MIT Fast Thinking
| Hours: | 11 AM through 11 PM |
| Ages: | Teens, Adults |
| In/Outdoor: | Indoor |
| Cost: | Free see below |
| Category: | Music & Concerts |
March 5, 2011
Kresge Little Theater & Kresge Auditorium at MIT
48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA
A 12-hour marathon that demonstrates the outcome of pioneering research at the intersection of music, technology, and brain science. MIT FAST Thinking is part of MIT FAST — a three-month-long festival celebrating MIT’s 150th birthday and its revolutionary work at the intersection of art, science, and technology. Read more about the FAST Festival http://arts.mit.edu/fast.
11 AM–1 PM Kresge Little Theater
Pawan Sinha | Insights from New Sight
MIT Professor Pawan Sinha’s groundbreaking work on how the brain extracts meaning from sights and sounds has enabled him and his team both to restore sight to children born blind and “listen in” on how the brain hears music. Sinha will talk about this work and demonstrate his “Brain Jukebox,” a tool that reconstructs sound sequences from the mental patterns of listeners and plays it back to the audience.
2 PM–4 PM Kresge Little Theater
Peter Child | Musical Patois: Reflections of Language in Music
This discussion/interactive performance explores the roots and relationships of rhythm and melody in music and language. MIT professor and award-winning composer Peter Child, Aniruddh Patel of the Neuroscience Institute, USC engineering professor and pianist Elaine Chew, and computer science researcher Alexandre François of USC reveal how French and English music are tied to a composer’s native language. They demonstrate their findings with a fascinating variety of human- and computer-generated compositions.
4:30 PM–5:30 PM Kresge Little Theater
Fred Lerdahl | The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music
Fred Lerdahl, composer, theorist, and Columbia University professor, will lead a discussion about the evolution of speech from song and will play a recording of his new composition The First Voices for eight percussionists and three singers. Based on a text by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this brilliant piece is an homage to Lerdahl’s experience as a child listening to West African drumming and to Rousseau’s statement that “to speak and to sing were formerly one.”
7:00 PM–7:45 Kresge Auditorium
Preconcert discussion on music and language
John Harbison, Fred Lerdahl, Peter Child, Tod Machover
8:00 PM Kresge Auditorium
The Lontano Ensemble | The Language of Music Concert
London’s renowned Lontano Ensemble, in residence at MIT in the spring of 2011, has had a profound and enduring impact on the contemporary classical music scene since its creation in 1976. During FAST Thinking, the Lontano will perform work by some of the most influential, inventive, and radical names in contemporary music, including MIT faculty composers John Harbison, Evan Ziporyn, Charles Shadle, and Peter Child.
Find out more about FAST Thinking http://arts.mit.edu/fast/fast-thinking/
| COST | ↑ top |
FREE
| WEBSITE | ↑ top |
arts.mit.edu/fast/fast-thinking/
| LOCATION | ↑ top |
48 MASS AVE, Cambridge, MA, 02139 map
MIT's Kresge Little Theater & Kresge Auditorium
| TIPS | ↑ top |
- Listen to how the brain hears music--you'll never forget it!
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