In this workshop, Tod Machover (MIT Media Lab, Boston) and Alex McDowell (USC Cinematic Arts-World Building Media Lab, LA) will discuss radical new entertainment experiences - live, interactive, online, and mediated - and how these require bold new models of collaboration and experimentation, as well as new relationships between real world production and academic research. Based on examples from their work at two of the most innovative art-design-technology laboratories in the world, Machover and McDowell (who collaborated on the celebrated "robot" opera Death and the Powers) will explore how "antidisciplinary" thinking and "author-driven" tool building are leading to an integration of all the senses, a world-building practice for transmedia storytelling, and a dynamic interaction between artists and audiences. Practical examples will be presented, questions will be asked, and discussion will be encouraged.
Image: DEATH AND THE POWERS - A ROBOT OPERA: composer Tod Machover; designer Alex McDowell