Foreground: American Artist, The Monophobic Response (sculpture), 2024. Courtesy the artist. Background: American Artist, The Monophobic Response (film), 2024. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Dario Lasagni
Graduate Student Talk: Allegra Farrar
December 10, 2025
Join Allegra Farrar, a PhD candidate in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics with the Space Enabled Research Group, for a conversation around American Artist: To Acorn.
Allegra Farrar will guide attendees through the lifecycle of a tropical cyclone, reframing hurricanes as essential planetary processes—Earth’s own language of change. Drawing on her research, developing adaptive satellite observation strategies that listen to the shifting signals of the ocean and atmosphere, she examines how observation technologies can be used to embody particular values: extraction, control, or reciprocity. Connecting Octavia Butler’s Earthseed to today’s intensifying storms, this talk situates American Artist’s work within the lived urgency of reimagining both technology and community in relation to the constancy of change.
This event is free, but please register through the Eventbrite link in advance.
About the Speaker
Allegra Farrar is a graduate researcher at MIT, working jointly in the Media Lab and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics with the Space Enabled Research Group. Her work is shaped by the urgent need to address the inequities faced by coastal communities, where the impacts of tropical cyclones are often amplified by limited sensing infrastructure and growing climate uncertainty. In response, she is reimagining the design of Earth observation satellite missions for more timely, relevant, and actionable observations. Her work focuses on developing adaptive sensing frameworks for Earth-observing satellites, combining probabilistic machine learning tools with community-informed design for real-time decision systems. Her goal is to construct observation methods that serve both scientific inquiry and community resilience.
MIT graduate students explore current exhibitions at the List Center through the lens of their own research, background, and interests. Join us for this interdisciplinary lecture series where we dive into how art and research are overlapping on MIT’s campus.