News
Online Course: VTx
Visualizing the Birth of Modern Tokyo (VTx) 2023 course run.
The 2023 run of VTx is currently available through November 23. From MIT Visualizing Cultures; free and open to all; self-paced, start anytime. link to MITx to enroll
Instructors:
Kiyochika: Mount Fuji from Edobashi at Dusk, 1879. With Tokyo’s first gasworks, which began operating in 1874, the streetlamp joined telegraph wires and the ubiquitous rickshaw as a marker of new technology on the urban landscape. In this work, the gas lamp is a prominent framing device, though partially obstructed by a pine tree. Oil torches line the embankment, their flickering flames contrasted with the enclosed and steady stream of gas. Image: Freer-Sackler, Smithsonian Institution / MIT Visualizing Cultures
John W. Dower (Historian, Professor Emeritus, MIT);
James T. Ulak (President, US-Japan Foundation, and former curator, Smithsonian Institution, featured in the course);
Hiromu Nagahara (Professor of History, MIT);
Ellen Sebring (Visualizing Cultures, instructor and VTx lead content developer).
VTx travels through time into the making of modern Tokyo through the tradition of the “100 views”:
Kobayashi Kiyochika depicted Tokyo in the 1870s-1880s, the night newly awakened through gas light. His views evoked nostalgia for the old Edo that was fading as the new imperial capital took hold.
Koizumi Kishio portrayed the cosmopolitan Tokyo that arose out of the ashes of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.
8 Artists captured the restless café society, alienating speed of change, and growing authoritarianism. These artists forged a new style aimed at saving Japan’s fading national treasure: the woodblock print.
Online Course: VPx
Visualizing Imperialism & the Philippines (1898-1913)
The course is currently archived (can be accessed without live discussions).A newly updated version of the course will launch in October 2023.
Second in a series by MIT Visualizing Cultures; free and open to all; self-paced, start anytime. LINK TO MITx TO ENROLL
Remarkable political cartoons and photography at the turn of the 20th century reveal passionate debates over the US entry into global imperialism through the conquest and occupation of the Philippines. Presented by authors of the source material on MIT Visualizing Cultures with specialists on Philippine history and the Dean Worcester collection of ethnographic photography.
Instructors:
“And, After All, the Philippines are Only the Stepping-Stone to China.” Judge magazine, c. 1900. Artist: Emil Flohri.
John W. Dower (Historian, Professor Emeritus, MIT);
Christopher Capozzola (Prof. and Head, Department of History, MIT)
Ellen Sebring (Visualizing Cultures, instructor and VPx lead content developer).
Genevieve Clutario (Prof. Wellesley College)
Carla Sinopoli, Director, The Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico
Art Collaboration
Silo Solos-2 Performances
B3 Biennial: “Identity” Frankfurt City Center, October 15-24, 2021
Sebring rehearses Siloed *2021 (photo by Seth Riskin)
“Siloed *2021” (10:30 minutes) video by Ellen Sebring
A counterpart to Sebring’s 2020 sound piece in the Bell Silo, “Siloed *2021” layers light actions in dialog with Otto Piene’s “Star of David Light Ballet” in the Light Silo. Artifacts express the waning days of pandemic in 2021 within a fan garden that defies the close confines of the silo. Camera by Thomas Draudt.
Book Chapter
Access and Control in Digital Humanities
Edited by Shane Hawkins, Routledge, 2021 [link]
Chapter by Ellen Sebring titled: “Visuality as Historical Experience: Immersive multi-directional narrative in the MIT Visualizing Cultures Project”
Art Collaboration
Silo Solos 2020 performances
B3 Biennial: “Hello Truths” Virtuale Extravaganza, Frankfurt
Opening Live Stream Event on Oct 9, 2020 4 pm EST / Program available Oct 10-18
B3 Biennial “Hello Truths” Virtuale Extravaganza
Silo Solos performances in the Light Silo and the Bell Silo at the Goldring-Piene art farm in Groton, Massachusetts were part of the B3 Biennial broadcast worldwide. The twin silos served as individual studios for contemplation and new works during the long quarantine due to the global pandemic of 2020. The participants include alumni of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the period when German-born artist, Otto Piene, was director. The assembled group is part of a larger cadre of active artist-Fellows who carry on the CAVS legacy, this time including Elizabeth Goldring, Aldo Tambellini, Seth Riskin, Paul Matisse, Ellen Sebring. B3 artistic director is CAVS alumni and President of HfG, Bernd Kracke.
Sebring rehearsing “8ight Circles”
(left to right) Seth Riskin, Ellen Sebring, David Whiteside, Elizabeth Goldring in front of the two silos, Goldring-Piene Art Farm, Groton, MA, Sept. 17, 2020
Catalog Essay
Fire and Light: Otto Piene in Groton 1983–2014 Fitchburg Art Museum, February 9–June 2, 2019
Catalog includes essay by Ellen Sebring: “The Light Silo as Insight into Otto Piene’s Art Farm Home in Groton”
Sebring’s essay “The Light Silo as Insight into Otto Piene’s ‘Art Farm’ Home in Groton”
Photo top: Sebring, much needed coffee while completing the final layouts for Centerbook at the Goldring-Piene farm in Groton, August 2019