Open Media Lab Hours

We had an awesome "Media Lab Open Hours" session on Saturday. Henry
(from Brown) and Matthew (from RISD) came to help. Paul and Josh worked
on a piece together. Kirby got help from me with Photoshop and from
Henry processing recordings of interviews. Karl (Paul's brother) came
because Paul was there and made a piece that he worked on with
incredible focus for almost two hours. Luis tried Logic for the first
time. David worked on a piece that included a little video action, and
Alanna merged her first Media Lab project (that she made with Angie)
with audio she recorded during class last week. Henry, Matthew, and I
were consistently occupied helping student with their work. It was very
busy and exciting, and gives me a lot to think about regarding moving
forward after this class is over.

The other cool part of the day was that Phase III used the upstairs
space to rehearse after Open Hours ended. Because Open Hours and the
rehearsal were one after the other, Luis started preparing for the
rehearsal a little early (warming up on his violin), which led to Josh
and Paul leaving their computer to grab a recorder to see if they could
get Luis to record something for the piece they were making. Karl
finished working on the computer a little before the rehearsal was
over, so he hung out in the main space and listened to Phase III. I
also learned that in this rehearsal, Phase III made use of several of
the practicing techniques they had learned at the Musical Workshop the
day before.



I think the day felt great overall because students seemed comfortable
using the space in a variety of ways. All of this made me wish we were
able to have general "open hours" on Saturdays at CMW, so that students
could come and go, clubhouse-style, using the space in whatever ways
suited them.

-Jori Ketten, Media Lab Director