on Moholy-Nagy’s concept of “Vision in Motion” to consider how education rooted in material experimentation fosters new ways of seeing, sensing, and imagining. Together, they will discuss how materials and methods shape thought, and how technology can be reimagined not as a tool, but as a generative space of inquiry and imagination, also leaning on research projects conducted at the Media Lab.

Hands-on workshops based on the classroom exercises developed by Anni and Josef Albers will be open for students and faculty on a drop-in basis.

Interacting with Color: Experiment with the phenomena of color relativity, illusions of transparency, after-image, and more, drawn from Josef Albers’s seminal 1963 book Interaction of Color.

Texture Studies: As assistant professor at Black Mountain College, Anni Albers developed a curriculum that included “pre-textile” studies. Learn about the language of texture by manipulating paper and cardboard with pressure and pin pricks.

Stamp and Repeat: Using only their typewriters, Anni Albers’s students created texture studies that mimicked the appearance of textile. We will experiment with this idea using rubber letter stamps and ink pads, as well as making our own stamps by wrapping rubber bands around wooden blocks.

Small frame-loom weaving

Make a small-scale weaving. Using a few basic weaving techniques and a variety of fibers, we’ll explore the tactile and structural qualities of textiles and the fibers used to construct them.

The Anonymous Designer as Radical: A Reading of Anni Albers
Amy Jean Porter, Assistant Curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

Artist & Technician: Collaboration and Process in Josef Albers’s Printmaking
Kyle Goldbach, Collections Assistant at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

To Let Threads be Articulate: Anni Albers and Materials
Karis Medina, Associate Curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

Also featuring presentations from:

• Future Sketches Group, MIT Media Lab
• Alfonso Parra Rubio, researcher, Center for Bits and Atoms
• Erik Demaine, Professor in Computer Science,
• Martin Demaine, Robotics engineer, CSAIL, MIT glass lab
• Marcelo Coehlo, department of Architecture, Design Intelligence Lab
• Ekaterina Kormilitsyna, artist and researcher, Center for Bits and Atoms
• Vlasta Kubušová, researcher, Center for Bits and Atoms

And many more!

Host or Publisher MIT Morningside Academy for Design