The Mother of All Demos, one of the crucial moments in computer history, is becoming an avant garde opera.
The demo took place in 1968, when Doug Engelbart presented the culimination of his team's research at the Augmentation Research Center before an audience at the Brooks Hall in San Francisco. Over the course of 90 minutes, he presented ideas that would become icons of the computer revolution, including computer mice, word processing, bitmap files, hypertext links, and much more. The team also showed off a collaboration across a computer network from two different locations. The entire historic demo can be seen here.
Mikel Rouse and Ben Neill are working on the avant-opera about the event called simply The Demo. The debut will take place April 1 and 2 at the Stanford Bing Concert Hall, about two miles down the road from the Stanford Research Institute where much of the tech was developed.
Rouse will play Englebert, and the opera will be interspersed with video footage from the original demonstration. The show mixes in multimedia elements, electronic music, and some bits of less-than-traditional opera thrown in. The show may go on tour after its debut.
Source: Wired
