Sign up by December 20, 2024 by emailing Lina Bondarenko.SSS is a workshop for the development of improvisational movements that survey sloped landscapes, negotiate with public infrastructures, and activate architectural sites. Inspired by dancer Anna Halprin’s Experiments in the Environment, we will practice foundational intuitive physical exercises and hand-drawing scores that recalibrate our notions of time and space. We will explore the historical relationship between urban design, choreography, and gravity, interrogating the persistence of horizontal surfaces and two dimensional representations in a tilted multi-dimensional world. By traveling locally on field trips to public parks and cultural sites, we will test a spatial practice for place-based learning inspired by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin’s RSVP cycles.SSS is a workshop for slorgs– sloped organisms. For millennia, human organisms have been collaborating with, traversing, inhabiting, perceiving, and relating to sloped terrain. Within the steep escarpments of the Great Rift Valley, a unique bioregional climate, landscape, and ecology fostered the evolution of our ancestors into upright hominids. The original stewards of this land, the Massachuseuk people, derived their name after the sacred hill Massa-adchu-es-et, massa meaning "large," adchu meaning "hill," et an identifier of place, translating roughly as "large hill place" (Jarzombek). The city of Boston was even founded as a colony in search of the “city upon a hill.” The condition of the slope is fundamentally coded within our very existence, the slorg’s physiology and cognition driven by the undulations of the land.Through learning to slow our attention to the subjective intelligence sensed by the body in space, slorgs are able to tune our pulse to the rhythms of the earth’s cycles, revealing environmental entanglements and response-abilities. We engage in sympoeisis—making with our communities of humans and non-humans (Haraway)—by moving with. SSS will culminate in the creation of a site-specific, collective happening in the legacy of the 1960’s Fluxus artists.SSS welcomes participants of all backgrounds and abilities with no prior familiarity with dance to experiment freely, embedding their own daily patterns within local ecology. As we transition between seasons and semesters, SSS is a method for grounding and acknowledging our position with this moment.COMMENTS/QUESTIONS1:00-3:00 Field Trips and score drawing (weather permitting) 3:00-4:00 Break/Rest/Commute 4:00-6:00 Movement in dance studio, guest speakersParticipants can Bring: a sketchbook and pens Wear: loose, comfortable, breathable clothing for studio sessions and warm weather-resistant layers for field trips.Lina Bondarenko is a current graduate student in SMArchS Urbanism at MIT Architecture, following a career practicing architecture and urbanism, teaching design at an arts high school, and a lifetime dancing and performing with various dance troupes. SSS follows her research on urban infrastructure of sloped terrain as spaces of subjugation and solidarity, presented as public happenings at architecture conferences in San Francisco titled “Steep Urbanist.”

Suproteem Sarkar, Harvard University

Registration is now open!Before the start of each semester, TLL offers a series of workshops for TAs and teacher trainees to help them prepare for the roles and responsibilities of the position of teaching at MIT. Topics include giving feedback, presenting a class session, and facilitating office hours, among other practical subjects related to teaching. Please visit our Teaching Days page to view the full schedule and location for each of the workshops . Register via CanvasPlease note that the IAP 2025 Teaching Days schedule includes a mix of in-person and online sessions.

Design, build and test your own laptop-based radar capable of forming Doppler, range and synthetic aperature radar (SAR) images. Must register by 1/22/2025Dates: Jan 27th, 29th, 31stTime: 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM ESTLocation: 33-419Registration Opens: November 25, 2024To register email: kenneth.koloddziej@ll.mit.edu

Colonel Alicia Burrows will give an Independent Activities Period presentation on contracting support for US Army and allied forces in Europe.Speaker info: Colonel Alicia Burrows is a US Army 2024-2025 Fellow at MIT's Security Studies Program and Lincoln Laboratory. She enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 2001, completed basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, and accepted an ROTC scholarship through the University Maine – Orono. She was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Signal Corps in 2004 after graduating from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies and played basketball. In 2012, she received a Master’s of Business Administration from the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA. She graduated from resident Command and General Staff College in June 2015 as an Art of War Scholar with a Masters in Military Arts and Sciences.Her previous assignments include: Director, Theater Contracting Center/409th Contracting Support Brigade, Kaiserslautern, Germany; DCMA Philadelphia Chief of Mission Support and Deputy Director of Contracts, Philadelphia, PA; Assistant Executive Officer, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics & Technology), Pentagon; Contracting Officer, DLA Troop Support, Philadelphia, PA; Battalion S3/XO, 925th Contracting Battalion, Team Leader, 619th Contingency Contracting Team, Fort Drum, NY; Staff Officer, LandWarNet, Army Capability Integration Center, TRADOC, Fort Monroe, VA; S6/Electronic Warfare Officer, 28th Transportation Battalion, Mannheim, Germany; Node Center Platoon Leader, Company Executive Officer, Charlie Company, 32nd Signal Battalion, Darmstadt, Germany. LTC Burrows’ deployments include combat deployments to Iraq (October 2005 –October 2006) and Kuwait (March 2008 – June 2009).She is a member of the National Contract Management Association and an Honor Graduate of the Contract Management Leadership Development Program. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Certified Federal Contract Manager (CFCM). She also serves on the Board of Trustees for her high school, a private co-educational boarding school in New Hampshire.Open to the MIT communityMIT is committed to providing an environment that is accessible to individuals with disabilities. If you need a disability related accommodation to attend or have other questions, please contact us at ssp-info@mit.edu.

New babies are such a blessing, but they can also bring with them sleepless nights, crying, and sometimes quite a bit of extra stress. Learn an approach to calm your baby in our Happiest Baby Class. New parents will learn step-by-step how to help babies sleep longer and how to soothe fussy infants.Class information includes:The Missing 4th TrimesterThe Calming ReflexThe 5 S'sThe Cuddle CureThis class is open to all soon-to-be parents, new parents of babies birth - 4 months, and other family members and caregivers.This class is for the MIT community only.Registration is required on our wellness class website. If you do not already have an account on this website, you'll need to create one. This class is free and open to the entire MIT community.