Haystack, MIT collaborate on interactive sculpture

DEER ISLE – If a metal sculpture could tell a story in its own language, what would it say? How would it sound?

Tom Joyce, a blacksmith artist from Santa Fe, and Justine Cassell, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab in Cambridge, Ma., had those questions in mind last weekend when they collaborated on an interactive metal sculpture. Part mythical sea creature, part high-tech computer, the piece has motion sensors that activate both sound and light when a viewer approaches. Recorded hammering sounds and a video light show, indeed, tell this sculpture’s story.

The untitled piece is the culminating work of “Digital Dialogues: Technology and the Hand,” a weekend symposium held at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, and sponsored by both Haystack and the MIT Media Lab. Light sensors, digital video and computers are not the typical materials used at Haystack, which holds summer studio workshops on clay, metals, weaving and printmaking. And sculptors are not exactly lining the halls at MIT’s Media Lab.

But symposium organizers wanted to bring the two seemingly disparate domains together purely to share ideas, whether in the art studio or the science lab. Mitchel Resnick runs the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Media Lab and studies new forms of learning for a digital society. He and Stuart Kestenbaum, executive director at Haystack, developed the symposium after meeting two years ago and realizing that their two institutions might have more in common than meets the eye. Or the hand, as the case may be, since both computers and crafts have a critical reliance on it.

Past that, Resnick and Kestenbaum both run creative centers where the old and the new constantly intersect. The Media Lab builds on early computer technologies, and Haystack artists use some of the earliest technologies known in human history, such as weaving and working with clay, to create contemporary craft objects.

It wasn’t a big leap for the two directors to realize that Haystack, tucked in among the trees and coves of Deer Isle, might allow a perfect, unpressured nexus, a think-tank weekend on art and science.

To that end, Resnick and Kestenbaum contacted about 60 professionals from the world of crafts and the world of digital media and encouraged them to pack their warmest fall clothes and attend the event. They arrived with laptop computers, micro cameras and cell phones (few of which worked effectively). When the group realized that there was only one modem line at Haystack, a satellite link and wireless system were immediately installed. “I doubt there have been this many computers at once at Haystack,” said Kestenbaum, who is more accustomed to seeing starlight than the blue illumination of a computer screen beaming on the central patio of the campus at night.

Among the lineup of participants were a composer from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., a ceramist from Philadelphia, a fiber artist from New York City, a papermaker from Minneapolis, a digital technologist from Seattle and a neurologist and hand specialist from Stanford, Calif. The academics who attended were specialists in the esoteric fields of tangible media, human and machine haptics, and “the disembodiment of the embodied – the embodied of the disembodiment.”

Throughout the weekend, studios on the Haystack campus were shared by a craftsperson and a technologist. It was in that setting that Joyce the blacksmith and Cassell the digital expert came together to create their sculpture.

“Working this way enhances the piece,” said Kestenbaum of the artwork, which will remain at Haystack permanently. “There’s a way that each discipline has its own voice, that way it speaks best, and has a natural way to express itself. Tom used the old technology of forging, and Justine used the new technology of computers. But we have a continuum of creativity when it comes to making.”

When Kestenbaum initially considered the idea of a symposium that would combine the two fields, he was skeptical, and told Resnick that he thought they were too far apart for there to be a useful interaction. But Resnick persisted.

“In the work I do, these two worlds come together in many ways,” he said. “Most people see computation as an abstracted world disconnected from the physical world and governed by abstract rules – as opposed to craft, which is physical engagement with material. In my mind, the worlds shouldn’t be that separate.”

To underscore that philosophy, the organizers invited one craftsperson and one media technologist to share each of the five studios on the Haystack campus. Joyce and Cassell, who met the day they each arrived at Haystack, spent most of the weekend in the blacksmithing studio, where Cassell attached LED lights to Joyce’s upper body and filmed the movement of the dots of light in the dark. She also recorded the hammering sounds that accompany his work.

“It was extraordinary to find points of intersection theoretically and then to realize them in an installation piece,” said Cassell. “For me, craft is about having an image in your head and bringing it into being.”

As well as telling the story of a blacksmithing experience, the piece symbolizes the success of the weekend, said Diane Willow, an artist-in-residence at the Media Lab.

“The piece that Justine and Tom did was less a finished piece than a process piece,” said Willow. “I love the relationship between revealing the making and using the object itself to reveal the process of making. It is evocative in the sense that the technology brought out human touch in a deep way. It was clear that even though the symposium was created as distinct communities coming together, there was a lot of open-heartedness between people and interest in knowing more about how other people work.”

At the end of the weekend, several participants called their experiences “life changing.” And it was clear that members of this heady group would be returning to their labs and studios charged by the exchanges and lessons from reaching across the lines of disciplines and looking for connections rather than differences. The shared commitment came through using creativity as a problem solver, whether the materials were virtual or actual.

“I thought I was going to learn how there was a way to implement technology into my work,” said Joyce. The lesson he did learn, however, had to do with something beyond both technology and crafts. “It wasn’t about blacksmithing. It wasn’t about technology. It was the magic of trusting one another and being willing to do a free fall and see where you land. I could see that the technologists were dealing with creativity on an edge – much like artists do. In many ways, they are artists themselves.”