28. June 2016 8
Andrew McPherson – Resonator piano
Ok we confess – this is not an actuall robot but an innovative way of triggering a piano. Andrew McPherson from Drexel university created this new instrument. It uses coils to move the strings of an existing piano and thus creating alien-like sounds.
The magnetic resonator piano is a hybrid acoustic-electronic instrument which uses electromagnets to augment a grand piano. This instrument expands the piano’s vocabulary to include infinite sustain, crescendos from silence, harmonics, and new timbres.
Pierre Bastien – Mecanoid
1953 born, french artists is Pierre Bastien one of the godfathers of music robotics. His work covers an overwhelming range of experimental music robots and sound art pieces which are a reference point for many contemporary artists.
Graham Dunning – Techno robot
Our friend Graham Dunning got famous with his installation “techno robot” as it triggers memories at both vinyl and sound art lovers! Graham uses different objects as well as pre-cut vinyls to create a multi layer vinyl player that plays a visible “loop”. It fits very well to this loop-focused style of electronic music and reminds us of artists like Piere Bastien.
BD594 – Glockenspiel
Famouse youtube user and music robot aficionado BD594 did it again – he build an awesome glockenspiel bot. Its remarkable, that he used a systems where one beater is responsible for a set of tones – and not one beater per tone as in similar instruments. This concept has the advantage of beeing much nicer to watch because the instrument has big movements – but the disadvantage that you probably cannot play it live because the latency gets too big.
Toa Mata Band – Lego Robots
Our friend Giuseppe Acito builds robots, that control sensors, that control electronics – with lego! His Toa Mata band is a wild mix of 80s synthies, Glockenspiel, self-made drums and oll of them are controlled by lego motors and solenoids. The future of robotic music will be cute!
Be sure to check out his website
Old Spice – Muscle Music
Well know for their mind-boggling, reality-shifting, viral old-spice commercials US-actor Terry Crews made another piece for the body wash company where he combines muscle controllers with music robots. It all looks a bit thrown-together but we cannot deny – this man got the groove!
The overall system seems to be controlled pneumatically. Whether its pre-written or live played cannot be said.
Sonic Robots – Glitchy sounds w/ mechanics
Glitch Robot is an installation by Moritz Simon Geist where acoustic sounds used in electronic music are created by … Robots!
The Installation consists of several robotic actors. When the actors make contact with their instruments, they produce a sonic impression of an omnipresent texture of modern life: electronic music. The music robots used in this performance consists of recycled and 3D-printed parts such as harddisks, relays, tongues, motors and solenoids.
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