Poet / Artist

Elizabeth Goldring Piene and her retina print, "Wandering Monk.” Exhibition "The Experience of Seeing," Groton, MA 2015. [Photo: Ellen Sebring]

Elizabeth Goldring is a visually challenged poet and artist. As a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, Goldring collaborated with MIT and Harvard engineers, scientists, physicians, designers and students to create seeing tools and visual experiences for herself and others like her with severe vision loss due to macular degeneration or other diseases of the cornea, retina and lens.

A poet and media artist, Goldring has published five poetry books, and contributed to many poetry publications. Goldring is co-author of Centerbook, the first history of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT (2017), available through MIT Press.

Goldring has exhibited internationally as a visual artist, including her interactive Eye/Sight installations, and environmental works such as “International Alarm,” with piercing rooster cries “utilizing the temporal landscape of sky and space.” (Goldring, Leonardo, 1987) As a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, she worked with Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope inventor, Robert Webb, to turn the SLO into a “seeing machine” for people who are blind. As director of the CAVS Vision Group at ACT/MIT, she and her Vision Group prototyped a portable, easy-to-use “seeing machine camera.”

Goldring’s collaborations include work with theater director, Robert Wilson, exploring blindness and robotics featuring the CAVS Vision Group’s Eye-Robot. Goldring collaborated with video artist Vin Grabill to visualize low vision and blindness; and with flutist David Whiteside, to mesh poetry performance and musical improvisation. She is a Fellow of the World Technology Network and of the Lifeboat Foundation. Awards and honors include Smith College Medal; Technology ReviewScientific American and Esquire Magazine “best and brightest” awards; NEA, poet of the month award; Prix Ars Electronica; MIT IDEAS competition. 

Goldring was graduated from Smith College and received a Master’s Degree from Harvard University. She worked as exhibits developer at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Collection of Fine Arts and the Boston Children’s Museum. At MIT she has held positions as Exhibitions and Projects Director, CAVS; lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning; acting Co-Director, CAVS. She co-directed and participated in five international Sky Art Conferences and two MIT Arttransition Conferences with Otto Piene.

Goldring was married to artist and CAVS/MIT Director, Otto Piene, who passed away in 2014. Goldring is Chairman of the Board of the Elizabeth Goldring-Otto Piene Foundation.