MIT Hacks, Pranks, and Other Forms of Guerilla Architecture

For MIT's 2008 Campus Preview Weekend, hackers modified the List Visual Arts Center Media Test Wall so that it played Rick Astley's 1987 music video Never Gonna Give You Up after every four repeats of the usual art-house film. (The Media Test Wall is a rear-projection screen installed in the lobby of MIT's building 56. It's so known for playing inaccessible and often bizarre art films that in lieu of editing the existing art film, the hackers simply replaced it with one they found equally incomprehensible under the assumption that nobody would notice a difference.) The hack was meant as a reference to the Internet meme of 'rickrolling,' where a person provides a link to the Rick Astley video under the pretense that it is a link to some relevant website.

For MIT's 2008 Campus Preview Weekend, hackers placed boxes with clear fronts, chainsaws, and the text 'In Case of Zombie Attack, Break Glass' on the front in the lobbies of MIT's buildings 16 and 46. The selection of Building 46 was a clear reference to the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences housed there; zombies traditionally seek brains to eat.

For MIT's Campus Preview Weekend 2008, inflatable beach balls were hung in Lobby 7 with characters written on them, reading from left to right (looking east) '2 0 I W H T F P 1 2'. It is presumably intended to mean: [Class of] 2012: I Will Hate This Fucking Place.

On the last day of MIT's Campus Preview Weekend 2008, a UFO appeared atop one of the Stata Center's protrusions complete with a "hole" through the large white wall behind it. The UFO featured a stuffed "alien" crawling out through a hole smashed in the windshield and color-changing LEDs around the circumfrence of the half-spherical top.