LECTURES

How can technology enhance and improve our relationship with music as performers, listeners, and creators? The MIT Media Lab’ s "Opera of the Future" research group is exploring novel concepts and techniques to help advance the future of all aspects of music – composition, performance, learning, and expression. The scope of the group’ s research includes design of musical instruments for professional virtuosi and amateur music-lovers, concepts for new performance spaces, and even "music toys." The group’ s explorations of performance range from an extension of traditional forms to radical and innovative departures.

Join Opera of the Future researcher Elly Jessop for a look at the group’ s exciting history and a live demonstration of Elly’ s research in the intersection of performance, gesture, and music. Elly will also discuss the group’ s upcoming project, a new opera called Death and the Powers. The opera, directed by American Repertory Theater Artistic Director Diane Paulus, will be a one-act, full-evening work incorporating a variety of exciting new performance technologies, from a theatrical set that will gradually "come alive" as a main character in the drama, to expressive "operabots" that serve as a Greek chorus for the production. Death and the Powers will be performed at the A.R.T. in Cambridge during its 2010-2011 season.