The Brain Opera

I apologize for the length of this post (flame me if it suits you) but I think it's 
quite relevant for those with a deep interest in the PT's Lifehouse story. 

A few years ago, on a BBC radio special focusing on the Lifehouse project, PT lamented 
that at the time he was trying to move the project forward, although the sounds (e.g, 
the ARP, Moog, etc.) and the concepts (audience members helping create the music, ala 
the sequencing loops of Baba O’Riley) were there, “the computer technology needed to 
process all that information just wasn’t.”

Who fans interested in exploring some of these themes (and contributing their own note, 
chord, or melody to a single concert performance) might want to check out The Brain 
Opera which will be on display free at the Juilliard School of Music in NYC beginning 
July 23rd. This is a $5 million project created by Tod Machover, founder of the 
Hyperinstrument Group at MIT’s Media Lab. Machover’s past instruments have been used by 
the likes of Peter Gabriel, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. MIT’s Media Lab, 
for those unfamiliar with it, is an ultra-cool place at the cutting edge of AI, robotics 
and computer music technology. The WWW-site for this project 
(http://brainop.media.mit.edu) gives the lowdown on the whole event. I’ve included below 
some excerpts from a 5/27 piece in the NY Times that should give a rough idea of what’s 
going on: 

“...On a PC, hooked up to the Internet, a web of neurons appears, represented by a panel 
of lights, which flash in different colors as they are touched by the cursor. Nearby, a 
singer, hitting the right pitch, causes an image of an eye to open on a monitor, until 
the screen is suffused in brilliant white light. Machover, standing in one corner, holds 
a wired baton in the air, conducting an invisible synthesized chorus whose sounds react 
to his gestures.

The Brain Opera...requires a forest of computers, fast interaction with the Internet and 
software that will be state of the art...It will be a piece of participatory music 
theater...a celebration of technological possibility and an attempt to demonstrate a 
theory of intelligence....

In Machover’s words, “Each member of the public -- either at a physical performance or 
via the Internet -- will have a role in shaping, contributing to, and creating the opera 
itself.” Sounds produced with a variety of high-tech instruments will be filtered, 
refined and combined with other sounds and words using Machover’s software.

Machover is directing a small army of designers, architects, musicians and hackers to 
create a version of a musical brain... hoping to give an illustration of how these 
layers and combinations form a work that is not only marked by intelligence but designed 
to illustrate intelligence’s deepest nature. 

That is why it is being called “The Brain Opera”, and why Marvin Minsky, one of the 
founders of the Media Lab and the author of “The Society of Mind”, will also play a role 
in the final composition. 

Minsky’s theory developed out of a lifetime of work trying to create artificial computer 
intelligence. He believes that intelligence stems from diversity, arising from the 
interaction of independent agents in the brain. 

One agent may not even be aware of what another is doing or how the whole is shaped. 
Instead, actions and decisions emerge from “conflicts and negotiations among societies 
of processes that constantly challenge one another.”

This is, of course, precisely the opposite of the way most music works -- with each 
element consciously coordinated with every other element, combined in a seamless whole. 
But Machover believes that if the “instruments” are subtle enough and encourage 
particular kinds of playful interaction, he will be able to create out of disconnected 
fragments something resonant and resourceful....

Beginning July 23, the 65th Street lobby of Juilliard School in Manhattan will be 
transformed with a network of triangular scaffolds; pods and cacoons will house 
Machover’s high-tech instruments. About 125 people will enter at a time, and will be 
given about 50 minutes to explore the environment...

The random and unexpected input from these various cells of sound will then be combined 
with other sonic material according to meticulously established rules and will 
“performed” in Juilliard’s Morse Hall for the same audience that helped create it. 

The 50-minute opera will reach its climax with a live hook-up to the Internet, where 
sounds will be produced by “instruments” on the Brain Opera Web Page, created by mouse 
clicks from surfers around the world. These improvisatory rhythms and melodies will be 
sent into Lincoln Center, merged into the performance in progress and then sent back out 
over the Web. 

The scale of the enterprise is impressive --  with performances taking place 8 times a 
day for 2 weeks -- but Machover’s previous compositions have also explored the interface 
between technology and tradition, chance and calculation, entertainment and art. 

“The Brain Opera” will be creating a kind of hyper-instrument, as each of the players on 
the Net and in the wired lobby of Juilliard become a small part of a grand communal 
instrument. 

So this will be a vast experiment. Can a combination of randomness and calculation 
create something that is more that the sum of its parts, or something less? 

If it fails, an audience will be able, at the very least, to play with some of the most 
unusual toys yet invented. If it works, there will be magic in the web of it.” 

David Thirteen

"My name is Spinner..."