These two videos are actually two separate scenes from the same work, "Dolly," which is itself only third act of a three-part 'opera' by Steve Reich. The three movements of this opera, Hindenburg, Bikini, and Dolly, all explore the nature of technology in an ambivalent light. The first excerpt, which opens the act, is about cloning, and the second posted/final excerpt is titled 'Robots/Cyborgs/Immortality.' For the libretto/text, which you can read here, Reich collected interviews with some of the most prominent people working in the fields of robotics, cyborg sociology, technology theory, and genetics, including Richard Dawkins, James Watson, Sherry Tucker, and Ray Kurzweil. Then, using a technique that he uses in severalpieces, Reich splices, repeats, and otherwise messes with the interviews (but with minimal hard/destructive editing), and notates the natural pitch and rhythm of the voices so that the acoustic instruments can double/reinforce them.
One of the things that I think draws me to this work (honestly, Reich is sometimes hit-or-miss with me) is the fear and apprehension that frames this work. He frames this act with a religious/spiritual mysticism that appears to be inevitably doomed for failure. In the first part, Reich intersperses lines from Genesis, 'sung' by Kismet, a semi-intelligent robot designed by Cynthia Breazeal:
"And placed him in the Garden of Eden, to serve it and to keep it."
