Meetings/Gatherings
Coffee Hour with Director of Huang-Hobbs BioMaker Space
| Jan/08 | Mon | 10:00AM–11:00AM |
| Jan/17 | Wed | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/29 | Mon | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
Interested in the Huang-Hobbs BioMaker Space? Come learn more about the facilities and opportunities in the space. Enjoy a cup of coffee or tea, and chat with the Director of the space. Learn about the ongoing programming in the space and how you can start a project or join one already in progress. No registration required. Attend any session.
IAP Event: Introduction to Compassion Meditation
Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy and Practice
MIT Heavy Metal 101 2024
| Jan/15 | Mon | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/16 | Tue | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/17 | Wed | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/18 | Thu | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/19 | Fri | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/22 | Mon | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/23 | Tue | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/24 | Wed | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/25 | Thu | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/26 | Fri | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/29 | Mon | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/30 | Tue | 06:30PM–08:00PM |
Not a Metallurgy class! This veteran crash-course is coming back in full force and will have you head banging, air guitaring, and devil horn raising in no time! Learn everything you ever wanted to know about Heavy Metal, including how Metallica continues to evolve, why Lemmy IS God (RIP), how the genre tackles some of today's biggest sociopolitical challenges, why metal bands exist in every country on Earth, and why you're probably already a metalhead without even knowing it.
WARNING: This series most definitely goes to 11! Earplugs optional.
We'll look at metal cultures, explore the fringes of the most extreme forms of metal, and, of course, listen to some SCREAMING HEAVY METAL! This is guaranteed to be the most BRUTAL class ever offered at MIT! Anyone is welcome to join, and since we're remote again this year, seating isn't limited. Learn more about this series' past in the class archive!
Heavy Metal 101: Music and Culture
Monday January 15, 2024
An introduction to Heavy Metal. Topics include the musicology of Heavy Metal as well as an examination of Heavy Metal culture. This multimedia extravaganza covers everything you ever wanted to know about Heavy Metal!
Music as Emotional Catharsis with Jason McMaster
Tuesday January 16, 2024
MIT Heavy Metal 101 is pleased to present guest lecturer, Jason McMaster. Jason McMaster, metal vocalist from bands including Watchtower and Dangerous Toys, will delve into the unique ways heavy metal serves as a form of emotional release and a coping mechanism for millions worldwide. Also a seasoned School of Rock educator for the past 18 years, Jason will discuss the process of song creation, from the intellectual spark to the physical act of crafting melodies with wood and wires, and how this genre has evolved into a therapeutic art form.
Guitar Tablature Generation with Deep Learning with Pedro Sarmento
Wednesday January 17, 2024
MIT Heavy Metal 101 is pleased to present guest lecturer, Pedro Sarmento. Within the field of symbolic music generation with deep learning, most works focus on MIDI representations, but less attention has been paid to guitar-focused symbolic music using digital tablatures. Guitar Pro format tablatures are a type of digital music notation that encapsulates information about guitar playing techniques and fingerings. Tablatures are often the preferred way of notating music digitally amongst the rock and metal communities. This presentation will showcase the findings concerning the generation of multi-instrument compositions in Guitar Pro with Transformer architectures. The talk will focus on (1) the DadaGP dataset, a corpus of Guitar Pro tablature data suitable for sequence models, (2) GTR-CTRL, conditioning methods for Transformer models for the task of guitar tablature generation that allow for control over instrumentation and musical genre, (3) ShredGP, methods for guitarist-style conditioned guitar tablature generation with Transformers and (4) ProgGP, a practice-based research approach for creating AI-generated but human-produced prog metal music.
Innovating Metal Music with Technology with Jordan Rudess - LIVE In-Person and Online!
Thursday January 18, 2024
This class will take place online in-person on MIT's Campus in room 35-225 and will be livestreamed (if possible) and recorded for later viewing.
MIT Heavy Metal 101 is pleased to present guest lecturer, Jordan Rudess. Jordan Rudess, keyboardist for the progressive metal band Dream Theater and founder of Wizdom Music will share his expertise on the fusion of technology and metal music. Focusing on the innovative use of Riffler, an app for creating copyright-free guitar riffs, Jordan will also invite conversation regarding the roles of artificial intelligence and creativity in musical performance. This class will be an opportunity to gain insights from a pioneer in the integration of digital technology in metal music.
Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions with Joan Jocson-Singh and Julie Turley
Monday January 22, 2024
MIT Heavy Metal 101 is pleased to present guest lecturers, Joan Jocson-Singh and Julie Turley. The book Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions is an exploration of women and heavy music and the ways in which women have historically engaged with musicking as mothers. Julie Turley and Joan Jocson-Singh, musicking mothers themselves, largely employ an ethnographic lens, foregrounded in powerful one-on-one original interviews as vignettes that narrate thematic patterns. Other chapters examine motherhood identity embedded in respective published rock music memoirs, discussions of rock performance as a site of maternal bonding, and themes that arise when heavy music mothers write about motherhood.
The Physics of Shred with Dr. Gore
Tuesday January 23, 2024
MIT Heavy Metal 101 is pleased to present guest lecturer, Dr. Gore. Dr. Gore’s session will focus on the relationship between the physics of the electric guitar and the characteristic sounds of heavy metal guitars. Topics covered will include pickup design and placement, natural and artificial harmonics, multiscale/”fanned fret” guitars, the boons and banes of nonlinearity, and why distortion is so integral to the “heavy metal sound.” Dr. Gore will also perform some shredtastic demonstrations of each of these principles along the way.
History of Heavy Metal: Part I
Wednesday January 24, 2024
A seminar examining the history of Heavy Metal from the late 1960s through the early 1990s. Topics will include Hard Rock, Archetypal Heavy Metal, and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM).
Similarity of Musical Subcultures Across Different Nations – Heavy Metal Fans as a Global Tribe with Akemi Nishimura
Thursday January 25, 2024
MIT Heavy Metal 101 is pleased to present guest lecturer, Akemi Nishimura. We will explore the uniqueness of contemporary Japanese culture and how national cultures have an impact on metal fandom and personalities based on the 6 dimensions model of national culture by Geert Hofstede.
History of Heavy Metal: Part II
Monday January 29, 2024
A seminar examining the history of Heavy Metal from the early 1980s to the present. Topics include Power Metal, Thrash Metal and the Big 4, New American Metal, Metalcore and Grindcore, Black Metal, Death Metal, and Extreme Metal.
All About Harsh Vocals – History, Application, and Technique with Paul Buckley
Tuesday January 30, 2024
MIT Heavy Metal 101 is pleased to present guest lecturer, Paul Buckley. This talk will discuss the history of harsh vocals, how they are applied in everyday life, and how rock and metal singers use them to do what they do.
History of Heavy Metal: Part III
Wednesday January 31, 2024
This will be a seminar examining even more genres of Heavy Metal. Topics will include more obscure genres of Progressive Metal, Metal Fusion, Experimental and Avant-Garde Metal, and whatever else we missed so far. As always, it's going to get weird.
MIT iGEM Team Info Session
| Jan/03 | Wed | 03:00PM–04:00PM |
| Jan/08 | Mon | 07:00PM–08:00PM |
| Jan/24 | Wed | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
Interested in iGEM? These informational sessions provide additional details about the project competition and joining the MIT iGEM team. Session will cover basic information about synthetic biology, iGEM the competition, the schedule for the upcoming competition year, and the team application and selection process. Session will also include information about a complementary course (20.020: Introduction to Biological Engineering Design Using Synthetic Biology). Q&A Session to follow a brief presentation. Session is available hybrid format.
The 1/3/2024 session will be ONLY VIA ZOOM (see streaming link or email jbuck@mit.edu for details). Other sessions still plan hybrid format
Mindfulness Mini-Course
| Jan/10 | Wed | 04:00PM–04:45PM |
| Jan/17 | Wed | 04:00PM–04:45PM |
| Jan/24 | Wed | 04:00PM–04:45PM |
Thinking about learning to meditate in 2024? IAP is a great time to try it out. This Mindfulness Mini-Course offers a variety of meditation techniques with no experience needed.
This mini-course incorporates skills from the Mindfulness Institute for Emerging Adults, which is intended for adults at any age and stage of meditation experience. It includes meditation practices, breathing techniques, stretches, and stress relief to calm mind and body.
Register for free anytime, even if you cannot attend all the sessions. Feel free to invite others to register for this stress relief opportunity.
Pleasures of Poetry 2024
| Jan/08 | Mon | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/09 | Tue | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/10 | Wed | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/11 | Thu | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/12 | Fri | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/16 | Tue | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/17 | Wed | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/18 | Thu | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/19 | Fri | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/22 | Mon | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/23 | Tue | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/24 | Wed | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/25 | Thu | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
| Jan/26 | Fri | 01:00PM–02:00PM |
Pleasures of Poetry meets this IAP 2024 in 14E-304 from 1-2 p.m. every weekday from January 8-26, with the exception of MLK Jr. Day (Jan. 15). This popular activity – which aims to reach all those with an interest in poetry, regardless of experience level – has been offered every IAP for several decades. This will be the 28th year of Pleasures of Poetry at MIT. Each one-hour session is devoted to a poet or two, often a single poem, chosen by session leaders who volunteer to facilitate conversation for that day. Collaborative close reading is the aim and ideal of each hour. Some participants attend every session, but many others may drop in only once or twice during the series to discuss a favorite poet or poem, or to discover new favorites. The roster of poets is typically diverse — from classic Chinese poets to American poets laureate, and from such canonical figures as Shakespeare, Keats, Dickinson, and Bishop to contemporary poets including Louise Glück, Joy Harjo, Terrence Hayes, and many more.
Free and open to the public; as well as staff, alumni, and students.
Pleasures of Poetry 2024 Poetry Booklet PDF
Schedule: January 8 – January 26
(with the exception of MLK Day January 15th)
Building 14, 14E-304 @ 1:00-2:00pm
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Mon 8 Stephen Tapscott and Tom Özden-Schilling
"An American Sunrise” by Joy Harjo
Tues 9 Peter Shor
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” by William Wordsworth
“Immortality” by Matthew Arnold
"Reply to Mr. Wordsworth” by Archibald MacLeish
Wed 10 Mark Hessler
"Retreating Light”
“Grace”
"Parable" by Louise Glück
Thurs 11 Ben Mangrum
“sort by day, burn by night” Rita Wong
Fri 12 Avery Nguyen
”Triptych (#3)” by Diana Khoi Nguyen
“The Last Prom Queen in Antarctica” by Ocean Vuong
Mon 15 MLK Jr. Day (Institute Closed)
Tues 16 Anne Hudson
"Good Bones"
"Poem Beginning with a Line from Basho” by Maggie Smith
Wed 17 Moderator
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning
Thurs 18 Sandy Alexandre
”Abecedarian for Alzheimer's" by Joy Priest
Fri 19 Arthur Bahr
"Caelica - Sonnet 100” by Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke
Mon 22 Elizabeth Doran
"Et quoi penser du silence? (And What to Think of Silence?)"
"à toi (to you)" by Alejandra Pizarnik
Tues 23 Marah Gubar and Kieran Setiya
“Blocks World: The Lobster” by Emma Catherine Perry
Wed 24 Bronwen Heuer
"La loba (The She-Wolf)"
"Tú me quieres blanca (You Want Me White)"
"Cuadrados y ángulos (Squares and Angles)"
"Hombre pequeñito (Little Tiny Man)" by Alfonsina Storni
Thurs 25 Kevin McLellen
"States" by Kevin McLellan
Fri 26 Jessica Ruffin
“Spirit Matters” by Peter Rose
Wunsch's Winter Wonderland: Open house/Open studio
| Jan/16 | Tue | 05:00PM–07:00PM |
This IAP event is set up as an open house and open studio. Discover the art of bookmaking, zine-making, origami, and letterlocking in the Wunsch Lab, a space dedicated to caring for the Libraries’ collections and teaching the history and technology of books, printing, and manuscripts. Join MIT Libraries’ and Museum staff for open house activities. See details below. At 6:30 pm our wonderland completes the day with a disco dance party!
Open house
The interactive open house includes whimsical and wondrous demonstrations: bookbinding, origami, leather tooling, zine-making, letterlocking (you can make one, too!).
- Zinemaking – Kai Smith, MIT Libraries’ Architecture and Planning Librarian will be present to talk about and help make zines.
- Paper and creased curve origami folding inspired by works in the MIT museum collection by David Huffman – Flori Pierri, Assistant Curator, Science & Technology, MIT Museum.
- Highlights from the Hart Nautical Collection – Libby Meier, Assistant Curator, MIT Museum.
Open studio
Come work independently on a project and explore the Wunsch Lab’s Teaching & Study Collections. Did you start making zines earlier in IAP with Kai, and need to finish them up? If yes, come on by!