Music around town
Students staying on campus this summer should be happy that MIT is next to the lively city of Boston, Mass. and not Ithaca, N.Y. Here are some moderate-size, lower-cost venues that you should visit while you are still immune to p-sets.
GOING DIGITAL Maps of paint
Google Art Project was only unveiled in February, but already it has professional artists and amateur art lovers alike raving. It’s no wonder that people are impressed. A visit to the home page gives a crystal clear close-up of a famous painting. In the introduction video, painting after painting presents itself in proper Google Maps style as a voice tempts us to “discover hidden secrets, or get in close to see the most miniscule details, like the brushstrokes of van Gogh.”
ALBUM REVIEW Lost with a Valleyheart
By all rights, Los Angeles duo She Wants Revenge should trade in climaxes. The narratives of most of the songs on Valleyheart point dutifully at an acrobatic guitar solo or a cathartic spray of lovelorn bellowing that simply doesn’t arrive. The subwoofers are wired, but the bass never drops; the opener “Take The World” is five minutes spent absent-mindedly waiting for a gear change to kick. This furrow in their otherwise confident songwriting is baffling, but it makes the album sound like a series of promises breaking.
ARCHITECTURE@MIT MIT welcomes 21st century design
Archiprix International is an exhibition of the best graduation projects from top architecture design programs around the world. The biennial event was founded in 2001 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, as an attempt to create a global context for architecture education, and Archiprix now has 1527 participating universities. This year, MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning is hosting Archiprix International 2011, from the end of May to beginning of June.
MOVIE REVIEW The last eight minutes
Don’t let the title fool you into thinking that Source Code is a hacker movie, or even about anything remotely related to Course VI. “Source Code” refers to a fictional technology that lets people revisit the last eight minutes of a dead person’s life. In the wake of a bombing attack on a Chicago-bound train, the government sends Army Capt. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) into the Source Code again and again to learn the identity of the bomber. Through repeated visits, Stevens falls for his fellow passenger Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan) and tries to find a way to save her, even after repeatedly being told by his commanding officers (Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright) that it would be pointless. Source Code, they explain, is “not time travel, but time reassignment.” If that didn’t make sense, don’t worry, because it’s all quantum mechanics and “parabolic calculus.” Tricky stuff indeed.
BALLET REVIEW Pure movement, pure beauty
Tearing myself away from campus during the MIT150 open house to watch Bella Figura was a difficult feat. But as I watched the ballet, I knew it was a worthy sacrifice. I glued my eyes to the stage, completely blown away by the beauty of movement and the emotions that the dancers imparted to the audience.
BOOK REVIEW Giving back the funk?
Perhaps I can explain the draw of Tony Rauch’s new book, eyeballs growing all over me … again, rather quickly through one analogy: The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (1984, Chris Van Allsburg). Harris Burdick was a collection of illustrations by Van Allsburg, each accompanied by a title and a single line of text. The goal, according to elementary school teachers, was to make children think creatively and come up with stories incorporating the text and the picture. “Mr. Linden’s Library,” a picture of a sleeping girl and vines sprouting from the binding of an open book in front of her, sparked a sea of creative juices from excited fifth graders; eyeballs does the same thing for the more mature reader.
INTERVIEW Storyteller of the ordinary and the fantastical
At age 37, independent film director, actress, artist, writer, and musician Miranda July already has various forms of creative work under her belt, ranging from web-based experimental projects to novels and multimedia performance. July’s stories, inspired by magical realism and the avant-garde, often involves ordinary settings and situations examined in great depths. Her most eminent work, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), won several awards, including Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. July visited Boston last week to present her latest movie, The Future, at The Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFBoston), which took place from April 27 to May 4 and had more than 100 film screenings in theaters across Cambridge and Boston. At a roundtable, The Tech had the opportunity to speak with July about independent films, the artistic process, and, yes, school.
MOVIE REVIEW Forget Jason Bourne — it’s time to meet Hanna!
Hanna opens with some beautiful panoramas of the beautiful, snow-covered remote wilderness of Finland. In this silent, almost enchanted landscape, a girl — later introduced as Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) — hunts and eventually kills a stag, demonstrating some unusual skills for a 16-year-old. Soon it becomes clear that Hanna has mostly been living alone with her father Erik (Eric Bana). Erik, a former CIA agent, has been training his daughter her entire life to become an assassin. The two have been hiding from civilization since the day she was born, and Hanna’s only knowledge of the outside world comes from the languages and information that her father teaches her from books. This knowledge remains very abstract to the girl, though. In one scene Hanna asks her father about the sound of music — she knows the definition of “music” from an encyclopedia but has never heard any. Ronan lists this curiosity as one of her favorite aspects of her character: “We meet her as she goes out on her own, and when she does she is fascinated by everyone and everything she comes across. My favorite quality of hers is that she is non-judgmental; she shows an open mind to, and a fascination with, everything.”
THEATER REVIEW The prosecution of genius
The lights rise in the black box at the Central Square Theater. Alan Turing (Allyn Burrows) speaks nervously with the constable (Dafydd Rees). He is reporting a personal theft — committed, we’ll discover, by a lover many years his junior. The losses themselves are trivial — clothes, half a bottle of sherry — but are reported out of principle. It is principle, and idiosyncrasy, that defines Turing. He is a man unable to be untrue about his ideals — whether they pertain to science, mathematics, or love.
EXHIBIT REVIEW And then there was glass
Dale Chihuly has been working with glass for over 40 years, and his newest collection of glass sculptures is now on display at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass is not your typical art exhibition, it’s a celebration of installation art and fragility at its very finest. Of course, before we give Chihuly all the credit, you should know that he does not work alone. A dislocated shoulder from a 1979 bodysurfing accident left him unable to hold a glassblowing pipe; since then, he has relied on a team of glassblowers to carry out his artistic plans. Chihuly classifies his role as “more choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more director than actor.” The result of these artistic collaborations is an oeuvre focused just as much on presentation as craftsmanship.
ALBUM REVIEW Arresting, thoughtful, accessible
I am sitting on an American Airlines flight when they have just served the same vile plastic egg-y mess they have always dished up for so-called breakfast. Untouchable — I simply fail to understand why they persist in throwing such muck at their passengers. The 777 is surprisingly noisy, at least where I am sitting. But I have a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and I have The Great Deep — a new album from Duo LiveOak — within reach.
CONCERT REVIEW Mellow, folksy, hypnotic
The Low Anthem. Iron and Wine. This was quite the contrast to the other concerts I attended over this long weekend. Think Random Hall versus Baker — that’s how radically different Iron and Wine is from both the metal/hardcore festival I attended on Saturday and the electro-reggae Major Lazer concert I attended on Sunday at Wellesley. Tuesday night was a prelude to getting focused again, musically pre-gaming for the days ahead, prepping for the return from the four-day weekend. The concert whispered to me, telling me that this was the final moment of relaxation before I had to head back to the slave camp that had already consumed some of my friends for the whole long weekend.
THEATER REVIEW A-M-A-Z-I-N-G
The MIT Musical Theater Guild is performing The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee as their spring show, and this production is nothing short of phenomenal. Wisecracks about the unwieldy name aside, the Guild has put their best foot forward with Spelling Bee, and the result is a must-see.
CONCERT REVIEW West Campus goes hardcore
New England Metal and Hardcore Festival: A three-day event designed for only the most HxC (“hardcore”) individuals. The NEMHF has occurred annually in Worcester, Mass., at the Palladium ever since the festival’s inception in 1999.
CONCERT REVIEW Fresh sound, stale performance
This is TV on the Radio, one of a kind: wind chimes attached to the guitar. Whistling and clapping. And a rotating siren light.
ARTS ON CAMPUS Not your typical East Asian festival
Last Saturday, the MIT Asian Dance Team (ADT) hosted Inspirasian, the inaugural Boston Asian Performing Arts Festival. The festival, held at Kresge Auditorium, featured performing groups from throughout the Greater Boston Area and included performances that represented both East and South Asia.
THEATER REVIEW Dramashop gets it on
During the past two weeks, MIT Theater Arts and Dramashop presented La Ronde (Let’s Get it On), an adaptation of the original play by Austrian author and dramatist Arthur Schnitzler. It was translated and directed for the MIT community by Anna C. Kohler, MIT Senior Lecturer in Theater Arts.
The man behind the lens
This is a story of a man and his city. The man — legendary fashion photographer Bill Cunningham — has faithfully documented street style for The New York Times for decades. The city, as seen through his lens, hosts a menagerie of creative getups ranging from the elegantly subtle to the outrageously flashy. Cunningham’s extensive portfolio serves as a comprehensive anthology of the last half-century of New York fashion. Even now, still energetic at age 80, he bikes through the heart of New York City every day, chronicling noteworthy outfits with his analog film camera.