We're hosting the first of many regional alumni gatherings on August 27 in San Francisco. We hope you (and a guest) will join Media Lab Director Joi Ito, several Media Lab faculty members and researchers, and some of your fellow alumni from 7-9pm for a casual get-together at San Francisco's Bluxome Street Winery. This should be a great chance to catch up with old friends and meet new ones.

view more ›

We envision a public space that is populated with active visual surfaces. Where there is a sign, there can be a display. Similarly, we assume an equally dense population of normal cameras. The work of this thesis is to use that ensemble of equipment, both personal and environmentally deployed, to build rich information exchanges where the visual data is simultaneously useful to human observers and camera devices. The screens are both displays and data transmitters.

view more ›

In this dissertation research, we explore ways of using audio on AR applications, as it is especially suitable for mobile users when their eyes and hands are not necessarily available and they have limited attention capacity. While most previous mobile AR audio systems were mostly tested in sparse audio maps, we want to create a system that can be challenged by a city load of information.

view more ›

This work seeks to demonstrate the applicability of a digital material approach in designing new cellular materials and methods for assembly of structures with static reconfigurability.

view more ›

This work describes a framework for the design and study an online community of amateur creators. Monroy-Hernandez focuses on remixing as the lens to understand the contexts and processes of creative expression as it is fostered within social media environments. He is motivated by three broad questions:

1. Environment: what kind of attributes influence people's remixing practices?
2. Process: how people do people remix functional role of remixing in cultural production and social learning?

view more ›

This dissertation will examine what a first person viewpoint means in the context of data visualization and how it can be used for navigating and presenting large datasets. Recent years have seen rapid growth in Big Data methodologies throughout scientific research, business analytics, and online services. The datasets used in these areas are not only growing exponentially larger, but also more complex, incorporating heterogeneous data from many sources that might include digital sensors, websites, mass media, and others.

view more ›

We have long assumed that being face-to-face is the best environment for social interaction. But is "being there" the best we can aspire to?

view more ›

Music has been shown to be an essential part of the human experience---every known society engages in music. However, as universal as it may be, music has evolved into a variety of genres peculiar to particular cultures. In fact, people acquire musical skill, understanding, and appreciation specific to the music they have been exposed to. This process of enculturation builds mental structures that form the cognitive basis for musical expectation.

view more ›

This exhibition of over 20 internationally created holograms is opening at the start of the 9th International Symposium on Display Holography being held for the first time in Boston, at MIT from June 26 - 29, 2012. Co-chaired by Seth Riskin and Michael Bove, the Symposium is presented by the MIT Museum and the MIT Media Lab. The exhibition is open to the public until September 28, 2013.

view more ›

CIO Keynote Panel
The dual mandates of the CIO: Cost efficiency and value delivery while supporting growth and innovation

view more ›