The Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered Tod Machover’s “already and not yet,” a new commission incorporating live artificial intelligence, at Symphony Hall on Thursday, Oct. 22, with more performances through Saturday, Oct. 24. The performances anchor a celebration marking four decades of the MIT Media Lab.
Kent Nagano conducts the program, which uses an AI system developed by Media Lab doctoral student Manaswi Mishra to interact with individual orchestral musicians. Fellow doctoral student Ana Schon handles the audio mix. Machover serves as the lab’s faculty director.
The premiere is part of a broader schedule of concerts and discussions running Oct. 22-25 in Boston and Cambridge. Alongside the Symphony Hall performances, the BSO’s Technology and Our Humanity discussion series will feature Media Lab work through events at MIT’s Thomas Tull Concert Hall.
According to the lab’s event announcement, the AI in Machover’s composition is designed to work with each player and generate unanticipated relationships among musicians across the ensemble. The announcement presents that interaction as central to the piece, connecting its musical approach to Machover’s hopeful conception of democracy’s future.
The program brings the lab’s anniversary into an orchestral setting while also examining technology through conversations about creativity and human experience. Those discussions will range from the history of musical experimentation at MIT to the decisions artists make when working with machine learning.
Conversations beyond the concert
Before the Oct. 24 performance, composer George Lewis will join Machover to discuss how musical AI has developed and where it may lead. The Media Lab says their conversation will address subjectivity, how people understand one another socially, and questions about human identity.
A separate panel moderated by Machover will gather music alumni from different generations of the lab. Participants include Anna Huang and Ben Bloomberg, along with Teresa Marrin Nakra, Nicole L’Huillier and Alex Rigopulos. They will consider the lab’s approach to musical invention, their subsequent careers and potential directions for music.
The anniversary programming also traces music’s place in an institution that has brought artists into contact with researchers, engineers and designers. The lab identifies the Hypercello, Brain Opera and Guitar Hero among projects reflecting that history.
Composer and artist Holly Herndon will offer another perspective through a presentation about machine learning in her own musical practice. Her session will examine how choices about training material, dataset selection and the assessment of results influence an AI system’s creative possibilities. Mishra will moderate the question-and-answer portion.
Symphony Hall is at 301 Massachusetts Ave. in Boston. The Cambridge discussions will take place at Thomas Tull Concert Hall, 201 Amherst St.
What’s next: The Media Lab has announced a limited, first-come allocation of free tickets for its community for the Oct. 22 performance at 7:30 p.m. Community members seeking details can contact ML40support@media.mit.edu.
