MIT Media Lab

The November edition of the Media Lab's LinkedIn newsletter is available now!

The Media Lab’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in the areas of Cultivating Creativity, Constructionist Learning, and Human Flourishing. Applications are due December 31. Please share with your networks!

Media Lab Professor Pattie Maes, a pioneer in human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence, talks to the MIT Industrial Liaison Program about how her work prioritizes people. “The Media Lab tends to emphasize the human and societal impact of emerging technologies,” she says. “Here we try to think hard about how cutting-edge technologies might improve people's lives.” https://lnkd.in/g6JdQWfU

Watch: At 10:40am ET, Media Lab Professor Deb Roy takes the stage at the Project Liberty Summit for “Tech Track: An Innovator’s Guide to Building a Better Web,” with Paul Allen, Vivian Schiller, Glen Weyl, and Zoe Kalar. Register for the livestream! https://lnkd.in/esQN_ZJr

Happening RIGHT NOW: Watch Media Lab Director, Dava Newman on a panel titled: A Roadmap for a Better Web at the Project Liberty Summit on the Future of the Internet. REGISTER FOR LIVESTREAM at: https://lnkd.in/esQN_ZJr

Congratulations to Professor Ramesh Raskar, head of the Media Lab’s Camera Culture research group, on receiving The Royal Photographic Society Award for Imaging Science for 2024! This award recognizes sustained excellence or a notable contribution to the advancement or application of imaging science.

Watch: The World Economic Forum highlights three new technologies revealing the impacts of climate change, including advanced visualizations that can be experienced in augmented or virtual reality. Developed at the MIT Media Lab, these interactive, intuitive explorations of complex data can be used to help leaders make climate decisions.

With “Jordan and the jam_bot: a work-in-progress performance,” acclaimed keyboardist Jordan Rudess brought his signature blend of innovation and virtuosity to the Media Lab, showcasing a unique blend of human and machine improvisation. The performance was the public debut of an AI model called the jam_bot, which Rudess developed with researchers from the Media Lab’s Responsive Environments group. During the concert, the jam_bot engaged in a musical dialogue with Rudess and violinist Camilla Bäckman. The live performance also featured a kinetic sculpture that responded dynamically to the jam_bot’s musical contributions. Throughout the show, Rudess and Bäckman exchanged musical cues, while interactions with the jam_bot highlighted the potential for AI to collaborate creatively in real time. This project was a collaborative effort led by Professor Joseph Paradiso and graduate students Lancelot Blanchard and Perry Naseck, and included continuous input and data from Rudess. Rudess has been a pioneer in integrating AI into music; the jam_bot project exemplifies "symbiotic virtuosity," where human and computer duet in real time, creating performance-worthy new music live on stage. “The goal is to create a musical visual experience,” says Rudess, “to show what’s possible and to up the game.” He’s also interested in the model’s potential applications in musical technology and education, saying “This work has legs beyond just entertainment value.” Professor Paradiso adds, “At the Media Lab, it’s so important to think about how AI and humans come together for the benefit of all. How is AI going to lift us all up? Ideally it will do what so many technologies have done — bring us into another vista where we’re more enabled.” https://lnkd.in/gY-PysNN

Congratulations to all of the honorees in TIME's Best Inventions of 2024, which include a number of Media Lab spinoffs and companies supported by the E14 Fund, the early-stage venture capital firm from and for the MIT and Media Lab startup community: BRELYON, Formlabs, Guardian Agriculture, and OVERJET.

“PortaChrome,” a portable light system and design tool that can change the color and textures of various objects, could enable surfaces to display dynamic patterns like health data and fashion designs. Developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the University of California, Berkeley, and Aarhus University, including Media Labber Cedric Honnet, the system was presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2024).