April ReSiDeNt Show: New Works, New Instruments, New Artists :: Featuring new works by Dafna Naphtali, Andrew Schneider and Simon Morris :: at LEMURplex, 461 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, between 9th & 10th Streets :: Friday, May 2nd :: 8 pm - 11 pm :: $5 at the door

Dafna Naphtali is a sound-artist and improviser-composer from an eclectic musical background. As singer/guitarist/electronic-musician she performs and composes using custom sound processing of voice and other instruments. Besides her composing and improvised projects, she co-leads the digital chamber punk ensemble What is it Like to be a Bat? with Kitty Brazelton (http://www.whatbat.org) and has collaborated/performed with Lukas Ligeti, David First, Joshua Fried, Continue reading

Ajay Kapur - Electronic Sitars, Robotic Tablas, and Sarawati’s ElectroMagic :: April 3, 2008; 5 - 7 pm :: Machine Project, 1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA.

TABLACENTRIC is thrilled to present Ajay Kapur, whose work revolves around one queston: “How do you make a computer improvise with a human?” Using the rules set forth by the north Indian classical tradition, Ajay strives to build new interfaces for musical expression by modifying the tabla, dholak and sitar with added microchips and sensor systems, while building robotic musical instruments which can be programmed to perform along with the human performer. Continue reading

Synapse: Collaboration between the arts and sciences has the potential to create new knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial to both fields. Artists and scientists approach creativity, exploration and research in different ways and from different perspectives; when working together they open up new ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the world around us. For the past decade, the Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) has provided opportunities for artists and scientists to work together. Through Synapse, and in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts, ANAT offers residencies, the Synapse Database and now ANAT is pleased to announce its latest initiative: a moderated elist discussion on contemporary art and science collaborations in fields including bioart, artificial intelligence, robotics, climate change and space, amongst others. You can subscribe here. Continue reading

On January 31, ABSOLUT is launching The ABSOLUT Machines, two artificially creative and highly interactive music-making machines, as visually stunning as they are technologically pioneering. Users from around the world will be able to interact with the machines over the Internet. The musical input from online users will be processed by the machines, which will respond with a unique musical composition – co-created by man and machine. The machines will immediately perform the songs, and their performances will be live-streamed to a global audience at absolutmachines.com.

Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman have created the ABSOLUT QUARTET, a large-scale electromechanical sculpture consisting of three instruments and thousands of parts, working together to create one piece of music. Continue reading

BliK an interactive installation and networked musical composition method based on collaborative “Web 2.0″ principles. The composer / participant types directives / keywords - referencing one of the LEMUR ModBots - into a blog post to create a musical score. The LEMUR ModBots are a set of single-function percussive bots that work as a percussion ensemble. They reside at LEMURplex in Brooklyn, New York. Some are scrapers, some are shakers, some strike different surfaces. They each have their own name, for instance, “bucket” and “shake.” By typing “bucket shake shake shake,” into a blog post, the user causes both bots to improvise algorithmically, with the shake being 3 times more present in the section than the bucket. The user controls the tempo by typing keywords such as ‘fast’, ’slow’, and ‘medium’. Continue reading

Toyota unveiled a robot that can play the violin as part of its efforts to develop futuristic machines capable of assisting humans in Japan’s greying society.

The 1.5-metre-tall (five-foot), all-white, two-legged robot wowed onlookers with what we are told was a faultless rendition of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. With 17 joints in its hands and arms, the robot used its mechanical fingers to push the strings correctly and bowed with its other arm, coordinating the movements well. The new robot comes three years after Toyota unveiled a trumpet-playing robot. For more information, see Technology Review or AFP Google.

LEMUR announces ReSiDeNt, a major new residency and performance/installation series :: Open Call for Submissions: Deadline: December 17, 2007. Artists from all performing and installation disciplines are encouraged to apply, including musicians, composers, dancers, choreographers, video artists, interactive installation artists, performance artists, multimedia artists and others.

In January 2008, LEMUR will inaugurate ReSiDeNt, a unique new creator-in-residence program, hosted at LEMUR’s Brooklyn space in Park Slope. Each month, we will award three artists a month-long residency at LEMUR, enabling them to create a work utilizing LEMUR’s resources, including robotic musical instruments, MIDI audio/video controllers, video projection and tracking system and more. Each group of residencies will culminate in a public show at LEMUR at the end of the month. Continue reading

The STRP Festival :: the Klokebouw, Eindhoven :: November 22 - 25, 2007 :: with works by artists such as Kurt Hentschlager (AUT), Scanner & TeZ (UK) and D-Fuse (UK).

The STRP Festival is one of the largest art & technology festivals in Europe, presenting a four-day multidisciplinary programme with more than 120 artworks, performances, and artists. Thursday November 22 the festival kicks of with a Chemical Brothers opening concert. The extensive expo of robotics and interactive art challenges the visitors to undertake their own explorations. Continue reading

The Chandelier - developed by Mike Fabio, Steve Pliam, Brian Demers, and Lucas Hernandez-Mena - is a large-scale robotic musical instrument designed for the opera Death and the Powers. Using various electronically controlled actuators, The Chandelier is capable of creating sounds unlike traditional instruments, and even some sounds that defy the size of the instrument itself. In this installation participants are given control over an instrument that is clearly, visibly, much larger than themselves, yet inextricably linked to their movements on a traditional piano keyboard, exploring and breaking the limitations of human performers as well as the instruments that we think of as commonplace. Continue reading

You can listen to the closing Performance of the Emerging Technologies Conference @MIT, Ensemble Robot, by going here and scrolling to the bottom of the page. (The video could use some editing at its beginning. You might want to start it a quarter inch in to avoid a long waiting period.)

A unique blend of musicians and robotic instruments Ensemble Robot creates music that pushes acoustic instrumentation beyond traditional boundaries. Ensemble Robot was founded in 2003 by MIT alumnae Christine Southworth and Leila Hasan as a collective of artists, engineers, programmers, and musicians working to design, construct, and program an orchestra of robotic musical instruments and dancers. Continue reading