I strongly agree with much of Jim Gasperini's review of Tod Machover's
"Brain Opera," and would like to take the critique further.

Mr. Gasperini wrote, "So my impression is of another work where you're
invited to make a difference that makes no difference."

This is perhaps *the* fatal flaw in the work. According to Machover, the
"Brain Opera" is important (important enough to cost over 4 million
dollars) because it pioneers a new class of "musical instruments" which
allow users, with little or no technical mastery of an instrument, to
create music. The hope is that such high-tech instruments will
democratize the music-making process, empowering people who, for various
reasons, are unable to learn conventional instruments.

In reality, Machover's machines do the opposite: they allow a small
group of elite programmer/musicians/intellectuals to determine what
music the masses are able to produce and listen to. In "playing" the
"instruments" of the Opera, I made virtually the exact same musical
cacophony as every-one else, no matter what I did. It was *impossible*
to acquire any skill on the instruments, because they were preprogrammed
to deliver the same notes, chords and silly-samples over and over to
everyone. For example, one station (a table-top LCD screen which emoted
beautiful imagery and sound when touched) apparently played the *same*
loop of music, no matter what the user did. The imagery changed, but the
music seemed to only vary in volume. "Wow. I'm a musician!"

In general, the entire "Brain Opera" struck me as one big Magic Show.
Machover and his MIT colleagues wowed the poor audience with a huge bag
of high-tech tricks, giving us the impression that we were playing an
active role, while all of the important work was being done behind the
scenes. The "performance" section was perhaps the biggest trick of them
all. The audience sat through about an hour of cheesy, generic ambient
music, captivated by 3 "musicians" (magicians) waving high-tech wands,
who appeared to be making some new type of music through new types of
man-machine interfaces. Only during the following question-and-answer
session did we learn the truth: the music was all preprogrammed! The
magicians were simply controlling the volume, panning, and (sometimes)
choosing which instrument voices played which lines. "Now that's an Opera!"