Boston Symphony Orchestra to premiere Machover’s live AI work
“already and not yet” uses an MIT Media Lab-designed system to interact with musicians across a three-movement vision of democracy.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra will give the world premiere of Tod Machover’s new commission, “already and not yet,” at Symphony Hall in Boston from Oct. 22 to 24. Kent Nagano will conduct the work, which uses a live artificial-intelligence system designed to collaborate with individual players during the performance.
The premiere is part of the MIT Media Lab’s 40th-anniversary programme, Technology and Our Humanity, which examines music, technology and humanity. The work’s live AI was designed by Manaswi Mishra, an MIT Media Lab PhD student, and audio will be mixed by fellow doctoral student Ana Schon.
The system is intended to make unexpected connections across the orchestra. Electronics enhance the ensemble throughout the piece, while the AI takes a more prominent role in its second and third movements.
Machover has described the work as a “possible, positive vision” for the future of democracy. The title refers to a world and country that have much to value but remain incomplete and in urgent need of progress.
Its three movements trace a stated arc from clash or crisis, through an awakening, to an unfolding future democracy. In the second, the AI creates enhancements and variations on solo lines as they pass through the orchestra, foregrounding individual players and their differences. In the third, it brings together orchestral layers in a sound intended to balance detail with wholeness, and may extend the sound into the hall.
Machover, the MIT Media Lab’s faculty director and Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media, has long worked with music technology. His previous works include the AI-infused opera “VALIS,” which incorporated AI elements in 1987, the audience-interactive “Brain Opera,” and the robotic “Death and the Powers.” He has argued that AI should enhance and engage with human-made art rather than replace it.
George Lewis will join Machover for a pre-concert conversation on Oct. 24 about the evolution and future of musical AI. The discussion is set to consider subjectivity, social intelligibility, humanity, shared creative life and democracy.