Maywa Denki

Ensemble Robot

http://www.ensemblerobot.org/

From their website : “With “Ensemble Robot,” we aspire not only to produce uniquely beautiful and intriguing music for a multitude of audiences in the New England region, but additionally to instruct and inspire would-be artists and engineers at schools, museums and other public forums throughout the Boston and greater New England area. We believe that “Ensemble Robot” will serve to bring together the often-independent artist and engineer communities and stimulate cross-discipline dialogue”.

THE WHIRLYBOT, aka the ROBOCOPTER, is their newest robot, designed and built by Andy Cavatorta, Erik Nugent, and Bill Tremblay, in 2006. With seven tuned whirlies spinning at different speeds controlled by MIDI, the Whirlybot has a range of 2 octaves and sounds like a chorus of voices.

Ballet Mecanique ; on again + new video doc

http://lemurbots.org/ballet.mov

+ + + + + + + + + + +

In 1924 American composer George Antheil and artist/filmmaker Fernand Léger collaborated on ‘Ballet Mécanique.’ Inspired by the ever-expanding presence of machines in modern life, the two artists reconstituted the dance form with whirring, grinding mechanical parts overseen by human guides. Although the two parts (score and film) were never married in the artists’ lifetimes, both pieces became landmarks in the their respective fields. Léger’s film has been well restored and is a notable chapter in modern art history, and ‘Ballet Mécanique’ remains Antheil’s most famous orchestration. This December, Paul Lehrman and LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots) will present an all-robotic version of Antheil’s score. Originally written for 16 player pianos, four bass drums, three xylophones, a tam-tam, seven electric bells, a siren, and three different-sized airplane propellers, the ‘all robot version’ replaces any and all human participation with pre-programm! ed robotic knowledge. The piece will play twice a day from December 1-11th at the Wolfsonian Museum at Florida International University, offering rhythmic and evocative respite from the Miami Art Fair shopping season. –Caitlin Jones

Sustainable: a dynamic robotic sound installation

David Birchfield, David Lorig, Kelly Phillips

http://ame2.asu.edu/faculty/dab/sustainable.php

Sustainable, 2004.

Sustainable is comprised of a network of robot water gongs that are linked together by water tubes that allow each tank to receive water from one upstream neighbor, and to pump water into one downstream neighbor. The network is a closed system that distributes water between the members.

Automatons by Godfried-Willem Raes

Godfried-Willem Raes, born in Gent (Europe) in 1952, is known worldwide as a “musicmaker” in the largest sense of the word. He has built robotic musical instruments of all kinds, sound sculptures and enjoys a nude performance or two, legend!
http://www.logosfoundation.org/instrum_gwr/automatons.html

Muneteru UJINO @ Sydney Biennale

http://artspace.org.au/2006/06/biennale.html

http://mizuma-art.co.jp/_artist/ujino_e.html

I saw a fun performance by Ujino last night at Artspace for their launch of the biennale.

the installation / performance had alsorts of recycled consumer electricals that you know they would be so easy to find in the gommy in Japan, except most of the larger parts of the install, Car, wardrobes, old mamoth radio /cabinets had Australian components, the artist was even wearing a clovelly hat!. Obviously he has been out here for a while collecting junk, and no one has told me (i now have pile of junk appilances etc). The Performance was a mix between noise and techno with all music made live from the hybrid guitar / blenders and custom pencil records, these controled the switching of lights and revolving of windscreen wipers, more blenders etc. UJINO would get a bass rhythm going (pencil records switching amped saucepans pumping bass speakers installed in cupboards) Ass shaking, then drop the guitar / blender / drill until it became unbearably lovely, i saw a few chin strokers contemplating the end of the silence of painting etc..hohum. Ujino then, let systems running to strap on his motor bike gutiar which was totally out of sync with everything else; headlights spectacularly blinding people infront of him. During the performance he also managed to make a bannana smoothy – (even in the bannana crisis!)

I reccommend checking the install and i may see you at his artists talk. 4.30 pm Saturday 10 June

Ballet mécanique Washington March 12-May 7, 2006!

http://www.antheil.org/

The Ballet mécanique is Antheil's most famous—or notorious—piece. At its various premieres, it caused tremendous controversy, not to mention fistfights. Although it was very successful in Paris, it was a huge flop when it came to New York, and in fact Antheil's career as a "serious" composer never recovered from that debacle.

The re-created orchestra consisted of 16 MIDI-compatible grand player pianos, provided by the Gulbransen division of QRS Music, and three xylophones, four bass drums, a tam-tam, a siren, and three "airplane propellors," all controlled by MIDI, using robotics built by the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, under the direction of Eric Singer.

http://lemurbots.org/

crap CBS news doco here

http://www.antheil.org/audio/CBSSundayMorningWeb.mov

The Three Sirens; A self learning robotic rock band

http://the-three-sirens.info/

Originally, three robots formed the band The Three Sirens, those were Aglaopheme (slide guitar), Peisinoe (bass) und Thelxiepeia (drum). By now, a few other artificial intelligences have joined the group: Aciilyzer (Vocals), LynxArm (Percussion) and some “off the shelf” electronic instruments.
The Three Sirens are not conventional musical instruments but autonomous, self learning robot musicians. They are not controlled by humans. Artificial neural networks control every aspect of the robot’s activities. This means that the authorship for their music does not belong to any living being (no predefined material or musical knowledge is available to the system), all musical material is generated by self organizing learning processes in an improvising manner.

Trimpin

Trimpin, a sound sculptor, composer, inventor, is one of the most stimulating one-man forces in music today. A specialist in interfacing computers with traditional acoustic instruments, he has developed a myriad of methods for playing, trombones, cymbals, pianos, and so forth with computers. Trimpin sums it up as “extending the traditional boundaries of instruments and the sounds they’re capable of producing by mechanically operating them. Although they’re computer-driven, they’re still real instruments making real sounds, but with another dimension added, that of spatial distribution. What I’m trying to do is go beyond human physical limitations to play instruments in such a way that no matter how complex the composition of the timing, it can be pushed over the limits.”

November 18, 2004
University of Victoria’s Music Intelligence and Sound Technology Interdisciplinary Center

http://www.mistic.ece.uvic.ca/research/robots/trimpin/

computerized music box

http://www.playmusicbox.com/

Jin-Yo Mok's and Gicheol Lee's MusicBox is a sound instrument that
integrates an installation with interactions over the Internet. The
physical installation consists of an old-fashioned music box with a
crank handle, in which the pins have been replaced with LEDs and the
notes with photo sensors for user interaction.
Users can draw a shape and pattern on the screen with their mouse and
the same pattern of LEDs will light up on the physical music box.
Turning the crank handle on the LED cylinder, any sensors that detect
light from the LEDs will make a sound. Data submitted by users is
stored in a database and shared by the online and offline music box.

Drawing on Music Box : Users can design the lights on the music box by drawing on the computer screen, April 2004