The dominant visual metaphors of the Brain Opera are the body and the word. The body is the medium and the filter that locates and gives coherence to the continuously evolving perceptual and interpretive network we call personality, identity or self. It is a relational, ordering structure, analogous to musical form. The word is an "agent" of language, analogous to sound in music, it is a unit of meaning continuously evolving through contextualization and recombination.

Each visual interface of the Brain Opera has real-time controls that allow both performers and participants to construct and compose moving images through direct, intuitive, physical manipulation such as gesture, touch and voice. Each interface attempts to express the network of connections, like that of neurons in the brain, between individuals engaged in different modes of participation with the Brain Opera. Experiences focus on individual subjectivity, exploring and challenging the notion of "self."