FAST was a prominent feature of the MIT150 events, a festival celebrating MIT’s unique confluence of Art, Science and Technology. Directed by Professor of Music and Media Tod Machover, FAST presented an exciting, surprising variety of work, embracing past to future, performance to debate, and installations to the unclassifiable. FAST appeared throughout the MIT campus and extend over the entire spring 2011 semester, punctuated by five special Festival weekend events:

FAST PAST, Festival Kick-Off, February 3–5: Exploring MIT’s unique tradition in the media arts, systems theory in art and design, and electronic music, through an exhibition of the work of Stan VanDerBeek, a forum on contemporary arts and cybernetics, and demonstrations of the past and future of music and technology, from Hyperinstruments, sensors and interfaces, to theories of musical mind and emotion.

FAST THINKING, March 5: Radical research on music and language, and vision and neuroscience, which a special appearance by London’s famed Lontano Ensemble. The concert features work by MIT faculty composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison, Bang-on-a-Can All-Star Evan Ziporyn, and world premieres by Charles Shadle and Peter Child.

FAST OPERA, March 18–25: U.S. premiere of Death and the Powers, a musically and technologically visionary “robotic” opera by Tod Machover, developed at the MIT Media Lab. Commissioned by Association Futurum of Monaco and given its world premiere at the Monte Carlo Opera in September 2010, the opera includes animated walls, a chorus of robots and a musical chandelier, launching a new era in opera production and expression. This production is a collaboration with American Repertory Theater.

FAST FUTURE, April 15–16: A music/media marathon combining the Kronos Quartet, Bang-on-a-Can, Wu Man, and MIT’s own Gamelan Galak Tika and Chamber Chorus; featuring hyperstrings and a MIDI Gamelan. Followed by an unprecedented convening of MIT’s creative arts faculty, alumni and students, which will reveal how new creative practices emerge in MIT’s unique environment and how these processes can be expanded and enhanced in the future.

FAST LIGHT, May 7: An all-evening celebration involving light and the kinetic activation of MIT throughout the campus, and along Memorial Drive and the Charles River, curated by Meejin Yoon.

More at http://arts.mit.edu/fast