KEYNOTE SPEAKER: TOD MACHOVER

What do Yo-Yo Ma and Prince, the Boston Symphony and Guitar Hero, and Music and Medicine have in common?

All of these are aspects of the creative world of composer/inventor Tod Machover, widely recognized as one of the most significant and innovative composers of his generation, and celebrated for inventing new technology for music, including Hyperinstruments. Machover’s work both as Professor of Music and Media and as Director of Hyperinstruments and Opera of the Future Groups at the MIT Media Lab has helped open doors of expression and creativity to some of the world’s greatest virtuosi, as well as to non-professional music lovers, to children and seniors, and to many with physical and mental disabilities.

Since 2006, Machover has been Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Machover’s music has been commissioned and performed by many of the world's most important performers and ensembles and has received numerous international prizes and awards, including the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French Culture Ministry. His Hyperinstruments augment musical expression for everyone and led to the development of the videogame hits Guitar Hero and Rock Band. His music composition software Hyperscore is fast gaining worldwide recognition as a popular creative tool for people of all ages and backgrounds. Machover is currently helping to create a major initiative in Music, Mind and Health at the MIT Media Lab. In awarding Machover the first Kurzweil Prize in Music and Technology in 2003, celebrated inventor and entrepreneur Raymond Kurzweil wrote: “Tod Machover is the only person I am aware of who contributes on a world-class level to both the technology of music creation and to music itself. Even within these two distinct areas, his contributions are remarkably diverse, and of exquisite quality.”

As SOFAlab’s keynote speaker he will explain his Hyperinstruments and discuss how a new intellectual culture is needed – as well as novel research and academic structures to support it – that can cultivate and sustain a revolutionary and increasingly indispensible blending of artistic, technological and scientific sensibilities and skills.

Panelists

Maria Barbosaa is an installation artist who was born in Brazil and lives in Frederick, MD. She received a B.S. in Biology (1970 from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, a M.S. in Microbiology and Immunology (1974) from the Escola Paulista de Medicina, São Paulo, Brazil, a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of California, Riverside (1978). From 1981 to 1990, Barbosa worked as a scientist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. In 1987, she was awarded the National Research Service Award. Since 1990, Barbosa has dedicated herself to her art and to teaching. Barbosa’s works explore issues of communication and misunderstandings. Her Installations and artist’s books are exhibited nationally and internationally.

Ernest Barreto is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy and the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, works at the convergence of physics, mathematics, and neuroscience. After receiving an A.B. in physics from the University of Chicago, he studied nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory at the University of Maryland at College Park (PhD, 1996), as well as theoretical and experimental neuroscience at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. His current work is funded by the NIH. In addition, he sang for many years with The Washington Chorus, is an amateur photographer, and twice finished in third place at the International Whistler’s Convention. Links: Ernest Barreto's website, Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, George Mason University

Barndon Morse is a professor of Digital Media at the University of Maryland and a Washington, DC based video and video-installation artist, whose work has been shown in museums and galleries across the United States, Europe, and Asia. His work portrays the degradation and collapse of organized systems. His process revolves around the creation of rule-based simulations of 3-D environments using animation software. Objects and environments are created in the software and assigned structural traits and physical behaviors and are then subjected to computer-generated forces such as gravity, turbulence and wind. The resulting videos are a record of these processes playing out over time wherein architectural and organic structures lose their coherence and slowly decay over time towards a chaotic, disorganized state. Links: Brandon Morse's website, Department of Art, University of Maryland