MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (MIT CAST)

he MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) creates new opportunities for art, science and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures and publications. The Center is funded in part by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

CAST solicits and supports cross-disciplinary curricular initiatives that integrate the arts into the core curriculum and create new artistic work or materials, media and technologies for artistic expression.

CAST supports graduate students and postdoctoral researchers whose work advances the mission of the Center.

The CAST Visiting Artists Program is distinctive for its emphasis on the research and development phase of artistic work. Residencies embed artists in the cutting-edge research and teaching at MIT, where scientists and engineers are open to artists’ speculative and hands-on way of working.

The program hosts artists from a wide range of visual and performing arts disciplines each academic year, exposing students to the creative process and fostering cross-fertilization among disciplines.
Launched in fall of 2016, the Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist position creates the opportunity for artists to shape new creative projects over a period of two years of sustained, in-depth research and development.

CAST assists in the presentation and curation of performing and visual arts or design relevant to the research of engineers, scientists and the MIT community as a whole.

The creative and intellectual production supported by the Center is disseminated to the public through performances, exhibitions, installations and a biennial symposium.