The 2011 edition of “Open Mind: Sharing Knowledge for a Better Future,” features a chapter written by Tod Machover, “Ópera del futuro para robots y también para personas” (Future Opera for Robots and People Too), available in Spanish and English. Tod delves into the role of music in our lives and the potential of technology to distance us from music, or conversely to bring us into a more intimate, fulfilling engagement with it. In the conclusion, he draws an analogy between our food culture and musical culture. Chew on that!
“We all enjoy eating at three-star restaurants and admire the achievements of the world’s greatest chefs. At the same time, we do not hesitate to dive in ourselves to prepare special meals of high quality on special occasions. We also put together daily meals for ourselves, improvising content that reflects our personal styles. We enjoy eating and even studying the most ‘expert’ cuisine we can find, but are not scared to make and invent our own. In turn, the fact that we constantly prepare food ourselves makes us better understand and appreciate other food that we encounter.
“Music—and most of the arts—have come very far from such a ‘healthy’ ecology, and it is this that we need to reinvent. Technology can help, as it can act as a bridge to each of us depending on our background and experience, taking advantage of our skills and compensating for our limitations. Even more importantly, we need to establish a fundamentally new partnership between all of the potential participants in our musical culture, including individual artists, all parts of the music business, technology, lifestyle, health and social organizations, music presenting and broadcasting entities, research institutions, artists-as-mentors and—last but not least—the music-loving public. Only in this way can we establish a culture that will allow music to reach its full potential in shaping and transforming our experience.”
The Open Mind series is published annually by the multinational Spanish banking group BBVA. It focuses on articles about today’s most interesting and vital subjects, written by the world’s foremost specialists.
Opera of the Future 