This group has a special interest in inventing musical instruments that "understand" the artistic intentions of the performer, allowing for the enhancement and extension of musical expression and innovative interventions for learning and health. We design these instruments for use by highly skilled performers, as well as for students, seniors, and the disabled. We also explore how new media technology can modify music itself, and how such concepts can in turn be applied to interactive intermedia art and entertainment forms, of which opera is a particularly sophisticated example. A current project, Death and the Powers, which will premiere in Monte-Carlo in 2009, will reinvent opera as we know it. It will feature a small ensemble of specially designed Hyperinstruments; a robotic, animatronic stage that will gradually come alive as the opera’s main character; and an army of robots. In turn, the opera will allow users to customize its infrastructure with their own memories, stories, and sounds to create a new form of "Personal Opera."
Students interested in radical new forms of music and opera, of music learning and learning through music, and of dynamic musical interventions to improve health and well-being. Strong musical background and imagination, with at least one complementary skill in areas such as, for example, hardware and software design, neuroscience or neurology, and interface design.
A portfolio of work (including musical examples) is required with your application. Posting materials online is encouraged.
