In a conventional opera, the audience sits in seats and watches performers on a stage. With improvements in sensing, computing, and communications, it is now possible to build responsive spaces, so that an audience (both local and over the Net) can interact with a performance and help shape it. The Brain Opera, written by Tod Machover with technology design and direction by Joe Paradiso, and loosely inspired by Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind, explored the technical and artistic questions posed by immersing an audience into a composed environment.

The home page for the Brain Opera is here , and supporting technical details on the devices developed for it are available here .

Download an MPEG movie of some Brain Opera spaces (24MB)