RainbowFloor@MIT by Natanya K. '14

Originally, I planned on naming this entry “Cool Stuff at MIT” and making it an ongoing series—but then I remembered how much cool stuff actually goes on at MIT, and decided that said series would inevitably morph into something disproportionately large and cumbersome, like the Snorlax of bloggerdom, crowding my blogspace with its inconvenient, road-blocking girth and…er, sleeping habits, I suppose.

(Yes, I happen to be a less-than-rehabilitated Pok√©mon nerd. However, as I realized when I wandered, stunned and amazed, out of my suite kitchen one night, the sound of a cadre of people assembled in my floor lounge singing the original Pok√©mon theme song making its way like sweet nostalgia to my ears, I’m in good and plentiful company.)

 

And I bet you thought I couldn’t find a Pok√©mon approximation of Tim the Beaver. WRONG.However, I digress. What I really meant to talk about was MIT’s Rainbow Floor, which I honest-to-god stumbled upon, randomly, after turning in an 18.01A pset about a week ago. Certainly, the last thing you’d probably expect to find while roaming the halls of Building 6C (a Course 3—Materials Science and Engineering—building) is giant floor-artwork*, but by god, there it was. And, luckily, a camera was on hand to take shameless tourist-pictures.

As I found out later, the Rainbow Floor actually has a real name**; but it is, sadly, quite lame. You know, that ultra-minimalist artsy sort of lame, where the artist decides to strip the title of anything actually evocative of the piece in the first place, all for the sake of coolness or whathaveyou. Therefore, it shall remain Rainbow Floor (@MIT) to me.
So, in order to take these pictures, I got up on a ledge bordering the entire atrium. Cool. That is, until I realized that there was a big room right behind me, and a meeting going on in that room, and thus quite possibly a whole bunch of people in that meeting staring at the random crazy girl who’d jumped onto their window ledge.

After the minor heart attack I had upon spotting the people conducting serious business behind me, I took one more picture before scampering back down, off the ledge and out of sight. I’ve been told the whole thing was vaguely reminiscent of a frightened squirrel escaping danger.

I’m extremely drawn to bright colors. This would be more of a problem if I was lower down on the evolutionary chain. Yay humanity?

 

More information can be found here. They also have some good bird’s-eye pictures of it, which I was unable to get as I am not, in fact, a bird (as previously mentioned). Also, I only had ten minutes to get back to my calculus lecture, and with my exceptional ability to get lost in any and all circumstances, I figured wandering around in order to get a better shot was probably a no-go.

*Well, maybe not the absolute last thing. I’d probably expect giant floor art before zombies, or the ceiling opening up to reveal a rain of pastries. Or the secret to being good at and/or actually enjoying physics. Which, please, universe: make those last two happen. Kthx.

**Because I suppose I must, and because I know not everyone will check out the link: for the record, the piece’s real name is Bars of Colors within Squares, by Sol LeWitt.