MetaLAB (at) Harvard

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MetaLAB (at) Harvard

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We are an idea foundry, knowledge-design lab, and production studio experimenting in the networked arts and humanities.

We are located at Harvard University and the Freie Universität Berlin. metaLAB (at) Harvard was founded in 2011 and is an institutional unit within the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, where it is involved in the Center’s research efforts in such domains as artificial intelligence, social justice, internet governance, cybersecurity, and the law. It is physically located within Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). Because design practice is fundamental to its ethos, metaLAB maintains close ties to GSD faculty, students, and academic programs, as well as to Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. metaLAB (at) FU Berlin was founded in 2022 and is housed at the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft. As a joint international research initiative with metaLAB (at) Harvard, it operates as a transdisciplinary platform for the exploration of new knowledge practices in the scientific, cultural and social domains with a focus on critical data science and experimental museology. metaLAB (at) FU’s approach and aim is to develop practice-based research projects in collaboration with both Berlin-based and European cultural institutions and research partners.

10/13/2026

🌿 This week at Mesh Festival Basel: Care Matters in Human-Ecological Infrastructures! From October 14–17, metaLAB (at) Basel leads this transdisciplinary autumn school co-produced with the wider metaLAB community across Basel, Berlin, and Harvard.

How can care shape the ways we understand and inhabit our shared environments? Across four hands-on workshops, participants will explore:

🩹 Care narratives — mapping community health journeys
🫙 Fermentation — engaging the body as a living archive
🥽 Extended reality (XR) — exploring ecological entanglements
🎧 Sound and sensing — listening to more-than-human urban ecologies

Participants will contribute to a collaborative neighborhood AI dataset and create a public, multimodal manifesta combining field recordings, spatial annotations, embodied observations, and written reflections.

🔗 Learn more at the link in our bio.

10/09/2026

🐘🦏🐪 Announcing: ¿SUSTAINABLE? ENOUGH: Landscapes and Communities!

Curated and moderated by Raffaella Colombo, this three-part online series examines sustainability through the interconnected questions of land, care, community, and collective futures.

Save the dates:
🐘 Oct 27: GATHER — Land, resources, and relations
🦏 Nov 10: CARE — Landscapes and ways of living
🐪 Dec 1: SHARE — New communities and collective futures

The three symposia take up a central question: What is enough, and enough for whom? Rather than treating sustainability as a self-evident virtue, ¿SUSTAINABLE? ENOUGH approaches it as a field of negotiation, opening critical conversations about limits, responsibility, access, care, and coexistence.

🔗 Learn more at the link in our bio.

10/05/2026

🌿 There’s still time to apply for “Care Matters in Human-Ecological Infrastructures,” a free, transdisciplinary autumn school led by metaLAB (at) Basel and co-produced with the metaLAB community, taking place during Mesh Festival Basel, October 14-17. The sign-up deadline is October 8.

Over four hands-on workshops, participants explore care as human-ecological infrastructure. Each workshop uses a different method: care and health narratives, fermentation as feminist archival practice, XR environments, and sound and sensing. Together, participants build a shared neighborhood AI dataset and co-author a multimodal manifesta, which is presented at the public roundtable and exhibit at Mesh Festival on Day 4.

Open to: students, researchers, artists, activists, practitioners, and interested members of the public from any discipline or background. No prior experience with any of the methods is needed. Curiosity and a willingness to co-create are what matter.

🔗 Learn more and apply at the link in bio.

10/03/2026

🌿 Join metaLAB (at) Basel and the wider metaLAB community for “Care Matters in Human-Ecological Infrastructures,” a free, four-day transdisciplinary autumn school at Mesh Festival Basel, October 14–17.

How can we understand care as a shared human-ecological infrastructure? Through four hands-on workshops, participants will explore health narratives, fermentation as feminist archival practice, extended reality (XR), and sound and sensing.

Together, participants will build a shared neighborhood AI dataset and co-create a multimodal manifesta, presented at a public roundtable and exhibition during Mesh Festival.

Open to students, researchers, artists, activists, practitioners, and curious members of the public from any discipline. No prior experience required. Application deadline: October 8

🔗 Learn more about the program and apply at the link in our bio.

10/01/2026

An exhibition celebrating Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before opens today at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan!

Drawing on Eco’s novel, rare books, scientific materials, and the author’s preparatory works, the exhibition explores the intersections of literature, history, science, and exploration.

metaLAB at Harvard and Berlin contributed to the installation, creating five visualizations of Eco’s text and an online version of the novel’s “metaphor machine.” Developed in collaboration with the Umberto Eco Foundation and the Museo Galileo | Firenze in Florence, the exhibition features the work of Jeffrey Schnapp and .

Learn more at the link in our bio. 🔗

09/29/2026

Join us TODAY, September 29th, for metaLAB’s first Work-share & Mingle of the academic year! Eric Rodenbeck will be discussing his work on “Archives, LLMs, data visualization and where they connect.”

Eric is the founder of Stamen and a Lecturer in Advanced Studies at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. His metaLab talk connects 25 years of data visualization practice with his teaching at Harvard, from Re-imagining the Archive to his upcoming course, Neural Cartographies.

Moving among archives, collections, brains, and machine-learning models, Rodenbeck will consider how design changes when machines become participants in making meaning. The talk is also an invitation to researchers, institutions, and potential project partners interested in what these systems make visible, what they leave out, and how we might work with them.

🧠 4:30-5:30 pm: Work-share discussion, 1st floor
🍻 5:30-6:30 pm: Reception & mingle, 4th floor
📍 42 Kirkland Street, Cambridge

09/28/2026

Join us tomorrow, September 29th, for metaLAB’s first Work-share & Mingle of the academic year! Eric Rodenbeck will be discussing his work on “Archives, LLMs, data visualization and where they connect.”

Eric is the founder of Stamen Design and a Lecturer in Advanced Studies at Harvard Graduate School of Design. His metaLab talk connects 25 years of data visualization practice with his teaching at Harvard, from Re-imagining the Archive to his upcoming course, Neural Cartographies.

Moving among archives, collections, brains, and machine-learning models, Rodenbeck will consider how design changes when machines become participants in making meaning. The talk is also an invitation to researchers, institutions, and potential project partners interested in what these systems make visible, what they leave out, and how we might work with them.

🧠 4:30-5:30 pm: Work-share discussion, 1st floor
🍻 5:30-6:30 pm: Reception & mingle, 4th floor
📍 42 Kirkland Street, Cambridge

09/09/2026

👏✨ We’re thrilled to see workshops led by members of the broader Harvard and metaLAB community at the Public AI Summit for Educators!

🗣️ Olivia Tai (Harvard alum/former metaLAB research assistant)
“Forgive my sin: I talk to AI way more than to all people in my life, combined :(”
Olivia will draw on her What We Tell AI AI project to explore how young people’s relationships with AI may be reshaping social life.

🔤 Dan Be Kim (AI Fellow, Center for Digital Thriving Harvard GSE)
“The AI to Z Workshop: Finding the Words We Need Now”
Dan Be will lead a participatory experience inviting educators to name and explore the new ways AI is changing culture, relationships, and everyday experience.

✍️ Jane Rosenzweig (Director, Harvard Extension School Writing Center)
“To What (Writing) Problem is AI the Solution?”
Jane will ask participants to reconsider why we teach writing, what we want students to learn, and where AI might support—or complicate—the writing process.

Join Olivia, Dan Be, Jane, and a dozen other educators and AI experts from across the country on September 17 for interactive workshops as part of the free, virtual Summit.

🔗 Register at the link in bio.

08/18/2026

🤖🐌☁️🌱 What if we slowed AI down? metaLAB Researcher Magda Romanska was recently invited to participate in a workshop on Slow AI and Disability, hosted by Leonardo ISAST’s CripTech Incubator.

Assembling disabled artists, musicians, writers, educators, and technologists, the workshop explored how disability perspectives can challenge AI’s culture of speed, extraction, and efficiency and create space for different rhythms and ways of making. From local open-source models to experimental computational methods, Slow AI asks us to pause, listen, and imagine technology otherwise.

We’re proud to see Magda contributing to this important conversation about accessibility and the future of creative technology!

🔗 Explore the full exhibition of Slow AI at the link in our bio.

08/13/2026

📚💡✨ The Public AI Summit for Educators returns September 16–17 as a free, virtual event bringing together educators, researchers, and AI experts for two days of practical conversations about teaching with AI.

We’re proud to see the AI Pedagogy Project—first started at metaLAB in 2023—co-hosting this Summit alongside the Data Nutrition Project. The Summit is supported by Axim Collaborative, a joint endeavor of Harvard and MIT focused on expanding access to education.

Featuring keynote conversations with:
✨ Karen Brennan (Harvard)
✨ Justin Reich (MIT)
✨ Arvind Narayanan (Princeton)

Expect practical workshops, live Q&A, classroom-ready resources, and thoughtful discussions about AI literacy, assessment, institutional policy, and preparing students for the future of work.

Virtual and free for all to attend!

🔗 Register at https://publicaisummit.org or head to the link in our bio.

Address

42 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA
02138

Website

https://mlml.io/

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