http://bit.ly/rctT36 MIT+150: FAST (Festival of Art + Science + Technology): FAST LIGHT — "Bicycle Repair Station"

This was thoughtful. Next to a long line of bike racks was this stand, where you could hang a broken bike and have guaranteed access to a bunch of tools (all tethered to the spot) and even an air pump. Nice.

• • • • •

Quoting from the official pamphlet:

FAST LIGHT • May 7 + 8, 2011, 7 pm - 10 pm

Contemporary pioneers in art, science, and technology have come together at MIT to create one of the most exhilarating and inventive spectacles metro Boston has ever seen. On May 7 and 8, 2011, visitors can interact with 20+ art and architectural installations illuminating the campus and the Charles River along Memorial Drive at MIT.

arts.mit.edu / fast

Installations scattered around campus (we didn't quite see all of them), again pasting from the official flyer:

• aFloat
MIT Chapel • Saturday, May 7th ONLY
Inspired by water in the Saarinen Chapel's moat, a touch releases flickers of light before serenity returns as a calm ripple.
By Otto Ng, Ben Regnier, Dena Molnar, and Arseni Zaitsev.

• Inflatables
Lobby 7, Infinite Corridor
A dodecahedron sculpture made of silver nylon resonates with gusts of air, heat from light bulbs, and the motions of passersby.
By Kyle Barker, Juan Jofre, Nick Polansky, Jorge Amaya.

• (now(now(now)))
Building 7, 4th Floor
This installation nests layers of the past into an image of the present, recursively intertwining slices of time.
By Eric Rosenbaum and Charles DeTar.

• Dis(Course)4
Building 3 Stair, Infinite Corridor
A stairwell transformed by a shummering aluminum conduit inspired by the discourse between floors and academic disciplines.
By Craig Boney, Jams Coleman and Andrew Manto.

• Maxwell's Dream
Building 10 Community Lounge, Infinite Corridor
An interactive mural created by magnetic fields that drive patterns of light, Maxwell's Dream is a visually expressive cybernetic loop.
By Kaustuv De Biswas and Daniel Rosenberg.

• Mood Meter
Student Center & Building 8, Infinite Corridor
Is the smile a barometer of happiness? Mood Meter playfully assesses and displays the mood of the MIT community onsite and at moodmeter.media.mit.edu
By Javier Hernandez and Ehsan Hoque.

• SOFT Rockers
Killian Court
Repose and charge your electronic devices using green solar powered technology
By Shiela Kennedy, P. Seaton, S. Rockcastle, W. Inam, A. Aolij, J. Nam, K. Bogenshutz, J. Bayless, M. Trimble.

• LightBridge
The Mass. Ave Bridge
A dynamic interactive LED array responds to pedestrians on the bridge, illustrating MIT's ties to both sides of the river. Thanks to Philips ColorKinetics, CISCO, SparkFun Electronics.
By Sysanne Seitinger.

• Sky Event
Killian Court, Saturday, May 7th ONLY
Immense inflatable stars soar over MIT in celebration of the distinctive symbiosis among artists, scientists and engineers.
By Otto Piene.

• Liquid Archive
Charles River
A floating inflatable screen provides a backdrop for projections that highlight MIT's history in science, technology, and art.
By Nader Tehrani and Gediminas Urbonas.

• Light Drift
Charles River
Ninety brightly glowing orbs in the river change color as they react to the presence of people along the shore.
By Meejin Yoon.

• Unflat Pavilion
Building 14 Lawn
This freestanding pavilion illuminated with LEDs flexes two dimensions into three. Flat sheets are bent and unfurl into skylights, columns, and windows.
By Nick Gelpi

• Gradated Field
Walker Memorial Lawn
A field of enticing mounts create a landscape that encourages passersby to meander through, or lounge upon the smooth plaster shapes.
By Kyle Coburn, Karina Silvester and Yihyun Lim.

• Bibliodoptera
Building 14, Hayden Library Corridor
Newly emerged from the chrysalis of MIT's diverse library pages, a cloud of butterflies flutters above, reacting to the movement of passersby.
By Elena Jessop and Peter Torpey.

• Wind Screen
Green Building Facade, Bldg 54
A shimmering curtain of light created by micro-turbines displays a visual register of the replenishable source of wind energy.
By Meejin Yoon.

• String Tunnel
Building 18 Bridge
A diaphonous tunnel creates a sense of entry to and from the Infinite Corridor and frames the surrounding landscape.
By Yuna Kim, Kelly Shaw, and Travis Williams.

• voltaDom
Building 56-66 Connector
A vaulted passageway utilizes an innovative fabrication technique that creates complex double curved vaults through the simple rolling of a sheet of material.
By Skylar Tibbits.

• Night of Numbers
Building 66 Facade & E15 Walkway
A lighting installation enlivens MIT architectre with numbers that hold special or historical significance to the Institute. Can you decode them all?
By Praveen Subramani and Anna Kotova.

• Overliner
Building E-25 Stairwell
Taking cues from a stairwell's spiraling geometry, Overliner transforms a familiar and busy passageway into a moment of surprise and repose.
By Joel Lamere and Cynthia Gunadi.

• Chroma District
Corner of Ames and Main Streets.
Lanterns react to visitors by passing sound and color from one to another, increasing in intensity along the way and illuminating the path to MIT's campus.
By Eyal Shahar, Akito van Troyer, and Seung Jin Ham.


In a Silicon Valley technology landscape where young hotshots tend to make their marks with innovative new startups, Farah Giga is different. She began her professional life as a solutions architect at Hitachi Data Systems while earning three degrees from Stanford, then made the move to HP. While there, she held numerous strategic managerial positions and led the integration effort when HP acquired storage vendor 3PAR for $ 2.4 billion. Now 27, Giga has joined Washington, D.C.-area VC firm Valhalla Partners as a principal.
Giga’s M&A experience while at HP was among the reasons Valhalla hired her, Director of Research Dan Gordon told me recently. “We’re in the manufacturing business,” he explained — as in manufacturing exits for the firm’s investments — and Giga knows firsthand how the process works within large vendors of the type that typically buy storage startups. According to Valhalla General Partner Charles Curran, the firm regularly connects with large storage vendors such as HP, EMC and NetApp, whereas many VCs focus their efforts solely on getting to know the entrepreneurs in which they’re investing.
However, Giga told me, she doesn’t lack in entrepreneurial spirit or know-how just because she spent nine years working for large vendors. She actually wanted to go the startup route out of college, but her career in the corporate world was going too well. Still, Giga said, she did get to do some entrepreneurial work at HP while wearing her strategy and business development hat, only she had a fair amount of resources to work with.
Giga looks like a particularly apt fit at Valhalla, which has made next-generation storage systems an area of particular focus. Among the companies current investments are Nirvanix, which is really the only game in town for enterprise-class storage in the cloud, and SolidFire, which is targeting cloud computing providers with an all-flash storage array. Previously, Valhalla backed LeftHand Networks, which HP bought in 2008 for $ 360 million.
She said she’s particularly interested in both cloud storage and solid-state drives as hot investment areas, as well as big data. What she’s looking for, she added, are disruptive companies within these spaces that let IT departments operate faster and better without killing their budgets. Gordon noted that cloud storage and SSDs should be big winners if Valhalla’s larger vision of “video as the new text” plays out. Video, after all, requires lots of storage capacity on the cheap, which the cloud provides, and the performance that SSDs deliver.
It will be very interesting to watch how Giga’s storage-industry contacts and experience — and relative youth — affect Valhalla’s success in these spaces. As Curran pointed out, SSDs, especially, are gaining traction across industries as everything from virtualization to big-data processing have CIOs thinking about storage performance. And it’s a competive space: He noted that Valhalla wanted in on Nimble Storage’s recent $ 25 million round, but was outbid. Artis Capital Management led that round, with Nimble’s existing investors Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital also chipping in.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Infrastructure Q2: Big data and PaaS gain more momentum
A field guide to cloud computing: current trends, future opportunities
Infrastructure Q2: Big data and PaaS gain more momentum