Our thirty-fourth Standing-Room Only Lecture will have David Reinfurt coming from the south and Robert Wiesenberger coming from the west to reconstruct a talk. Muriel Cooper (1925–94) worked for four decades at MIT in overlapping roles as a graphic designer, teacher, and researcher. Spanning the transition from print to early explorations of digital typography to fully evolved information environments, Cooper’s tenure at MIT maps onto one of the most dynamic periods of the school’s technical, conceptual, and theoretical development.
As the first Design Director of the MIT Press, Cooper established a comprehensive publishing program and designed landmark books like The Bauhaus (1969) and Learning from Las Vegas (1972). As co-founder of the Visible Language Workshop, she taught experimental printing and tested large-format Polaroid photography and video systems in MIT’s Department of Architecture. And at the MIT Media Lab, she developed software interfaces and educated a generation of designers and engineers. Throughout, Cooper’s approach remained consistent: creating tools and systems for rapid feedback, dissolving boundaries between design and production, and restlessly seeking out new problems.
“There is still no magic way—but we propose to keep working at it.”
In 1981, Muriel Cooper gave a lively and informal slide talk to visitors in the Visible Language Workshop called simply “Graphics and New Technology.” The talk was given at a hinge moment between print and screen-based graphic design, nine years after Learning from Las Vegas and four years before the Media Lab.
On December 5, 2024, David and Robert will present an edited reconstruction of this talk for our standing-room-only audience.
Our speakers, David Reinfurt and Robert Wiesenberger, have bios that are too long to use here, but both are interesting and accomplished. We can vouch for them.
Thirty tickets are available for $10 each.
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Date and Time
Thursday, December 5 at 7p
Doors open at 6p for mingling.
Place
Katherine Small Gallery
108 Beacon Street
Somerville, MA 02143 [map]
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Standing-Room Only Lectures aim to present short talks about graphic design, typography, and collecting. The lectures are kept to about twenty minutes because—true to its name—the series takes place in our standing-room only gallery. So, wear comfortable shoes and bring a short attention span.