Check out “A Night at the High-Tech Opera,” an article at Animation World Network that delves into production designer Alex McDowell’s work on the set of Death and the Powers. In an extensive interview, Alex describes the origins of his role in the opera, how his concepts for the production design evolved over time, the nature of his collaboration with the M.I.T. Media Lab team and the artistic vision driving the development of the technology.
Working on Death and the Powers “really opened [me] up,” McDowell is quoted as saying in the article. “There’s the whole art/science thing that John [Underkoffler, Media Lab graduate and data interface designer for Minority Report] and I have been doing for a long time. Media Lab’s right in the center of that conversation: they have artistic people who are great scientists and programmers and computer engineers. They are these multi-talented kids who don’t see a difference between one or the other, whereas in our industry, we’re going, ‘Well, this is art and this is science, and this is production and this is post,’ making all these silos and separations.”
Opera of the Future 