In the first week of the photography studio, students looked behind the photographs to find and understand the stories that provoked the images. Here are some photos taken by the students of people, places, and events that left an impression on them.

Sara Radin (Charles River)


Stephen Phillips (Kendall Square)


Sam Law (Kendall Square)


Rachel Dolgov (Near Charles River)


Max Penzel (Car)


Kayla Guzovsky (One Cambridge Center Building)


Ginny Hollingsworth (Neighborhood)


Angelo Cabral (Home)


Alex Jacobs (Kendall Square)


Alec Dede (Parkour, Harvard Square)

This past week, our Superheroes-themed Summer Program which is taking place on the Florida Southern College campus in Lakeland, Florida was featured on two news channels (NBC & Fox). Check out the two pieces and how students in Florida are getting a taste of NuVu's intensive, fun and creativity-focused program. "Summer Camp" on NBC Tampa Bay "Super Summer Camp" on Fox Tampa Bay:

We spent the day designing rigs for our second shoot. We were hoping to take sky pictures of the Tea Party rally in Boston Commons but we did not finish designing/making our rigs on time. Students used mostly foam and tape to make their rigs. We will be testing tomorrow morning.

Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-cant-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what theyre saying is you like stuff. Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness. - John Green (American author of young adult fiction and a YouTube vlogger) Over the summer, we've had the pleasure of having some of our past NuVu Alumni at the studio as part of our summer internship program. "The Mag8" or The Magnificent 8 (as the interns have happily nicknamed themselves) have been assisting the coaches with the studios, documenting the studios, blogging about the students' projects, working on iterations of past projects, planning Kickstarter campaigns, and keeping the students and us company! Intern Profiles:

Liam Brady Liam, a Beaver Country Day School Junior (class of 2014), made the trek from Easton all the way to Nuvu each day during the winter term of 2011-12. Liam created many incredible projects within the brain theme as inspiration, but his favorite project was an interactive mat that is projected from the ceiling onto the floor. He loved writing code and programming the mat. As an intern, he is enthralled with his newest invention: The Music Box. This goal of this project is to create a musical instrument that uses active Infrared sensors to read the distance between itself and ones hand. Liam thinks that this is a fascinating project, as it has potential to become a truly successful project in the marketplace. In his spare time, Liam plays the piano, creates his own music, and listens to that of others. Next year, he will travel to Cuba for a week with a group of Beaver students to study jazz. Liam loves any outdoor activity, as he skis, hikes, bikes, and plans to run Varsity Cross Country this fall. Fun Fact: Liam has perfect pitch, meaning he can hear a song for the first time on the radio, sit down and play it!


Nora Demick Nora Demick, a recent graduate of Beaver Country Day School from Watertown, will matriculate at Smith College this fall. Nora attended Nuvu during the fall of 2010, and her favorite part of Nuvu as a student was everything!!!!! but, more specifically, she enjoyed having the opportunity to work with and learn from people who are experts in their fields. She absolutely loved working in the Fusion Energy studio with Ishvan. Nora created an intergalactic table that she was extremely pleased with. When Nora discovered that this summers theme would be Superheroes, she jumped at the chance to intern with the program. She has loved superheroes from a very young age, and helping to teach other children about them through comics and attire were the best things she could be doing this summer. Nora enjoys writing, reading, watching superhero movies on repeat, and playing field hockey (she will be a goalie on the varsity team at Smith!!!). She prides herself on her ability to interact with kids and to help them absorb information and stay focused. Nora is an expert at working with kids as well as costume design and construction. Fun Facts: Nora was a three sport Varsity captain in two seasons this year, and she is allergic to water.


Alex Fissler Alex is a rising senior at Beaver Country Day School. Coming from Boston, Alex was a student at NuVu in the spring of 2012 in the term of Government. The fondest memories she has from her time last spring are of an incredible coach, Raghava KK. Alex worked with Rags during the Shaking the World studio during which she and her groupmates created real world cartoons showcasing empty Central Square locations and fictional characters designed in Photoshop. Rags was immensely helpful to Alex and she describes him as passionate about his own work, interested in that of his students, and one of the nicest people youll ever meet. During that studio she discovered a passion for graphic design, and now spends much of her time as a summer intern doing just that. Her favorite aspect of working at NuVu this summer is having a chance to develop those same skills. She has been working diligently on a variety of Photoshop projects including designing fish for a light installation that will be shown in the courtyard outside of the NuVu Studio space. Additionally, Alex is interested in art, reading, and sports. At Beaver she is the varsity field hockey captain, a dedicated member of the Model UN team, and devotes much of her time to community service. Fun Facts: she is from Germany, has been chased by a cow, and has pink hair.


Neil Hildick-Smith Neil is a Beaver Country Day School Senior (class of 2013) who joins us from Winchester. He participated in NuVu in the spring of 2011. What he enjoyed the most about his time as a NuVu student was the independent project period. During those weeks, he made a t-shirt printer! He liked this project so much because of the innovation involved; he could experiment with its pattern of movement and invent his own way of making it work. This summer, Neil has spent the majority of his time working on the outdoor courtyard installation. He has been perfecting his plan for the overall design as well as creating aspects of it in photoshop. When Neil is not at NuVu, he still thinks he is at NuVu! He spends his time doing projects similar to those that would be done at NuVu such as building remote control submarines and an assortment of robots. At school he is on the robotics team, the cross country team, and the tennis team. Fun Fact: Neil is a lefty.


Carli Jaff Hailing from Newton, Carli is a member of the Beaver Country Day School class of 2012. In late August, Carli will make the trip out to Waterville, ME to begin her time at Colby College. Carli, like Nora, attended NuVu in the fall of 2010. As it was the first NuVu term ever, it was a nerve-racking experience to be a guinea pig. However, she immediately fell in love with the program and, in her second studio, had her all time best experience here. During those two weeks, Carli worked on a sci-fi film trailer made up of clips from other movies. The plot was intricate, and the final project was amazing! She credits much of her success to Alla Kovgan, her coach, and realized that she might want to go into film editing as a career. In addition to editing films this summer as an intern, Carli has been working with the students, writing blog posts, and documenting the summer through photography and videos. Carli is also interested in musical theatre, field hockey, and writing. She was the editor-in-chief of the Beaver newspaper in her senior year. Fun Fact: Carli has lived in 5 states and attended 18 different schools.


Nick Laycox A recent graduate of Beaver Country Day School (Class of 2012), Nick Laycox plans to move from Sherborn, MA to Portland, OR in order to attend Lewis and Clark College starting in August. A Nuvu alumnus from the spring of 2011, Nick is thrilled to be back working here! His favorite part of NuVu then was taking a broad idea or large project and transforming it into something that can be created or built. What he likes about this summer at NuVu is continuing to do just that, as well as helping the current students to do the same. In addition to doing this, Nick has been writing grants and putting his talents in design to good use. At Beaver, Nick ran cross country, works on the tech crew, and is a staff member of the school art and literary magazine. He also likes to ski, play with electronics, and spend time outdoors. Nick is also looking forward to taking his applied mathematics course this fall. Fun Fact: Nick is a huge nerd.


Emma Magidson Emma will be a senior at Noble & Greenough School Senior (class of 2013) this upcoming year. A native of Wellesley, Emma attended Nuvu during the fall and winter of 2011-12. Her strengths at NuVu are both design and writing. Emmas favorite part of NuVu as a student was being able to take ideas and turn them into functioning projects. She believes that NuVu gave her a great amount of confidence both creatively and academically. In addition to this, she also loved the resources that she had access to while studying here. She could get anything she needed from Harvard and MIT as well as the help of the brilliant coaches! Having the freedom to work on interesting projects in combination with helping out with whatever is needed makes being a summer intern exciting for Emma. She feels that she is gaining a wide range of experience through the position. At Nobles Emma is a leader in student admissions, the editor-in-chief of the schools art and literary magazine, and the Nobles-Nuvu liaison. In her spare time she enjoys drawing, reading, writing, and working with kids enrolled in various tutoring organizations. Fun Fact: Emma used to be an extremely talented gymnast before she fractured her spine.


Sam Polk Sam, a Beaver Country Day School senior (class of 2013) and Newton Highlands resident, attended NuVu during the fall of 2012. His specialty here is engineering. Sams favorite part of NuVu as a student was the reinventing breakfast studio. He liked how the project could be used in the real world and that he could play a role in something so real. Within the studio, he specifically had fun working the world renowned chef and expert molecular gastronomist Adam Melonas. His favorite thing about working as an intern here is meeting and working with all the younger children, which has made Sams summer much more entertaining! Outside of NuVu, Sam enjoys skateboarding, playing Scrabble, watching British Sci-Fi, and setting world records on the iPad game Cut the Rope. At school he participates in robotics, jazz bands, ultimate frisbee, and excels at writing. Fun Fact: Sam has broken every one of his limbs, and has undergone 103 X-Rays!!!

Katie and Klara are the Flower-Power team in NuVu's Synesthesia Studio. They envision their final product as a flower that will be operated by hand movements. The flower will change color and play sounds in response to the hand movements of the operator.

The girls are using traditional tools and apply programming skills while creating their interactive flower. NuVu's mentors are supporting the project in their typical hands-on approach. 

The Making of the Flower Power Art

The flower will be made up of five petals and and a flower base. The petals of the flower were designed in SketchUp and then laser cut. The petals will be attached to a central servo in the flower base. The central servo will spin and open the petals.

These spinning and opening/closing motion of the flower petals will be controlled with a glove with sensors and accelerometers.  As the motion is triggered, sound files made in Max MSP will play.  And lastly, as the servo and flower moves and the music starts to play, the LEDs embedded into the five walls of the stacked 3D pentagon of the flower base, will be turned on.  There will also be three LEDs in the each of the five petals that turn on as soon as the petals begin to move into their place. The LEDs will fade in and out through the colour spectrum. 

This group is connecting the idea of movement/ touch with sound and colour, to represent Synesthesia.

NuVu invites you to our Spring 2012 Exhibit that will be held at our studio space in Cambridge. The event will showcase students projects from the Spring Government trimester. Come explore students innovative solutions for an automated mail delivery system for the USPS, a multi-service vending machine to help cut the MBTA budget deficit, a variable pricing scheme for Hubway, and an interactive device to track happiness. On display will be interesting data visualizations of twitter feeds, an interactive installation that describes stories of modern slavery, an online newspaper about local Cambridge/Boston- based issues, a happiness box, new medical devices, a complex game that simluates a variable pricing system, a musical staircase and much more! Time: Sunday, June 3rd, 2-4pm Location: NuVu Studio 450 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139

In the Visual Hacktivism studio, students explored the use of programming and design to visualize and communicate information related to government and activism in the world today. Some of the major questions discussed as part of the studio were: How can the acts of government and activism be understood through the information that emerges from them? How can this information be analyzed, visualized and shared to spread this understanding? Can dealing with data become a type of activism in itself? Students designed various data visualization projects around the topics of modern slavery, the Occupy Wall Street movement, debt per capita in Europe, and the 2012 presidential elections. The final projects can be found here. The seven projects are: Modern Slavery by Amina Dowe and Sophie Weissbourd InfoCircle by Stephen Ellias and Yulika Louis-Jean Occupy Wall Street by Sonya Raab and Max Rae-Chu Visualizing Economics by Evan Lyle and Jenna Kaplan US Voter Map by Tyler Kavoogian Twitter Tracking by Zackary Steinberg and Leah Spingarn Twitter Bouncer by Sameul Favazza and Oliver Spring

What does an outer space colony look like that can accommodate 10,000 people? At what altitude is it built? How is the colony structured? What nanomaterials is the colony built out of? Are these nanomaterials self-assembling? How do communities gather on the colony? What types of public spaces exist? In the 1970s, NASA's Ames Research Center gathered artists and tasked them with designing space colonies able to accomodate 10,000 people. Many of these images were based off the work of Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill with the help of NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University. Together they showed how real the possibility was of building giant orbiting spaceships that we could inhabit. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made. These have been converted to jpegs and are available as thumbnails, quarter page, full screen and publication quality images on NASA's Space Settlements webpage. How close are we today to living in outer space?

NuVu's Interns are a diverse bunch of talented teens. Klara's posting below tells you fun facts about each of them (in order of the photos on the collage).

SUMMARY by Klara Ingersoll

Harper Mills:  Harper was a NuVu full-year student in 2012-2013. She traveled to Rio with NuVu; researching the challenges of favela residents, and created a website to educate people in the U.S about the multi faceted issues facing Rio's population.  She's graced NuVu with her Brainwave art (made an appearance at TED y'all!) and you will often find her writing poetry and discussing world happenings. Her spirit animal is an orca because she doesn't like being in captivity. She is literally too cool for school. 

Joe Chafkin: Joe, going into his senior year at Beaver Country Day. He was at NuVu in the Fall of 2012 and worked on  the flight simulator, the EEG Brainwave Art studio, and the moving documentary "The End". This documentary discussed a wide scope of beliefs surrounding the afterlife . Joe surfs and plays lacrosse. His spirit animals is a penguin, and much like penguins he is charismatic and slides around on his belly. 

Yash Balaji: Yash, who lives in New Jersey, is going into his sophomore year of high school. He attended NuVu in summer 2012, and traveled with NuVu to India and participated in the Mumbai studio. He made super gadgets and wrote the script for the interactive story book, Harmonize, aiming to bring back the beauty of old Indian folk music. 

Klara Ingersoll: Klara, going into her sophomore year at CRLS, first entered NuVu in summer 2012 where she created the honeycomb dress that was shown in Boston Fashion Week. She later returned to NuVu in January 2013 and has worked on numerous projects since. In the spring she took part in the launch of NuVu Bangalore, working with some of India's top designers, artists, developers and engineers, creating an interactive storybook, and taking photos. Her spirit animal is a peacock because she's sassy and doesn't wear salmon shorts. She wants to be in a all girl japanese biker gang when she grows up.

Max Ingersoll: Max attended NuVu in summer 2012 and was a full-year student in 2012-2013. He has re-designed logan airport, built airplanes, and a super Max outfit for Boston Fashion Week. He has also challenged the hurricane problem by building a pump which cools surface water temperatures. He traveled to Bangalore with NuVu and worked on the Interactive Storybook App. He plays hockey. Max's spirit animal is himself because he likes to make himself into a superhero at every opportunity he gets; because he is The Most Interesting Man In The World.

Graeme Mills: Graeme was a full-year student in 2012-2013. He plays basketball and is really interested in deepening his understanding of economics and cosmic theory. He traveled to Rio with NuVu, and created an App to help inform favela residents about the housing market. He has also worked on a flight simulator, and made and modeled a glowing super super suit. You can find him jamming out to Hans Zimmer and watching South Park. 

Neil Hildick-Smith: Neil, just graduated from Beaver country Day, attended  NuVu in 2011 (the first year of NuVu!) and returned as an Intern in summer 2012. He worked on an app for Gali Gali Sim Sim, an Indian Sesame Street (but cuter), and went to India to field-test the games made for Hindi speakers. He is one of the of the main developers of the Music Box, and a long distance runner. His spirit animal is a mantis shrimp because it's a mantis shrimp. 

Liam Brady: Liam, an incoming senior at Beaver country Day, attended NuVu in the winter of 2011. He interned in the summer of 2012. He made the iMat, an interactive projection-based game, and a viral video with Jeff Marx and Raghava KK. He is the head programmer and chief of wild ideas of the Music Box. His spirit animal is his laptop. 

The students in NuVu's Fall term 2013 have started off the school year with a photoshop session. They created self-portraits with creative elements mixed in. Check it out above?