Location

Arsenal Center for the Arts, Mosesian Theater, 321 Arsenal Street, Watertown, MA

Description

Composer Tod Machover and poet Robert Pinsky talk about making art in the age of new technology. Hailed as "America’s most wired composer," Machover is transforming classical music and opera, mixing cocktails of music, dance, theater, and high-tech brilliance. His experiments include a "magic" opera for Penn and Teller, The Brain Opera, and now Death and the Powers, which will have its American premiere in Boston in 2011. Robert Pinsky, who wrote the libretto for Machover’s new opera, has embraced “the muse in the machine” like few other writers. He has described poetry as an “ancient technology” and has even written a “computerized” novel, but he has also cautioned that the ultimate scene of poetry is the human breath and the human ear. Former Poet Laureate of the United States, Pinsky is the poetry editor of Slate and the author of numerous poetry collections. Tod Machover, Professor of Music and Media at MIT, is also an inventor of groundbreaking new music technologies.
They will talk with Boston Phoenix music critic and poet Lloyd Schwartz about art, technology, and how poetry and music continue to shape what it means to be human.
$10 tickets are available for students.