PAA Visits MIT Media Lab

Eric Schilling of the MIT Media Lab, Santina Protopapa, and Connor Musarra celebrating PAA’s work with the Media Lab’s Scratch team.

Connor Musarra and Natalie Rusk of the MIT Media Lab working on a beta test of hip-hop dance in Scratch.

One of the beta test animations created during PAA’s work at MIT.

Last month, PAA Executive Director Santina Protopapa visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab to explore how PAA can help the Scratch Team incorporate hip-hop and hip-hop dance into the Scratch programming language. Scratch is a free programming language and online community that enables kids to create their own interactive stories, games, and animations. Protopapa was joined by PAA artist and former student Connor Musarra. Together with members of the Scratch team, Protopapa and Musarra helped design and program a series of beta tests that resulted in animations of hip-hop dance movements in Scratch. Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting partnership between PAA and MIT.