‘DEFENDING THE FUTURE’: THE PROCESS REVEALED IN NEW FILM
A new background released video traces the technical process behind Remembering the Future, the woven work by Janet Echelman at MIT Museum. On view from September 18, 2025 to 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 is drawn upward to Echelman’s expansive net sculpture. Handmade folded mattresses fibers in gradients of orange and blue stretch across the atrium, forming a suspended canopy over the staircase. During the day, natural light streams through the open mesh, while at night programmed lighting activates the surface, casting a soft field of color on the surrounding walls. The structure appears weightless, although its geometry is strictly calibrated through tension and balance.
The film places 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 became possible that opened a whole new chapter in my art,‘ explains Echelman. This tool emerged through her collaboration with architect and MIT associate professor Caitlin Mueller, whose work on the Digital Structures team shaped the project’s structural logic.
images © Anna Olivellacourtesy of the MIT Museum
JANET ECHELMAN AND CAITLIN MUELLER DEVELOP A NEW PLANNING TOOL
Janet Echelman’s collaboration with MIT Museum began with a common question: how to design soft, tensile structures with the same immediacy and precision available in more rigid architectural systems. As Mueller describes, existing software tools are “intended mainly for rigid materials such as 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 the strained geometry I wanted, send it to an engineer… and get back a version that was often very different from my original artistic design,‘ the artist notes. The new simulation tool changes this 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 in the fiber network, where even small adjustments ripple through the entire structure. ‘If you adjust the length of a small string… everything else needs to be updated too,‘ Burke explains. What was once a slow and manual process is now iterative and immediate.
For Echelman, this shift expanded the project’s formal possibilities. ‘This was the first time my work was able to have this kind of intricate geometric twist on the tension ropes,‘ she says. The final result, now 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 FORMS FORM AND EXPERIENCE
The geometry of the Memory of the Future is informed by climate records spanning from the last ice age to the predicted future. Working with MIT climatologist Raffaele Ferrari and the En-ROADS modeling team, Echelman translated the temperature and atmospheric data into multi-level spatial curves. The present moment appears within the sculpture as a single line held in tension, positioned between multiple possible trajectories.
‘This is a work of art,‘ Echelman points out in the film, ‘to consider different possible futures.Rather than presenting data as static information, the installation offers a thought-provoking spatial environment. The project balances scientific modeling with sensory experience as visitors move through the atrium while experiencing changing perspectives within the multi-layered mesh.
The video also places the installation in a larger institutional context. The MIT Museum functions, in the words of Professor Michael John Gorman, as “a playground for ideas, as a living laboratory,where collaborations between artists and researchers can unfold over extended periods.
the sculpture hangs above the museum’s lobby staircase
Artwork for a quiet moment
Beyond its technical development, the installation has a personal dimension that emerges in the film. Echelman reflects on the role of grief and mindfulness in the context of the play, describing how confronting difficult realities can open up space for agency. ‘We often feel overwhelmed by climate news,‘ says, ‘and part of the goal of this piece is to give us a moment of quiet.‘
This sense of pause is built into the spatial experience of the work. Suspended above costs, the network structure invites a slower pace of unfolding, where details emerge over time. As one visitor notes: ‘the more you look at it, the more you see,with the layers gradually revealed.
Hand woven and twisted fibers change color from orange to blue
Professor Caitlin Mueller is collaborating on new stress-based structural technology
