The Brain Opera will probably be the most ambitious interactive music/image project - and one of the largest interactive entertainment projects - ever undertaken. It will be a totally new kind of art event, in which individual audience members - real and virtual - can contribute to the opera itself, as both performers and creators.
The Brain Opera is being designed and produced by a multidisciplinary team of artists, scientists, musicians, and inventors at the MIT Media Lab, under the direction of composer Tod Machover. It will use state-of-the-art hyperinstruments, invented by Machover and used since 1987 by some of the world's best musicians and performers, including Yo-Yo Ma, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Peter Gabriel, Prince, and magicians Penn & Teller, as well as by musical amateurs and the general public in a variety of concert, gallery and museum contexts.
Based on the ideas of Marvin Minsky (founder of Artificial Intelligence and Professor at the MIT Media Lab) that explain the many simple parts of the mind that come together to form creative ideas and personalities, the Brain Opera will be presented for the first time at the new Lincoln Center Festival in Summer 1996. Simultaneously, it will be a core project of the Internet 1996 World Exposition, giving people around the world access to Brain Opera activities. A CD-Rom version of the Brain Opera will also be produced, and the piece will tour worldwide in 1996/7.
The Brain Opera uses innovative music to teach people about technology, the human mind and human communication, while they participate in a unique, collective artistic experience. The core of the Brain Opera will be a set of interactive musical games and activities, fun and challenging to play, each with a distinctive musical personality, its own rules of interaction and "mysteries" to discover. Each interactive music game will involve different musical features (melody, rhythm, harmony, etc.), while also revealing what goes on in the mind while listening to, performing, or creating music. The games will guide people in creating their own music which will become part of each Brain Opera performance. |
