A conversation between artist Lars Jan + professor Patti Maes, at MIT’s Media Lab

MIT Media Lab, Third Floor Atrium
(75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA 02142)

There is hardly an industry that has not undergone major disruption due to the internet and other digital innovations over the past 20 years. Perhaps more importantly, its effect on culture and individuals has been every bit as transformative transforming our sense of time, privacy, our memories, and our sense of self.  The ICA is pleased to be partnering with the MIT Media Lab and the MIT List Visual Art Center  to present a public discussion with artist Lars Jan and Professor of Media Technology Pattie Maes. This intimate and provocative conversation, hosted by David Henry the ICA’s Bill T. Jones Director of Performing and Media Arts, will focus on the interplay between technology and human identities as they consider the future of memory.

About the Speakers:
Lars Jan is a director, writer, visual artist, and founder of Early Morning Opera, a genre-bending performance + art lab whose works explore emerging technologies, live audiences, and unclassifiable experience. Jan’s original works — including Holoscenes, The Institute of Memory (TIMe), and Abacus— have been presented by the Whitney Museum, Sundance Film Festival, BAM Next Wave Festival, Under the Radar Festival, REDCAT, Hammer Museum, New York Live Arts, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art TBA Festival, Toronto Nuit Blanche Festival, Artichoke (London), and NYU Abu Dhabi among others. Jan is a past MacDowell and Princeton Atelier Fellow, artist-in-residence at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and recipient of the Sherwood and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts100 Awards.

Pattie Maes is a professor in MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences as well as academic head of the MAS Program. She runs the lab’s Fluid Interfaces research group which aims to radically reinvent the human machine experience. Coming from a background in artificial intelligence and human computer interaction, she is particularly interested in the topic of cognitive augmentation, or how immersive and wearable systems can actively assist people with memory, learning, decision making, communication and wellbeing.


The Institute of Memory (TIMe) was co-commissioned by the CalArts Center for New Performance, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, REDCAT, The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and the National Performance Network’s Creation and Development Fund. This project is organized by Culture.pl as part of a program celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Tadeusz Kantor. TIMe has received generous support from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theatre Project Creation & Touring grant. Crucial residency support was granted by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and technology support by FARO.

The ICA’s presentation is funded in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Project, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 

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First Republic Bank is proud to sponsor the ICA’s 2017–18 Performance Season.

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Co-sponsored by the MIT List Visual Arts Center, MIT Media Lab, and the Institute of Contemporary Art

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