Music, Technology and Immortality: an Interview with Composer and MIT Professor, Tod Machover

January 11, 2011

MIT professor Tod Machover recently took some time to answer a few questions from the New Vilna Review about his latest creation, an opera entitled “Death and the Powers: A Robot Pageant,” a work that asks the audience to think deeply about questions of family, mortality and legacy. In this interview, Professor Machover offers some fascinating insights into the ways in which he thinks about the intersection of technology and music, offers a glimpse into his own creative process, and discusses some of the ideas which inspired the creation of this latest opera. 

In Death and the Powers, the lines are blurred between life and death, electronic and organic.

NVR: You recently participated in an event sponsored by the New Center for Art and Culture in Watertown, Massachusetts, in which you discussed your collaboration with Boston University Professor and former US Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky, on a new opera entitled “Death and the Powers: A Robot Pageant.” In this work you have created a world in which it has become possible for one very wealthy man (and members of his family) to escape death by transferring his consciousness from the organic to the electronic – in your own work as a musician you often combine these two elements - the organic and the electronic - do you feel a personal connection to the character of Simon Powers? Does he represent on stage, as a work of fiction, a synthesis that you have created in part, within your own life and work?

TM: I always work on projects that have a deep personal interest for me, and by extension, I always identify – or at least empathize – with all of the characters in my operas. What drew me to the character of Simon Powers, however, is not so much his experiment with turning his human existence into a technological one (too radical even for me!) but rather his deep desire to create a living legacy that would allow him to pass along the richness and texture of his life to his loved ones – and even to stay in contact and communication with them – after he is gone. And while legacy and mortality are certainly things I think about for myself, as we all do, the situation that really inspired me to write this opera was the fact that my parents – with whom I am extremely close – are getting older, and I am very conscious about how difficult it is to transmit the wholeness and the details of their lives to my teenage daughters, skipping that one generation. This has made me think about the potential for creating and transmitting legacy in more creative ways, and also about the poignancy of what can’t be transmitted or what others don’t want to receive. For me, technology has always been a powerful tool to explore such issues artistically and practically, and I have certainly tried to increase my communicative palette through these means. But the basic questions posed by Simon Powers – and the responses of his daughter Miranda and wife Evvy and all the characters in the opera – are human and spiritual.

NVR: During the event at the NCAC, the moderator, Professor Lloyd Schwartz, asked a question about the role that Jewish identity plays in the work you do, and specifically whether it figured into the creation of this new opera. You replied that you needed some time to think about that question, and so I would like to ask it again – do Jewish ideas, culture, history or identity play a role in your work as a composer and musician? Did they have any influence on the creation of “Death and the Powers: A Robot Pageant”?

TM: I grew up in a reform Jewish environment in the New York area. All four grandparents came from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, and there was a wide range of Jewish practice in that generation of the family, from devout orthodoxy to relative iconoclasm. I have always been drawn to the ethical nature of Judaism, and to its dynamic concern with understanding how best to live in the here and now. Such issues, and the struggle to maintain hope in the midst of impossible circumstances, are central to all my work. I have been less influenced by the ritual practices of Judaism, more by the intellectual and spiritual freedom and courage that Judaism seems to spawn, from the uncompromising philosophy of Maimonides and Spinoza, to the revolutionary brilliance of Einstein and Schoenberg, to the storytelling of Kafka and Buber and Babel, to the black comedy of Woody Allen and Leslie Epstein. Something about this combination of human warmth and crisp intellectualism feels particularly Jewish to me. These are qualities that I feel very close to and that are certainly found in Simon Powers and many of my other characters. Also, my primary musical impulse has always been melodic, partly because of growing up as a cellist, but probably even more from listening to my mother and grandmother sing unaccompanied Jewish songs, some quite ancient, that are some of my earliest, deepest and sweetest memories. I am not certain where these tunes pop up in my music, but I bet they are everywhere!

NVR: It seems as though a large part of the work you do involves an educational element – what is it that inspires you to not only want to create this music, theater and art, but to put so much energy into making it accessible and interactive as well?

TM: Part of this commitment to pedagogy – and to involving the general public directly in artistic experiences in new ways – was influenced by my parents. Both of them were and are exceptional pedagogues, my Mom literally, as one of the most creative and effective piano teachers I know, and my Dad, through his career of developing and evangelizing computer graphics technologies that would allow people to harness the power of computing through intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces (decades before the appearance of the Mac!). On top of this, I see a general disconnect between sophisticated artistic culture and current educational priorities (especially in this country), and also – paradoxically – a tendency for Facebook and Twitter-type technologies to increase the celebrity of famous artists while augmenting the “fandom” of everyone else, distancing audiences from the artists they admire. I believe that culture in general is healthiest when people participate actively and creatively, instead of just watching from the sidelines. And paradoxically, technology is one of the best tools for bridging gaps between each of our abilities and whatever knowledge we need to get or experience we want to have…when designed correctly, of course. So it has become part of my life work to not only create and share my own personal artistic visions, but to develop environments where anyone can experience sophisticated creative experiences, from the Brain Opera and Toy Symphony which allow amateurs to perform and explore, to Hyperscore which lets anyone compose original music, to our work in Music, Mind and Health, which provides tools and techniques for diagnosis of disease, for treatment of a wide range of physical and psychological ailments, and for general wellbeing and personal expression.

NVR: Throughout your career you have had the opportunity to collaborate with an incredibly diverse range of artists, thinkers, writers and entrepreneurs – can you tell us a little about how these collaborative efforts have influenced the ways in which you approach the creative process? Are there discoveries you have made along the way about your relationship(s) with/to technology, art and music that you might not have otherwise made?

TM: It’s funny, because one of the reasons that I decided to become a composer – deciding that my real passion was in creating original music – was that I loved that experience of working in relative isolation, letting my imagination follow whatever twisty paths it might discover, and not needing to explain my process or progress until a new work was fully developed. And yet because of the complex technological development which often results from that same imaginative process – imaging sounds and structures that can’t be created with existing instruments or tools – and because of the large-scale operas and installations that I do, my work is indeed often more collaborative and involves more people at all stages of development than almost any other composer you could think of. This paradox is demonstrated in where and how I live and work. Much of the research and development work is done at the MIT Media Lab, where I have been a professor for 25 years and which is one of the most interdisciplinary, open, collaborative and futuristic environments you could imagine. Yet I live and work about 20 minutes away in Waltham, on an 18th century farm in a very old and beautiful barn that I converted into my composing studio. This is where I go to think, to compose, and to write (like now!), and to develop all my ideas before sharing them with others, or when I need to withdraw and re-evaluate things as they evolve.

It is not simple to balance this public and private life, but it is this combination that works best for me. The isolation allows me to pursue any idea – to chase any sound – to its farthest extreme and most significant state, and to imagine its full effect. The rich collaborations I have enjoyed allow me to solve problems that I could not do by myself, and also – when done right – to tease out implications of ideas through the insights of others. I especially enjoy working with collaborators from vastly different backgrounds and experience levels, mixing artists and scientists, performers and engineers, seasoned professionals and fresh young students. I love an environment where everyone feels trusted and is therefore prepared to take risks, where we all feel like we are exploring an idea for the very first time and need to invent solutions from scratch. Whenever I feel like I am using previous answers to solve new problems, or imagining existing sounds to compose next melodies, I am uncomfortable and think that I have selected the wrong project and that it is time to start again with something else. Of course I have gotten pretty good over the years at defining and selecting just the kinds of projects which stimulate me most and use my skills the most fully.

NVR: You are currently the Head of the Media Lab's Hyperinstruments/Opera of the Future group – can you tell us a little about how you became involved with the Media Lab and what role you see the Hyperinstruments/Opera of the Future group playing in the world of art, music and technology beyond MIT?

TM: As I mentioned above, I grew up surrounded by music and technology at home, so had both in my blood, quite literally. I played the cello as a child, Bach first, then The Beatles (with electronic manipulations of my cello) in high school, and then Boulez (the French avant-garde composer and conductor) in college. I went to Juilliard in New York and got the bug for technology, realizing that the neutrality and generality of software design and building hardware interfaces would allow me to realize any sound and performing technique that I could imagine in my head. I was invited by Boulez – then conductor of the New York Philharmonic – to be a kind of young composer guinea pig at his IRCAM institute for music and technology at the newly opened Pompidou Center in Paris, and I stayed there as Director of Musical Research for 7 years. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, called me one day in Paris and asked me if I wanted to come back to the States to join the new endeavor, and I jumped at the opportunity, both because I wanted to return to the U.S. and also because I had the intuition that the Media Lab would be even more open and interdisciplinary than IRCAM. Luckily I was right, and have been very happy at the Media Lab ever since. One of the things I like best is that there are really no boundaries as to what “music” is supposed to be, and this has allowed me to think of many ways to expand the sound and expression of my pieces, to imagine a broader definition of who my music is for, and to imagine all kinds of ways that music can become a more central part of everyone’s lives. Because most of my projects are done in collaboration with outside performing arts organizations (such as Lincoln Center in New York for my Brain Opera, and the Monte-Carlo Opera for Death and the Powers) or major international corporations such as Yamaha, IBM or Hasbro, it has provided an opportunity to influence real world experiences and products in very unusual ways. It is very important to me that my dreams and visions can get out to people as widely and effectively as possible, and the fact that technology developed in my Lab grew into the videogames Guitar Hero and Rock Band shows that we do sometimes succeed! 

Bono, of the rock band U2, playing the Sensor Chair interactive instrument designed by Professor Machover at the MIT Media Lab.

NVR: Can you give us a little glimpse of what you might be working on right now?

TM: Whenever I finish a project as large and involving as Death and the Powers (which took me about 10 years to realize from the moment of original conception), one of my main goals afterwards is to evaluate what we have actually accomplished and what that suggests for future work. So one thing I am doing is making some small adjustments – in timing for instance – to the opera in advance of our U.S. premiere performances in March. In addition, I am exploring ways that the music-visual legacy environment invented by Simon Powers in the opera – what he calls The System – can be adapted so that anyone can create a new form of “Personal Opera” to express and communicate essential feelings about oneself or one’s family and friends. I am also working on a new work that will explore the thoughts, words, and “listening process” of MIT professor Noam Chomsky. This piece has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet to help celebrate MIT’s 150th anniversary, and we will present a first version at MIT’s FAST Festival of Art, Science and Technology on April 15th. And I am beginning to plan my next opera. I can’t talk about it yet, but as it happens, it will more directly touch on a Jewish subject than any other work of mine.

In Professor Tod Machover’s new opera, robots take the lead, and share the stage with human beings.

NVR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

TM: Since a lot of my work involves unusual new technology and often pushes the boundaries of musical performance and presentation, there is sometimes a tendency for people to look more at the means that I use than the music that I create. At the end of the day, what matters to me most is the music itself, and how I can communicate ideas and feelings about the human experience through memorable melodies, invigorating rhythms, and embracing sonorities. My hope is that people will concentrate on this aspect of my work more and more, and it was therefore especially gratifying to see one of my favorite music critics, Andrew Porter (formerly of The Times of London, then chief critic of The New Yorker, now writing for Opera Magazine), emphasize just this point in his just-published review of Death and the Powers. If the music doesn’t speak for itself, then I haven’t done my job.

Copyright 2011 The New Vilna Review.

To find out more about Professor Machover’s work, please click here. And for more information on his new opera, Death and the Powers, please click here. For ticket information for performances of Death and the Powers at the American Repertory Theater this spring in Cambridge, MA, please click here.