Walk Into My Brain

Walk Into My Brain

Cambridge University Moving Image Studio (CUMIS) invites you to 'walk into the brain' of composer and Head of the Opera of the Future Group at the MIT Media Lab, Tod Machover.

This is the first public lecture held by CUMIS and everyone is welcome. The lecture is on Monday (20 November), at 5pm, Lecture Room 1, Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, Cambridge.

Light, colour, spectacle, sound and cutting-edge digital technology are the medium for his interactive hyperopera of ideas. His theatrical works include his opera, "VALIS", composed for the 10th anniversary of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and "Media/Medium", for magicians Penn and Teller. Machover is also widely noted as a designer of new technology for music and is the inventor of hyperinstruments, which use smart computers to augment musicality, virtuosity and creativity. Performers as diverse as Yo-Yo Ma, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Prince and Peter Gabriel have been used these hyperinstruments.

Since 1991, Machover has adapted his hyperinstruments for use by musical amateurs, students, and children. The "Brain Opera" premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York in 1996, before touring in North America, Europe and Asia. It invites the public to participate in each performance, live or via the Internet. The final version - with an additional "Future Music Blender" - is now permanently installed in Vienna, Austria, at the new "House of Music".

"The goal of my work is to try to lift the general level of public participation in music as well as the level of sensitivity and intelligence in listening, performing and composing. 'Brain Opera' is inspired by the work of Marvin Minsky and I wanted to create an opera about how the mind works and what it feels like to develop coherent ideas from a mass of fragmented sensory inputs. People walk into a giant musical brain and become an 'agent', collaborating with others to help make each performance of the opera," he said.

For further information please contact:

CUMIS Cambridge University Moving Image Studio,1 Bene't Place, Lensfield Road, Cambridge

Tel: 01223 762549

Email: info@cumis.cam.ac.uk


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