July 2016 6
Dadamachines – Changable lego actors
The german based artists-group around Johannes Lohbihler build an interactive and fun-to-play set of robotic actuators which enables the spectator – thus actor – to play with every item that are laying around. As other projects it uses lego bricks and pieces to make the system universally convertable and playble.
The dada machines toolkit let’s you compose the sounds of the world around you into a unique sound creation. Whether you are a professional producer or curious noisemaker, you can use the modular dada system to use your environment to create.
James Houston – retro mechanic music
Triggered by a remix contest from the band Radiohead, UK-based artist James Houston wired this retro orchestra in 2008 to create a mezmerizing and beautiful project and video work. It combines different retro computing devices such as:
- Sinclair ZX Spectrum – Guitars (rhythm & lead)
- Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer – Drums
- HP Scanjet 3c – Bass Guitar
- Hard Drive array – Vocals & FX
They play the song “nude” from radiohead in a very musical way. The video is heavily colorgraded to give it that retro look, which fits well to the overall idea.
Based on the lyric (and alternate title) “Big Ideas: Don’t get any” I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.
It doesn’t sound great, as it’s not supposed to.”
Liat Segal – Robotic darbukas
One of the more old-school robotic drum projects combines Arabic instruments with (in 2010) state of the art high-tec: Wireless controlled darbukas. It was set up for the international biennale in 2010 in Israel and realized by Artist Liat Segal.
18 Darbuka drums and 36 robotic arms are controlled via wireless communication. Drum music is composed and played at a music sequencer on an iPad.
The project was presented at the Bat-Yam international biennale of landscape urbanism, September 2010, as a part of the ‘Green to Blue’ ecological street project. During the biennale, electricity generated by wind turbines and photovoltaic cells was used to operate the robotic Darbuka drums. The drums were mounted on the wind turbines columns, creating a hybrid, digital-mechanic drumming circle, a futuristic-traditional acoustic space.
SileNT – Floppotron, biggest floppy organ
The Floppotron by polish hacker SlieNT is a hugh array of 64 floppy drives, 8 hard disks and two scanners.
It uses the controls as we have seen have it before but the project shines with its mass and build-quality. Also it implements volume control which gives it much more musical possibilities than similar hacks. Percussion-like sounds are realized with salvaged hard drives which are run against the casing to make the percussion “plopp”. Electronically, everything is realized with arduinos, which are wired as one big SPI-Chain to be finally controlled from a desktop computer.
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Joasihno – Robotic percussion & marimba
German musicians Cico Beck und Nico Sierig created their band “Joasihno” around several percussion robots and a robotic 5-tone marimba. They started they career with the well known german noise rock band “Notwist” – their new project locks nicely hacked-together as well and refers to like Four Tet or Steve Reich. Have a look:
Niklas Roy – Music Construction Machine
The Music Construction Machine is a large, public, generative music box, which people can operate via a big hand crank. Rotating the crank moves various mechanisms inside the giant box, producing ever-changing melodies and rhythmic patterns, played with an electric guitar, a keyboard and a drum set. As the machine is contained in a transparent glass pavillon, people can observe and contemplate on its inner workings while cranking.
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