Chicago Opera Theater presents the Midwest premiere of Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers, The Robots’ Opera, a new opera that puts robotics and new technologies center stage. The opera raises interesting questions about the intersection of art, science, and technology. How can these seemingly disparate fields work together to produce new and exciting products in each domain?

Join Tod Machover, professor of music and media at the MIT Media Lab and composer of Death and the Powers, and Malcolm MacIver, associate professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering, for a panel discussion moderated by Julio M. Ottino, dean of the McCormick School of Engineering.

Tod Machover has been called “America’s most wired composer” by the Los Angeles Times. He is widely recognized as one of the most significant and innovative composers of his generation and is also celebrated for inventing new technology for music, including Hyperinstruments, which he launched in 1986. Machover studied with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at The Juilliard School and was the first Director of Musical Research at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM in Paris. He has been Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab since it was founded in 1985 and is Director of the Lab’s Hyperinstruments and Opera of the Future Groups. Since 2006, Machover has also been Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Recorded Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at Northwestern University.