MIT video traces how janet echelman translates climate data into woven art

‘REMEMBERING THE FUTURE’: PROCESS revealed THROUGH NEW FILM

A newly released behind-the-scenes video traces the technical process behind Remembering the Future, the woven work by Janet Echelman at the MIT Museum. On view from September 18th, 2025 through Fall 2027, the installation occupies the museum’s central atrium and uses braided fibers to translate climate data into a suspended artwork.

Upon entering the MIT Museum, attention moves upward to Echelman’s expansive net sculpture. Layers of hand-spliced fibers in gradients of orange and blue stretch across the atrium, forming a suspended canopy above the staircase. During the day, natural light passes through the open mesh, while at night programmed illumination activates the surface, casting a soft field of color onto the surrounding walls. The structure appears weightless, though its geometry is tightly calibrated through tension and balance.

The film situates the work within a longer research process developed through Echelman’s residency at MIT’s Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST). ‘I’ve done residencies all over the world, but I’ve never been able to have a residency where a new tool that opened up a whole new chapter in my art was made possible,‘ Echelman explains. That tool emerged through her collaboration with architect and MIT Associate Professor Caitlin Mueller, whose work in the Digital Structures group shaped the project’s structural logic.

images © Anna Olivella, courtesy MIT Museum

JANET ECHELMAN AND CAITLIN MUELLER DEVELOP A NEW DESIGN TOOL

Janet Echelman’s collaboration with MIT Museum began with a shared question: how to design soft, tensile structures with the same immediacy and precision available to more rigid architectural systems. As Mueller describes, existing software tools are ‘mostly meant for rigid materials like concrete, steel, wood,‘ leaving a gap in how flexible systems can be modeled during the design process.

Previously, Echelman’s workflow relied on a slower exchange between artistic intent and engineering translation. ‘I would draw out the tensioned geometry I wanted, I’d send it off to an engineer… and I’d get back a version that was often very different from my original artistic design,‘ the artist notes. The new simulation tool changes that relationship. Developed with Mueller and a team including PhD candidate Adam Burke, it allows the artist to adjust forces and geometries in real time.

The system models how gravity and tension interact across the network of fibers, where even small adjustments ripple across the entire structure. ‘If you adjust the length of one little string… everything else also needs to be updated,‘ Burke explains. What was once a slow and manual process is now iterative and immediate.

For Echelman, this shift expanded the formal possibilities of the work. ‘This was the first time my work was ever able to have this kind of complex geometric twist in the tensioning ropes,‘ she says. The end result, now suspended in the museum, reflects this increased precision while maintaining a sense of fluidity.

Janet Echelman creates a large-scale fiber installation at the MIT Museum

CLIMATE DATA SHAPES FORM AND EXPERIENCE

The geometry of Remembering the Future is informed by climate records extending from the last ice age to projected futures. Working with MIT climate scientist Raffaele Ferrari and the En-ROADS modeling team, Echelman translated temperature and atmospheric data into layered spatial curves. The present moment appears within the sculpture as a single line held in tension, positioned among multiple possible trajectories.

‘This is an artwork,‘ Echelman emphasizes in the film, ‘to look at different possible futures.‘ Rather than presenting data as fixed information, the installation offers a spatial environment that invites reflection. The work balances scientific modeling with sensory experience, as visitors move through the atrium while encountering shifting perspectives within the layered net.

The video also situates the installation within a broader institutional context. The MIT Museum operates, in the words of Professor Michael John Gorman, as ‘a playground for ideas, as a living lab,‘ where collaborations between artists and researchers can unfold over extended periods.

the sculpture is suspended above the museum lobby staircase

Artwork for a moment of quiet

Beyond its technical development, the installation carries a personal dimension that emerges in the film. Echelman reflects on the role of grief and attention within the project, describing how confronting difficult realities can open space for agency. ‘We often feel overwhelmed by the news about the climate,‘ she says, ‘and part of the goal of this piece is to give us a moment of quiet.‘

This sense of pause is embedded within the spatial experience of the work. Suspended overhead, the net structure invites a slower pace of looking, where details emerge over time. As one visitor notes: ‘the more you look at it, the more you see,‘ with layers revealing themselves gradually.

braided and hand-spliced fibers shift in color from orange to blue