PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD What happens when a crazy-rich entrepreneur named Simon Powers decides to transcend life and death by uploading himself—personality, memory, feelings—into super cool technology he invented called the "System," leaving robots to look after his legend, family and home? Can he persuade his wife, kids and protégé to leave meat world and join him in cyber Foreverland?
A scene from the opera "Death and the Powers." (Source: American Repertory Theater)
Sounds like a comic book or a so-bad-it's-good sitcom. But it's "Death and the Powers," a major new opera that employs smart dancing robots, a sex scene between the left-behind wife and her hubby's spirit residing in a musical chandelier, and global apocalypse. The 90-minute production poses deep questions about existence, the crazy march of smart technology and, ultimately, life beyond life. (One critic dubbed the opera "The 'Nerd Rapture.'") At very least, elegant smart tech and Big issues tackled make "Death and the Powers" worth a look. Here's why.
Technical Virtuosity
Even if you hate opera, electronic music or entertainment in which nothing blows up, you have to give props to the Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab for the programming and engineering at the heart of "Death and the Powers," including 43 computers, iPads, RFID, sensors, 143 speakers and much more. The disembodied hero's voice, personality and breathing seem to inhabit the physical environment—the walls and the chandelier—that surrounds his family's home. It's spooky good. The 3,000-pound "operabots" directed by Xbox controls move and speak like you've never seen. I'd seen cool robot dancers before, even doing boleros. But these Apple-like triangle head bots are in a different league. (Don't miss this excellent short clip that explains the tech production.)
Killer theme
The main character, Simon Powers, is described as "a combination of Howard Hughes, Walt Disney and Bill Gates … who wants to leave the world, but leave everything about himself." Who doesn't want some kind of immortality? Whether it's religion, kids, a business, a novel or good stories, we all want to live beyond our years. Silly, you say? Tech God Gordon Bell spent years digitally recording and preserving pretty much everything about and around himself. How about the zillions of pictures, comments, videos, etc., you and we all upload daily? Isn't that a kind of stab at digital immortality?
All Star Creators
"Death and the Powers" isn't the amateur work of "shroomers" from The Patchouli Playhouse of Santa Cruz. The world-class tech and artistic talent includes:
● Score by Tod Machover, called "America's most wired composer," creator of the technology behind Guitar Hero and head of the Hyperinstruments/Opera of the Future Group.
● Libretto by Robert Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate. Only member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have appeared on both "The Colbert Report" and "The Simpsons."
● Production design by Hollywood vet Alex McDowell ("Minority Report"), who designed the operabots and wild undulating set.
● U.S. Premiers at Harvard's American Repertory Theater and Chicago Opera Theater.
Too highbrow or silly for your taste? Fair enough. But if anyone could do existential bot songs, it's this crew. Bonus: It's in English.
Robots, Humans Trading Places: Inevitable
In the opera, robots act like humans, and the humans retreat into the technology. Saw that coming.
People have always yearned to make robots more than just furnaces with feet. We dream of hard-shell humanoids with voices, intellects, emotions, senses of humor, quirks, even morality like ours. (Think the "Lost in Space" robot, HAL from 2001, R2D2 and C3PO, etc.) Even the creators of Watson felt compelled to give the Jeopardy-winning smarty pants a friendly smidge of human. Never mind that such romantic fancies ignore the hard fact that most real robots toil in jobs too dirty, dangerous, exacting or boring for actual humans. We depend on the supposed royalty of smart tech for tirelessly spot welding, unclogging sewers, huffing household dust, defusing bombs and other very plebian, here-and-now tasks.
Yet we still seem to want to become more like bots ourselves. Witness pop fascination with borgs, droids and funny robot dances. Pop divas seem especially keen: Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera and Fergy ("Fergytron") all have taken stage as sexy songbots. On a higher plane, there's Ray Kurzweil and the "singularity" crowd. They're eager to make us better, one bionic piece at a time, until we're all brilliant Six Million Dollar Men and Women, cheating death.
Is "Death and Powers" good opera? Initial reception has been good, even in picky Opera News. Is it genius engineering and application? Posing Big questions worth asking? Yes and yes.
For more Robo fun, check out these sites:
● Death and the Powers Individual Scenes
● Humans and Robots Dance Together (Frighteningly compelling)
● Styx: Mr. Roboto
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