The Economist has published an excellent article “A technology maestro,” about Tod Machover‘s work at the MIT Media Lab. The magazine’s web site includes an excellent video documentary. In the documentary, Tod explains how the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band motivated him to explore technologies that could bring the complexity and richness of studio-produced music to live performance. The documentary traces the trajectory of Tod’s ideas from the hyperinstruments he designed for world-class musicians to the Brain Opera and Toy Symphony which empowered children to create and perform music, and hyperscore technology that liberated Dan Ellsey to compose and perform music after a lifetime of being locked inside a paralyzed body. Most recently, his Media Lab team invented disembodied performance technology for the opera Death and the Powers. What’s next? Personal opera for the public, to be rolled out for the London Olympics?
Opera of the Future 