Eagleman and Eno perform Sum

Brian Eno and I have twice performed a musical version of Sum, once at the Sydney Opera House, and once at the Brighton Dome. Brian wrote twelve new pieces of music for mutually selected Sum stories, and then he played these pieces as an underlayer over which I and other readers read the stories on stage. 

The Sydney performance drew 1000, and the Brighton performance drew 1200. We're hoping to do some more performances soon -- right now Japan and San Francisco are the main places on the radar screen. Check back here for updates.

For those (few!) who don't know him, Brian is a talented musician (albums include Music for Airports, Here Come the Warm Jets, and Before and After Science), a mega-producer (of bands like Coldplay and U2), a public intellectual, and a terrific guy.

In a separate venture, German composer Max Richter is turning SUM into a full-length opera to be performed at the Royal Opera House in London in May 2012. Stay tuned for further details as that project develops.

From the Blog

  • The science of de- and re-humanization
    The science of de- and re-humanization

    Why do groups of people inflict violence on unarmed neighbors? (Germany, Rwanda, Darfur, Nanking....). Here's the neuroscience point of view.

  • Why I am a Possibilian
    Why I am a Possibilian

    Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story is true or not true. I call myself a possibilian. Find out why.

  • Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization
    Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization

    Watch a talk I gave at the Long Now Foundation about my hopes that the advent of the internet will mitigate threats that brought down previous civilizations.

  • My favorite New Yorker cartoon. Ever.
    My favorite New Yorker cartoon. Ever.

    I'm a sucker for time jokes.

Newsflashes

New Yorker magazine profile

Read a profile of David in The New Yorker: The Possibilian: What a brush with death taught David Eagleman about the mysteries of time and the brain by Burkhard Bilger.
Eagleman in the New Yorker

NY Times Oped

Read David's Op-Ed piece in The New York Times regarding time and Obama's withdrawal plan.

The secret life of the lab

Want to know more about the inner workings of a neuroscience lab? Watch a video profile of David and his students on NOVA Science Now.
Nova Science Now

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