George Lewis and Tod Machover: Positive Vision

George Lewis, composer Tod Machover, composer

Before the world premiere of Tod Machover's BSO commission, already and not yet, composer, Columbia University professor, and AI-music pioneer George Lewis will engage Machover in conversation about where musical AI has been and where it could be headed. Lewis's software Voyager, built in the 1980s and continually updated since that time, was among the first computational systems to create live improvisational dialogues with human musicians.  Machover, Faculty Director of the MIT Media Lab, has a longstanding engagement with AI that includes his celebrated 1996 Brain Opera.  already and not yet uses a live AI system that draws out each BSO musician's individuality while forging unexpected connections across the orchestra. In their conversation, the two composers will explore questions of subjectivity, social intelligibility, and ultimately, what it means to be human, offering a "possible, positive vision" for the future of shared creative life, and of democracy itself.