-Art and science are forms of expression and inquiry.

And, actually, the doors into them are pretty similar.

-The relationship between art and technology is so rich and so longstanding.

-In our culture, we like to put things into boxes.

We very much like to say, "This is art, and this is science."

You know, left brain, right brain.

But this is not really the truth.

-My dream is that we will just break down the walls between these classrooms.

-How strange is it of me to like both things that are artistic and scientific?

It's only as an adult that I've had to make a choice.

-Creativity can be mournful, it can be joyful, it can be despairing, it can be celebratory.

Sometimes even all at the same time.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Speaking native language ] ♪♪ For me, the computer is the new palette of the artist of the 21st century, which can open highways for the artist and generate many various kinds of art.

♪♪ ♪♪ Guy Ullens has been collecting art since he was 25 -- 62 years ago.

What Guy Ullens loves is to find out new forms and new artists.

Now he's obsessed by digital art because he's convinced that it is in this field that he will find the masterpieces of tomorrow.

-This was shown at Pompidou at one of the first shows on digital art.

And it's an art which is very close to my heart.

♪♪ Miguel's creativity is unbelievable.

He is for me, at the moment, the most extraordinary artist in Europe.

It's pleasant.

It's joyous.

It's -- It's fun.

What he says is great for the future.

-When you think of Monet painting 30 times, the Cathedral of Rouen in the same frame at different time of the day to show the time passing...

It is not the tool which will make the genius.

It is the vision, the eye, the innovation.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Speaking native language ] -[ Speaking native language ] -[ Speaking native language ] ♪♪ [ Speaking native language ] -Bonjour!

[ Conversation in native language ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -I invent different virtual seeds.

Each seed, they grow, and when they die, they create variations.

So, with these different virtual seed, we can create this virtual garden, you know?

And of course, we can interact with this garden when you move your body, you know?

That's also the idea, to have this sort of generative piece and interactive piece.

I use these tools because for me, it was very hard to generate new ideas in the world of the painting.

But in this tool, you can create new things that you can do only with digital.

♪♪ -When I started 18 years ago, I found very, very few examples of computer and technology being applied to physical movement in art.

And I remember seeing Dan Rozin.

I love his "Wooden Mirror."

It's mind-blowing.

But there were no articulated multi-axis artworks like this.

So, I said, "Well, it's worth going for it."

And I like to think of my work as a metaphor of the universe, of moving stars or stellar objects.

-But the masterpiece is this one.

The prototype of the Louvre piece.

It's a wave.

It's so many structures within one structure.

It's never the same.

It's fantastic.

-I showed Crespin the first time in the National Gallery of the Grand Palais in Paris in 2018.

We showed a tailor-made piece for large stairs of the Grand Palais.

I had to fight to have the director of the Louvre come in to the show.

I insisted many times before he came and fell in love with Elias Crespin's work.

And then here is the result -- Crespin has joined the Louvre.

The first ever computing artist to be part of the permanent collection of the largest museum in the world.

-To be asked to show something in the Louvre is a mind-blowing request.

And the first request was, okay, walk around and find out where it could be.

So, that was a challenge in this huge museum, finding a good spot.

And I was thrilled.

I had existential vertigo, there.

Am I really going to be allowed to install the work here forever?

-For me, this installation is the demonstration that computing art is now totally accepted as one main chapter of the art history.

For us, it was important to showcase how relevant this kind of art is in the art world.

We decided to exhibit both the work of Michel Paysant and the work of Leonel Moura, who have in common to use robotics as the new pencil for their canvas and drawings.

[ Speaking native language ] -[ Speaking native language ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I've start with a different kind of algorithm based on bio-inspired behavior, like ants.

Ants look for pheromones, and I've changed pheromones for color.

So my little ants, they look for color.

When they see it, like it happens with real ants, they put more.

And that's why they can make some clusters of colors and simulate a composition.

So, I do nothing.

They do everything.

[ Laughter ] -There will always be new technologies and new ways of making things.

And there's always going to be some tension between the old ways and the new ways.

And then they just coexist.

The world of creativity always has room for more under this tent.

There will always be new ways of imagining things... ...new ways of thinking about things.

-There is a lot that unifies human creativity that we sometimes lose sight of in the creative process because on the surface of it, drawing a picture and writing a piece of code looks very different, right?

When I think about video games as an art form, I do think there's a kind of unbroken golden thread reaching back to the very beginnings of human self-expression.

If we look at the early days of games... ...and how computing power increased exponentially, that just gave creative people countless opportunities.

And that's just made things shoot through the roof, in terms of innovation and creativity.

-Being a game designer is a lot like being an architect.

Like, you are an artist, but you're also producing something that's functional.

So, you know, an architect needs to make sure a building can stand on its own and meet the needs of the people who walk into it, but a game designer is kind of tasked with the same thing.

I need to make sure that you know how to navigate.

I need to make sure you know the rules of the game and how to even engage with it.

So, really, like, we're making functional software that happens to also be art.

-Oh, snap!

This is down to the wire.

-We've been playing games since the ages of, like, 4 and 2.

And it's an interactive movie.

I think especially nowadays with the technology that you have, there's so many, like, stories and experiences that you can tell through video games that as both a player and a creator, there's just so much to experience.

That's, like, the part that I want to, like, hold in the middle of the air, so like that kind of freeze frame.

-Okay.

-If you ask me if we consider ourselves business, artists, or IT, as Khalil will say, the answer's yes.

-Especially to be an indie game developer, you have to be ready to touch each and every one of those things or have someone in position to do that.

So, the answer is yes to all of that.

-My mom supported us playing games.

The only rule that we had was we couldn't play games during the week, so we had to focus on school.

But we found these loopholes during that was to create our own games to play during the week.

-Out of paper.

-Out of paper.

Like, we'd get, like, Eggo boxes, leftover Eggo boxes, make a whole world map.

But we didn't know that we were actually paper prototyping, which is a real way of creating and prototyping games.

-It got out of control, though.

We started having our own businesses.

We'd use, like, Monopoly money as the currency.

-We did, yes, yes.

-We made magazines, which we would use to advertise our games.

It was out of control.

We told our parents, like, "You created this."

[ Both laugh ] "Swimsanity!"

was the game that got us started.

-Kind of throwback to the times when we used to play games with, like, Nintendo and Super Nintendo.

So for me, it's just cool to kind of see where it ended up because you never imagine that, like, you'll be sitting down and watching four people playing a game you created.

Like, that was a really cool part for us.

And you know, we started that journey together, and now we're still here, working on those games.

-Video games have expanded the notion of creativity and the notion of art, design, and architecture in a way that is impossible to sum up.

-The video game is my art form.

It's the form that I use to express myself.

The relationship between games and art is, I think, too big a subject to really nail down.

And honestly, why would we want to nail it down?

But what I think we should really be asking is can video games communicate ideas?

And the answer is a resounding yes.

Video games communicate ideas because they put us into situations where we have to play.

-The house was exactly like I remembered it.

The way I'd been dreaming about it.

-We have to play with ideas.

We have to engage with ideas.

We have to question, we have to rethink.

We have to be critical.

We have to be challenged.

That is art.

-It's actually really hard to create a sense of wonder these days.

But technology allows us to do that.

Technology enables magic.

Why do we go to see magic shows, right?

Like, 'cause we like to have a sense of wonder.

You know, we want to have a sense of awe and a feeling that I don't fully understand something, but it's wonderful, right?

-Jenova Chen is one of the greatest artists, designers, cinematographers -- you know, all this synthesis of skills that go into video games.

And his video games have this quality of really taking you by hand and guiding you into places that you didn't know existed.

-"Journey" is a game where you travel as a pilgrim through a desert land to the top of a mountain peak.

And it follows the classic hero's journey.

-When we make "Journey," I wanted to make a game that is healing, that is peaceful, that does not involve violence.

And this is what I described to the Sony executive at the time.

They were laughing.

It was like, I want to make a game that makes you feel love.

-It's a very emotional experience where you are paired up randomly with one other person and you don't know who that person is.

But as you travel, you get to know them through their actions.

When I played "Journey" the first time, I remember I was with my companion.

We'd already been through a lot.

We'd learned how to help each other over obstacles.

And my companion fell.

And I was stunned.

And I'm running back and forth on the bridge, trying to call my companion to see if they're still there.

And I waited.

I waited and waited and waited.

And they never came back.

And my only choice was to go on.

And I'll always think about that.

What happened to them?

And it was one of the most powerful moments of sorrow that I've ever felt in a game.

-The strongest storytelling you can do is to leave something in that person's memory for life.

And that's what I consider as the most important thing.

And I just can't think about anything else I would want to do but bring the full spectrum of human emotions to my art.

-I think artists' role in the world is to be magicians.

To bring that touch of magic back into logic and intellect.

-I think there's all this wonderful technology being produced, but we have to always remember that it begins with humans.

We are writing code or doing extraordinary things.

But ultimately, what's really exciting is that these are all actually still human creations.

-I'm Joshua Bell, and I play the violin.

♪♪ You talk about the intersection of art and science.

This is it right here, because Stradivari was an incredible craftsman, an artist, as well as a scientist.

And somehow he managed, through trial and error, to come up with the perfect form.

This was made in 1713.

The tool I use every day is more than 300 years old.

There's still something about these old Strads, and certainly not robots or electronic instruments have yet to get to the level of making you cry that a Stradivarius can.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I'm Alex Davis.

I'm co-founder of a company called Embertone.

We make virtual instruments for composers.

We are playing the Bach double violin concerto.

Josh is playing his Stradivarius, and I'm playing a virtual violin using samples recorded from his Stradivarius.

♪♪ -So, they came to me and said, "We want to go to the next level of sampling sounds from a violin so that we can offer this as a tool for composers and people that want to make music electronically but have something sound realistic."

So, they said, "Would you like to be our violin?"

I wanted to be the guy to do it 'cause I often ask composers, "Can you send me what you've written in a computer format so I can just get an idea of what it sounds like?"

So, they send what we call MIDI sample of their piece and it's just -- it just sounds awful.

So, selfishly, I want a tool that I can give to these composers and actually come up with a version that would be listenable to me.

-Do you want to try using the pedals?

It's the top row would be the short articulations.

So, if you hold down -- yep.

That would be staccato vibrato.

-And what are these other pedals?

They all do something?

-Try that one.

That's a slur.

♪♪ Staccato.

And then if you push really hard down on the key you're playing, it'll release.

-Wow.

That's so cool.

-And then a soft release when you pull down on that.

Using the 20,000 or more samples that we recorded, it's almost like the Siri of Joshua Bell, where we have all of these separate pieces that can come together and make a real musical phrase.

-Did we do Suzuki book one?

No, I guess we didn't do that one.

[ Chuckles ] Oh, that's... You're already book four there.

[ Both chuckle ] ♪♪ What an amazing sound.

To hear you actually just perform it and it sound like that, that's awesome.

-Yeah.

I can even go... ♪♪ ♪♪ That's so realistic.

Alright, stop it, you sound better than me now.

[ Both laugh ] -We made this instrument so that it captured the essence of what Joshua's sound was.

We're not quite there yet.

But this is a really big step.

-What Embertone does is it has this incredible tool that can be used in a lot of creative and fun ways for composers and many other applications.

But there's still no comparison to a live performance with a real musician.

-The history of music is the history of technology.

♪♪ When I say technology, I'm including acoustic instruments.

A flute, a recorder, an oboe.

These are all -- they're technology.

You know, a drum is technological.

Human history is one of technological change.

-There's a deep physical connection with the musical instrument.

And when I say deep, I mean quantum level deep.

The way that you connect to the instrument to play it well is extremely profound.

It is at the very edge of our ability to connect with nature, meaning physical reality.

So, musical instruments force us to interact with our natural world at this level of sensitivity that's really unusual.

-My favorite of all my drums would be the wave drum.

It's so personal.

And it's the one that I travel with the most.

This is a Nigerian clay drum, also called the Udu drum.

It is ancient.

Drums are, I'll say, the second instrument, because the voice may be the first.

But certainly, it's a means of communication in the beginning.

It was romantic.

It was an alarm.

Defense.

And also it went along with the offense to help get the soldiers in the mood to have to go carry out their duties.

Sound is your vocabulary.

Your words and your letters and your sentences.

-One and a half million years ago, our early human ancestors began to communicate with each other.

We told stories in the way that we could have.

Now, here's the kicker.

Language didn't come around for another million years.

So, our ancestors were sitting around the fire, doing something that didn't involve language for a million years.

My theory is they were dropping a beat.

They were exchanging calls.

They were essentially creating music.

-I spent close to 30 years in West Africa, in North Africa, studying all types of beats, which many years down the line, thousands of years down in line, it kind of trickles down into a New Orleans shuffle, funk, blues, hip-hop, drum and bass, electronica.

It's -- the patterns are in there.

Coming over here and hooking up with Jaron for many years, we just kind of deal with the sound of things first.

It's just really building ideas off the sound.

And then where that takes us is where we kind of end up.

-Music overlaps with language.

It overlaps with dance.

It overlaps with math.

It overlaps with everything.

In fact, one of the amazing things about music is it overlaps with more stuff than any other thing that people do.

-What's on the wall over there?

-It's called the serpent.

Charles Dickens described it as a drainpipe with dysentery.

-Oh, now I have to hear it.

[ Laughs ] ♪♪ -Music isn't music until your brain decides it's music.

But even more so, I will make the argument that music doesn't exist in the compressions of air, in the soundwave itself.

It only exists in the brain that interprets it as such.

And when it decides it's music, it listens differently.

It activates differently.

-Every sound in the universe could be music.

It's all a question of just how we listen to it.

Any sound in the universe that's possible is something that a composer can manipulate.

So, literally, if you're a vocal group, it could be breaths.

It could be gurgles.

-[ Growls ] -[ Warbles ] -♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪ -[ Growls ] -♪ Um, um, um, um ♪ ♪ Um, um, um, um ♪ -Roomful of Teeth is a eight-person chamber vocal ensemble.

We work primarily with composers who write things specifically for the ensemble.

-We push them to explore new sounds, especially from the voice.

We have this massive palette of colors from our band.

What do you want to do with them?

-Somehow I feel like I'm leaning towards preserving this, like [Inhales deeply, sighs] gesture in some unified way.

I'm playing a lot with texture.

And, you know, you hear them sometimes just breathing.

-[ Inhales deeply ] ♪ Ah ♪ -All of it to me is music, and all of it, I think, especially with a group of exceptionally talented vocalists like this, all of it can come into play in a really amazing and musical way.

-When people write pieces for us, there's a long period where we're working with them and playing around.

And then what the piece -- how the piece actually materializes is often a mystery right up until the last moment.

-For me and writing for Roomful of Teeth, I understand that I have eight sort of Maserati voices, right?

Like, eight instruments that can do probably much more even than what I'm asking them to do.

Composing for eight super voices was just, like, more challenging for me than I thought.

So, just know that I'm, like, extremely not precious about any of it.

So, if some of it is just, like, trash, just, like, feel free to say that because this is our -- this is our moment to fix it.

-Nathalie Joachim is definitely creating this musical baby for us.

And we just know we're going to love that baby.

[ Chuckling ] No matter what it is.

-[ Vocalizing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -I wonder if you want, like, almost more mumbled text.

So, instead of, like, ♪ If we, if we, if we ♪ ♪ We could, we could, we could ♪ So, just get more of a sonority and less of the ♪ Here are words, here are words ♪ -Yeah.

-That's great, Jodie.

-I like that.

♪♪ -Great musical groups, like Roomful of Teeth, understand how tuning in to what's meaningful in a sound works.

So, in a piece of music, the repetition tells your brain, "Hey, listen to this stimulus differently.

You know, parse it for emotional meaning or harmonic meaning."

So that you start to hear things in the fourth, fifth, sixth repetition that you didn't hear in the first one.

♪♪ ♪♪ -There are pieces that just pull at your heart in a way that is inexplicable.

-I don't know how it works.

I can go through a spell of a year and listen to music and not be moved to tears.

And then just one little sound hits you in a particular way, and you're ruined.

-It's such an achievement when you write something like that yourself.

There is something magical about a moment in which I feel something specific and that actually the audience feels exactly that same thing.

♪♪ ♪♪ -At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what you hear.

♪♪ Everything else is our humble, feeble attempt to put down what we hear into another language.

Words, numbers, pieces of paper.

♪♪ The art and science have to live together.

They want to live together.

♪♪ I think a lot of people might not know what acoustic engineers or acousticians do.

It's a technology craft to try and optimize the performance of any space where critical listening takes place.

And that could be from a stadium to a concert hall...

It's double-wall construction.

...to a recording studio.

This is a good old-fashioned music recording studio.

This is for rock 'n' roll bands.

My start was with Jimi Hendrix.

He hired me to do a studio.

How lucky was I?

I mean, I got to work with a true genius.

I mean, someone who just heard stuff.

Hendrix!

And he dies, and no sooner than he is to die than the next person who moves into Electric Lady is Stevie Wonder, who's another guy who just heard stuff.

And, you know, these guys are on another wavelength.

Okay, so, here's a studio we're doing for one of the guys from Phish.

It's the profession that I chose, and I love it.

It's a perfect medium for me because I love architecture, music, and technology.

So, how lucky to be at this nexus of these three universes?

Symphony Hall in Boston, it holds a particular fascination for me.

I'm pretty sure it was one of the first auditoriums that actually was designed according to acoustic principles.

♪♪ That's beautiful.

It sounded lovely.

This is my favorite seat.

If you sit here for that passage and then go, say, back to what might be called the money seat right dead center, it's not as good.

It's just not as interesting.

Not as many overtones.

I know a little bit about the science.

I mean, I think I probably know a little bit more than some on the science, and I'm just always going to vote for shoebox.

I...

There's just something about the shape that seems to work over and over again.

-No, we're very, very lucky.

It enhances everything we do.

-Yeah.

And I think you can hear everybody, right?

You can hear?

-Yeah, we can hear each other very well, but not too much.

-Not too much.

Can you play again?

-You want it once more?

-I want to walk around while you play.

♪♪ It's the overtones.

So, then you go... Then, like, you know, take this seat... ...which is a really good visual seat, right?

There's just less of them.

-Yeah.

-There's just less overtones.

It's the same piece.

There's just less.

It's like a little bit of a sponge.

-It's, like, less enveloping.

Yes.

-It's not quite as enveloped.

-Yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Thank you.

-Of course.

-Amazing.

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

-I thought you wanted me to play the rest of it.

-It's very even up here.

-Yeah.

-It's extraordinary.

-It's a beautiful, beautiful stage.

Symphony Hall is my favorite hall.

I've been playing here now for a quarter century, and the Bach that I played was the very first thing I ever played on this hall, and it was for my audition for the BSO.

And until that point, I hadn't ever played in a hall this great.

So, when I tuned -- -The piece you just played?

-Yeah, that was -- -You played 25 years ago for an audition?

-26, 27?

-Right here?

-Long time ago.

Yeah.

Yeah, right here on this side of the stage.

And there was a curtain, and the committee was over there, and, like, playing the open strings for the very first time on this stage was an epiphany.

I thought I didn't know my violin could sound like this.

I didn't know how easy it was to play with a hall that's so giving and works with you.

I feel like for us in the BSO, the hall is a natural extension of our voices and what we're trying to say as musicians.

And that's why it's so much a part of who we are as a musical organism.

-For the listener, this has to come out as one unified event.

And then the hall takes over.

I don't know why Symphony Hall in Boston sounds the way it sounds.

I don't know why Buddy Holly can sing the way he can sing, or why Puccini can write chords that just the chord will make me cry.

Forget about the passage, just the chord.

Just the chord, just the last chord on the first act of "La Bohème," and I'm in tears.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -The question of how this moves us is a question that has plagued mankind since there was music.

Now, with great respect for all the neuroscientists doing wonderful work on music and the brain, at the end of the day, we don't know why music moves us.

It's really Robert Frost's two-line poem.

"We sit round in the ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows."

♪♪ ♪♪ -When I was a kid, I always thought of the pipe organ as being a source of awe and extraordinary power.

The pipe organ created a sense of amplification of the individual that was unprecedented... ...and had an enormous influence on how we thought about technology.

Before the fantasies of flying cars, there was the pipe organ, where you could just sit there touching buttons and become giant.

Become giant, what an extraordinary thing.

♪♪ -The organ has so much more than a singular sound.

It has a multiplicity of sounds.

No other instrument does that.

A piano's a piano, a trumpet's a trumpet, and a voice is a voice.

But the organ has this incredible total that is quite unique.

We have the flutes.

We have the reeds, which are... ...trumpets and others.

We have that particular organ sound, which we refer to as principal tone.

Kind of uniquely organ.

The extraordinary thing about the organ is that when all of these sounds are set in motion coming through the pipes and you're in a grand space, the sound embraces you, it surrounds you, you feel the vibrations.

The only thing that that's akin to is the sound of a symphony orchestra.

♪♪ ♪♪ -You know, in the Baroque and medieval periods, it was right up there with the town clock in terms of being the height of technology.

The essential technology is ancient.

It's wind of a bellows going into a holding chamber and being allowed to escape through a pipe.

So, regardless of whatever new technological advances we may have, that fundamental element is always going to be true.

-We are at the shop of Richards and Fowkes and Company.

We are witnessing the final stages of building this instrument.

There are two halves.

Certainly to build a machine as complicated as this, you have to have a certain amount of engineering background in order to make all these pieces.

And we're talking about tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pieces put together, make them work together.

And then on top of all of that, there is the artistic and the emotional aspect of it that turns it from a mere machine into a work of art.

-So, this pipe was made earlier this morning.

It sounds pretty raw.

It's a scratchy, pretty ugly tone.

-That tone can be refined almost infinitely.

And this is the art of voicing.

-You just keep manipulating the mouth parts and the toe, until you get the right volume and timbre.

♪♪ ♪♪ We'll pre-voice the pipes to what we think is going to work in that chapel, but they'll actually all get voiced right in the room.

And we're going to make this instrument a very colorful instrument.

It's going to wear a lot of hats.

[ Chuckles ] ♪♪ -I'm thrilled that my friend Avi Stein has been overseeing the organ project at Trinity Church, Wall Street.

And the organ that will go into that chapel will be very specially designed.

It'll be just right for that chapel.

Not too large, not too small.

You want it to move you.

You want it to soothe you.

You don't want it to crush you and you don't want to have to find it.

-No matter what your expectations are, they all turn out to be like human beings -- they've got their own voice.

For me, I'm a voicer.

So, I don't get really excited until I hear it.

I mean, it's fun to put together.

Don't get me wrong.

But the thrill is when it starts to sing.

♪♪ ♪♪ -This is a tricky room.

It's a small room.

It's a room with not a lot of forgiveness in the acoustics.

We were all a little nervous that we were going to put so much effort into something and that the room was not going to help it.

♪♪ -What do you think?

-Cool.

-Do you want to hear that?

-Can I hear that?

-Clifton, can you do a bit of that?

-We don't have D flats, and we don't have G flats.

♪♪ -It's not too big.

-No.

-I felt like we were guessing about volumes and everything.

I mean, this could have been one of those days where I learned I've got to go back and revoice, tame down or bring up a lot of the pipework.

-That works.

-Yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -It's such a beautiful instrument.

This is essentially a machine that becomes something more than a machine.

You can't separate the craft from the art from the science.

I think they all work together in a kind of alchemy to create something larger than the sum of its parts.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I never see things as, "This bit's the art bit, this bit's the science bit."

It's just all the bits you might need to do to make a great project.

-In a fully realized artist or scientist, there is both the ability to engage technology and science, and the ability to engage creativity and wonder and awe.

-That's what's so exciting about great art and great music, is suddenly a possibility is discovered that no one has ever heard before.

-It's about the human reaching after the not yet known.

-Artists and scientists are alive.

That's what being alive is.

♪♪ [ Applause ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -This program is made possible by the Priem Family Foundation.

Since 1999, dedicated to fostering education and innovation, striving to spur research, technology, and creativity and helping to empower students to achieve bigger dreams for themselves and the world.

♪♪ ♪♪