With touches of technical wizardry, MIT holds its first online Commencement
In an unprecedented online version of MIT’s annual Commencement exercises, necessitated by the departure of most people from the campus because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Institute added some innovative touches — including a surprise appearance from the International Space Station — to the unusual but festive occasion.
...
Another musical performance, featuring the voices of over 800 members of the MIT community, followed McRaven’s remarks. Called “Comusica” and conceived by professor of the practice Eran Egozy along with Professor Evan Ziporyn, who wrote the music, and Professor Isaac Chuang, who built the infrastructure and image-processing algorithms, the project involved recording each participant singing a single note. These were arranged into a mosaic to create a unique song and video “portrait” of the Class of 2020.
...
Nwanacho Nwana, president of the Class of 2020, spoke of regrets about the things he and his classmates missed experiencing during their last weeks of MIT. But, he added, “Even if we had those last few months together, we would all likely still leave MIT with numerous regrets of what could have been and what we could have done. This period has been a harsh reminder that time is not only limited, but the limits on that time are uncertain and we never really know when our time will be up.”
...
Following the online graduation ceremony, the names of all 3,512 degree recipients were scrolled online. Then, in a typically MIT show of technical prowess, a specially designed app was made available to all the graduates. This allowed each graduate to individually simulate through virtual reality the experience of walking across the Commencement stage, shaking hands with President Reif, and receiving their degree.
See the full story here: http://news.mit.edu/2020/online-commencement-0529