Summer Workshop Lights IIT's Crown Hall, June 11

Students from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, and Betzalel Academy Tel Aviv are participating in a three-week long summer session, Bauhaus Labs, which explores the ideas of visionary artist and educator László Moholy-Nagy through several group projects.

Bauhaus Labs culminates in the June 11 "Lighting Crown Hall" project, which challenges students to create a free public art piece that combines the contrasting ideas of Moholy-Nagy and S. R. Crown Hall's architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who collectively carried the principles of the Bauhaus to Chicago. The final results of the project will be displayed from 9 p.m. through midnight on Thursday, June 11, outside Crown Hall on IIT's Main Campus, 3360 South State St., Chicago.

Led by the Czech-Israeli artist Jan Tichy, "Lighting Crown Hall" offers students a special opportunity to use the translucent and spacious Crown Hall as a light box, illuminating the space from inside using a series of video projections. The location also offers a historic reference, as it was in Crown Hall that Mies implemented his American pedagogical program, which in many ways in contrasted to Moholy-Nagy's teaching scheme. The site is meaningful in the story of the charged relationship between these two leaders of the modernist revolution.

"Lighting Crown Hall" draws upon two important approaches in Moholy-Nagy's teaching. The first was to liberate students' creative potential through disciplined experimentation with materials, techniques, and forms, as introduced not only in his preliminary course, but also in any art process. In this project, the approach will allow students to learn new skills in time-based lighting, including analog and digital processes. The second of Moholy-Nagy's teaching approaches applies to collective work on a specific project and employs group dialogue, giving equal opportunity to all participants, teachers as well as students. As a result, the final installation of the project will be the outgrowth of a group collaborative effort.

Bauhaus Labs is part of "Living Modern Chicago," a year-long celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Bauhaus, hosted by IIT's Mies van der Rohe Society and SAIC, in collaboration with multiple other cultural institutions in Chicago. The program consists of a series of exhibitions and programs that probe the presence of modernism today. Building on the legacy of László Moholy-Nagy and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, "Living Modern Chicago" tells the Chicago chapter in the international story of modernism, looking at modernism's continuing ideals of inter-disciplinary innovative creative work and the legacy of the modern as a way of teaching and learning in both the academic and public realm.

For more information about Bauhaus Labs or other "Living Modern Chicago" programs, please visit www.livingmodernchicago.org.

A free public outdoor event, "Lighting Crown Hall" will be offered rain or shine. Visitors are encouraged to plan accordingly to enjoy this one-of-a-kind experience.

Founded in 1890, IIT is a Ph.D.-granting university with more than 7,300 students in engineering, sciences, architecture, psychology, design, humanities, business and law. IIT's interprofessional, technology-focused curriculum is designed to advance knowledge through research and scholarship, to cultivate invention improving the human condition, and to prepare students from throughout the world for a life of professional achievement, service to society, and individual fulfillment. Visit www.iit.edu.