MIT Kicks Off Three-Month Arts Festival with 80 Events, New Music Building
MIT’s first Artfinity festival merges art and technology with an interactive effort to help create personal connections through storytelling and AI. Tonight, projections of human eyes will glow overnight in the MIT Dome as part of “Gaze to the Stars,” an award-winning installation by Behnaz Farahi, director of the MIT Media Lab’s Critical Matter Group.
In the project, developed with 11 students and an independent contractor, participants enter an immersive pod where they tell stories about their lives to an AI guide as they gaze into a mesmerizing visual display of stars. An AI voice representing the MIT Dome reacts to participants’ reflections via prompts, taking them on an exploratory journey.
The accounts are everything from joyous to challenging, and they mirror the range of human experience. A research assistant named Krystal Jiang experienced the whole thing, then her thoughts were transcribed and her words encoded — as an image of her iris — to be projected on the MIT Dome. One visiting student researcher, Alix Aubert, described the experience as terrifying and beautiful, noting how the depth of emotion in participants’ eyes was recorded in the photographs.
Using the system Artfinity, MIT hopes to illustrate the balance of art and technology and show that digital art can enhance human interaction and connection. “It’s to show that the arts are very important and very central to the lives of people at MIT,” said Marcus Thompson, festival co-lead and professor of music.
Farahi envisions expanding the project beyond MIT, with portable versions designed to reach a broader audience, starting with Greater Boston. She hopes to create a deeper understanding of the human experience by including both uplifting and challenging narratives. The Artfinity Festival continues to push the boundaries of innovation and expression, merging art, AI, and storytelling in a way that sparks introspection and connection.
