In this activity each student will learn about the design and construction of a mechanical watch. The student will take apart a watch movement and put it back together, with instruction from Jason Champion (instructor from the AWCI: American Watchmakers and Clockmakers Institute), with help from Jack Kurdzionak and Steve Boynton (professional watchmakers), and Prof. Gerry Sussman (an amateur watchmaker). The entire exercise will take 4 hours. Each session will be limited to 8 students. Students need no prior experience, and all tools and materials will be provided by the instructors, as needed.Enrollment is limited. You must sign up for one of the 4-hour sessions:Saturday, 25 January 2025, 9am-1pmSaturday, 25 January 2025, 2:30pm-6:30pmSunday, 26 January 2025, 9am-1pmSunday, 26 January 2025, 2:30pm-6:30pmRegistration is now closed. If you wish to be added to the waitlist for one of the sessions, please email Cindy Rosenthal (crosenth@mit.edu).As part of this activity Professor Sussman will give a lecture on the theory of the mechanical watch and its relationship to an electronic impulse-driven oscillator. There will be a discussion of friction (resistance) and its effect on Q and timing precision. The lecture will explain why it is essential for the impulse to be supplied to the oscillator at the zero crossings of the angle, and why the oscillator will enter a limit cycle of a known amplitude.The lecture is open to the MIT community. It will be from 11:30am-12:30pm, in 34-101 on Friday, 24 January.

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.”

Telltales of Tide and Terra is a participatory art project addressing the climate crisis through collaborative art making, public data visualization, and installations, which include shading structures and giant community meals. Upcycled textiles and its patterns transform complex climate data into accessible, emotionally engaging visual experiences that inspire climate action. The project is produced though collaborative screen printing and cyanotype workshops, for an exhibition at the MIT Art Festival (March 1-16, 2025) and the Venice Biennale of Architecture (May '25).You will learn cyanotype and screen printing. Everyone will be listed and credited in these exhibitions.Sign up by 1/20/2025 by emailing Merve Akdogan.

The Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program (TFUAP) is holding a series of workshops during IAP to help guide individuals or groups interested in developing white papers. To learn more about TFUAP and read the call for white papers, please visit https://ovc.mit.edu/tfuap.These relatively free-form events can be used to form groups, ask questions about intent or details of individual learning/process goals, or workshop ideas. Due to the free-form nature, we welcome you to attend multiple sessions or attend for only part of the time as your schedule allows.We invite you to complete this brief form to help us know how many people to expect and ensure that we can send you location information and reminders. That said, we welcome MIT community members to show up to the workshops regardless of whether they signed up in advance.Other workshop times can be found here (in person w/ introductory discussion) or here (virtual, workshop only).Note: The January 26th session is limited to undergraduate students. All other sessions are open to anyone in the MIT community.

In this activity each student will learn about the design and construction of a mechanical watch. The student will take apart a watch movement and put it back together, with instruction from Jason Champion (instructor from the AWCI: American Watchmakers and Clockmakers Institute), with help from Jack Kurdzionak and Steve Boynton (professional watchmakers), and Prof. Gerry Sussman (an amateur watchmaker). The entire exercise will take 4 hours. Each session will be limited to 8 students. Students need no prior experience, and all tools and materials will be provided by the instructors, as needed.Enrollment is limited. You must sign up for one of the 4-hour sessions:Saturday, 25 January 2025, 9am-1pmSaturday, 25 January 2025, 2:30pm-6:30pmSunday, 26 January 2025, 9am-1pmSunday, 26 January 2025, 2:30pm-6:30pmRegistration is now closed. If you wish to be added to the waitlist for one of the sessions, please email Cindy Rosenthal (crosenth@mit.edu).As part of this activity Professor Sussman will give a lecture on the theory of the mechanical watch and its relationship to an electronic impulse-driven oscillator. There will be a discussion of friction (resistance) and its effect on Q and timing precision. The lecture will explain why it is essential for the impulse to be supplied to the oscillator at the zero crossings of the angle, and why the oscillator will enter a limit cycle of a known amplitude.The lecture is open to the MIT community. It will be from 11:30am-12:30pm, in 34-101 on Friday, 24 January.

Ten minutes for your mind@2:50 every day at 2:50 pm in multiple time zones:Europa@2:50, EET, Athens, Helsinki (UTC+2) (7:50 am EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88298032734Atlantica@2:50, EST, New York, Toronto (UTC-4) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85349851047Pacifica@2:50, PST, Los Angeles, Vancouver (UTC=7) (5:50 pm EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85743543699Almost everything works better again if you unplug it for a bit, including your mind. Stop by and unplug. Get the benefits of mindfulness without the fuss.@2:50 meets at the same time every single day for ten minutes of quiet together.No pre-requisite, no registration needed.Visit the website to view all @2:50 time zones each day.at250.org or at250.mit.edu

Experience the magic of opera up close and personal at the Multicultural Arts Center with Pico Opera's I Puritani, by Vincenzo Bellini—an unforgettable evening of gorgeous bel canto singing, madness, passion and drama!Join us for an unforgettable evening of gorgeous music, bel canto singing, madness, passion and drama as Pico Opera presents our final night of I Puritani. This intimate, fully staged production will be performed in Italian with English titles. All seats will be within 10 rows of the stage on stadium seating, ensuring a fully immersive and truly unique opera experience. Don't miss out on this opportunity to experience the magic of opera up close and personal at The Multicultural Arts Center!Synopsis: In the midst of the English civil war, two unlikely lovers, Puritan Elvira and Royalist Arturo, are about to be united in marriage. But when Arturo discovers his queen held captive in the Puritan fortress, he makes a daring escape with her, leaving Elvira at the altar and launching a whirlwind of heartache, madness and vengeful patriotism.When and Where: 5-8:30pm on Saturday, December 7th 2024 at The Multicultural Arts Center (41 Second Street Cambridge, MA 02141). Doors open at 4:30pm.Tickets: Reserve your tickets on EventBrite (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/i-puritani-by-vincenzo-bellini-tickets-1118401512029). Tickets will also be sold at the door on a first-come, first-served basis until the house sells out. All proceeds go toward costs of the production.General admission: $25About Us: Founded in 2023, Pico Opera is a new, community-based opera company performing intimate productions of bel canto masterworks in the Boston/Cambridge area. We are excited to share this beautiful music with you, up close and personal! Please visit our website for more information: https://www.picoopera.org/. Our concert performances feature an extremely diverse group of MIT students, alumni and affiliates with a shared love for classical music.We have had the privilege of growing as musicians through the various music programs at MIT and the support of the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT), as well as faculty and staff at MIT MTA. This performance serves as an homage to the vital role these people have played in our lives.

Experience the magic of opera up close and personal at the Multicultural Arts Center with Pico Opera's I Puritani, by Vincenzo Bellini—an unforgettable evening of gorgeous bel canto singing, madness, passion and drama!Join us for an unforgettable evening of gorgeous music, bel canto singing, madness, passion and drama as Pico Opera presents I Puritani. This intimate, fully staged production will be performed in Italian with English titles. All seats will be within 10 rows of the stage on stadium seating, ensuring a fully immersive and truly unique opera experience. Don't miss out on this opportunity to experience the magic of opera up close and personal at the Multicultural Arts Center!Synopsis: In the midst of the English civil war, two unlikely lovers, Puritan Elvira and Royalist Arturo, are about to be united in marriage. But when Arturo discovers his queen held captive in the Puritan fortress, he makes a daring escape with her, leaving Elvira at the altar and launching a whirlwind of heartache, madness and vengeful patriotism.When and Where: 5-8:30pm on Sunday, January 26th 2025 at the Multicultural Arts Center (41 Second St, East Cambridge). Doors open at 4:30pm.Tickets: Reserve your tickets on EventBrite (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/i-puritani-by-vincenzo-bellini-tickets-1118401512029). Tickets will also be sold at the door on a first-come, first-served basis until the house sells out. All proceeds go toward costs of the production.General admission: $25About Us: Founded in 2023, Pico Opera is a new, community-based opera company performing intimate productions of bel canto masterworks in the Boston/Cambridge area. We are excited to share this beautiful music with you, up close and personal! Please visit our website for more information: https://www.picoopera.org/. Our concert performances feature an extremely diverse group of MIT students and affiliates with a shared love for classical music.We have had the privilege of growing as musicians through the various music programs at MIT and the support of the faculty and staff at MIT MTA. This performance serves as an homage to the vital role these people have played in our lives.

Roll the Dice at Board Games Night!Join us on Sunday, January 26th, for an evening of fun, strategy, and pizza in the Westgate Basement. Whether you're a board game enthusiast or a beginner, this is the perfect chance to meet fellow residents, try out new games, and enjoy some delicious pizza!We'll have a variety of games available, and all experience levels are welcome. Pizza will be provided, so please RSVP below to help us estimate how much to order. This event is intended for adults only - thanks!Looking forward to a night of friendly competition and great company! 🎲