![]() I haven't quite figured that out yet.īut all kinds of unusual things happen with the characters as well. All the surfaces that you wouldn't expect come alive.Īnd somehow or other, we're going to make this stage sing. And then they start to vibrate and undulate. The panels themselves look like a room at first. It's made up of gigantic panels that move into different configurations, as you can see. So he turns himself into his environment.Īnd the stage itself is a big robot. MACHOVER: And in fact, the biggest robot of all is the set itself, because one of the ideas is that this character Simon Powers decides that he wants to leave everything about himself in the world, even though he himself wants to leave. And our robots won't look like any robots you've ever seen. And this has implications for his family, who may or may not follow him into this state, and also, because he's so rich, for the world and the world economy.Īnd the subtitle is A Robot Pageant. He's leaving the meat machine, and he's basically abstracting himself. PINSKY: Kind of immortality by having himself converted into software. ![]() He's a creative billionaire who is getting. PINSKY: He's a billionaire, sort of a Rupert Murdoch hyphen Walt Disney character. Do you want to say two words about what the story is? We'll tell you a little bit about the story later. Robert finished the libretto about four or five months ago. It's been a very, very interesting project. And Robert and I- I called Robert out of the blue to see if he might want to collaborate on a project several years ago. ![]() And then we'll show you a couple of minutes of it. MACHOVER: And I thought I would just quickly just show you a little bit about the opera. We're going to begin today by showing a fragment of an opera that Pinsky and Machover have collaborated on. He's the creator of the Toy Symphony, an international music performance and education project and is kind of a legend at MIT for his imaginative way of bringing classical attitudes toward music together with new technologies and with experimental forms of various kinds. He's the head of the Media Lab's Hyperinstruments and Opera of the Future group. It's about the biblical King David, much to my dismay when he told me that.Īlso sitting at our conversation table is my colleague from MIT Tod Machover. One of his most recent publications, which we will have a chance to talk about a bit later in our conversation, is a very interesting and, in some ways, surprising book for Robert Pinsky, a book called The Life of David. He teaches in the writing program at Boston University and is the author of a series of remarkable books of poetry, of which the most recent is Jersey Rain, and then a forthcoming chapbook about to appear, I think later this month or next month, called First Things to Hand. He is the poetry editor of the online journal Slate. Robert Pinsky is the former Poet Laureate of the United States, the only poet in American history to serve three terms as Poet Laureate from 1997 to 2000. And I'm hoping for a very exciting conversation. I'm going to be very brief in my introductions, because we have a full venue. ![]() And my hope is that, as is often the case with forums, some folks will be coming in as we speak. And we should reach a considerably larger audience than the folks who are here. But I remind our guests that we are in touch with an international audience through our website and through the audio recordings and now video that are archived on our site. I would be happier if there were more of you. I'm David Thorburn, director of the communications forum. THORBURN: -1006 communications forum series.
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