Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Lev is a robot that plays the theremin.

And while he’s far from being a virtuoso, he plays better than a lot of thereminists.

Lev may be the ultimate MacGyver music hack. He was made out of an old floor lamp, some plumbing supplies, a few empty mint tins, and some microprocessors.

Lev is named after Lev Termen or Leon Theremin, a Russian scientist who invented one of the first electronic musical instruments, an instrument which is played without touching, and which bears his name.

via MoonMilk, synthgear

New with the Thingamagoop 2:

• Arduino + Analog
• CV i/o
• Much more….

No pricing or release date have been announced.

From 1977, French robotic space pop group The Droids do The Force, a bit of Star Wars inspired robo disco.

Yves Hayat (synthesizers and sequencers) formed Droids along with Richard Lornac on key board and Jean Paul Batailley on drums and tablas.

via magicwaves:

more french robotic space rock, this time from 1976…

Bam Studio’s Voltage is a cool music video, inspired by modular synthesizers:

Just like modular synthesizers, people connect with each other in order to achieve diverse objectives. In Voltage, robots, half-human and half-synthesizer, powered by a huge amount of energy, connect to each other in an electric and chaotic trance.

Directed by:
Filippe Lyra e William Paiva

Produced by:
Barros Melo Animation Studio

Music:
William Paiva e Leo D

Breaker Bot is an animated short film created by Joseph Jones.

According to Jones:

This project is inspired by a mix of trends that have become a part of pop culture for the last 3 decades.

See breakerbot.com for more info on the artist and to see more animation post.

Extract from composition: ‘Glide’ recorded and filmed at Gasworks Winter 2008.

Felix’s Machines are music making sculptures. They were constructed in his bedroom and exist to facilitate music by translating rhythmic audio structures into a three-dimensional visual show.

They function as musical instruments as well as kinetic sculptures. The Machines are a performance device, but can be well suited to act as an art installation, theatre accompaniment, or standalone sculpture.

The Machines invite an audience to share the experience of their creator. He aims to exploit the complexity found behind the workings of most digital music and present it as a more accessible equivalent. These Machines do not intend to match human potential. Instead they exist to test the advantages of mechanical instruments and forget the ones designed for people.

“Although my medium focuses on the development of acoustic sounds, I am continually inspired by electronic music – the countless abstractions act as blueprints for the construction of its acoustic counterparts. I aim to build a space where artificial and dream-like environments can become a reality.”

FT

via audiolemon

Emergency Bot TV Theme for LEMUR GuitarBot by Joshua Fried.

GuitarBot is a robotic guitar-like instrument from LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots.

via esinger3141

You gotta love the Robotic GamelaTron of Zemi17 – and not just because its name makes you think of every cheesy sci fi movie ever made:

Zemi17 has augmented Gamelan instruments that he brought back for his time in Indonesia while the LEMUR team has built customized interfaces and robotic mechanisms to enable the playing of the Gamelan by computerized midi controlled robot arms.

Sonic Self, Chelsea Art Museum July 18, 2008, NYC.

zemi17 via thesonicself

Remember the Big Mouth Billy Bass? You’d press a button (or trigger a proximity sensor for a surprise) and the fish would start singing either Al Greens Take Me To The River, or Bobby McFerrins Don’t Worry, Be Happy. 

Texan Richard Carter took a Volvo, 5 miles of wire, five 6-volt golf cart batteries, a screw drive mechanism using 12v DC reversible motor, a lifting frame he made from scratch, a Linux server and approximately two hundred synchronized singing fish, and created what can only be described as an awesomely effective assault on good taste: the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir.

Bleep Labs has reintroduced the ThingamaWEEN – an anthropmorphic robot synthesizer, styled for Halloween. 

Four options are available:

• Bella Lubleepy – vampire
• The Ghost of Robot TB1X – robo-ghost
• Jack-O-Lumen – jack-o-lantern
• The Modern Prometh-O-Lux – monster

This video showcases the Thingamakit, a fun DIY project that lets you build your own anthropomorphic noise maker.

Comes with:

• detailed instructions
• fully labeled components
• simply layed out circuit board with minimal hand wiring.
• 2 ready to blink LEDacles
• control panel and face stickers

Lots of people have fond memories of visits to see these cheesy robots as kids, and videos of the reprogrammed robots went on to become hits on YouTube.

Now, there’s a new documentary in the works that looks at the story behind the Rock-afire Explosion:

The Rock-afire Explosion is the story of a small-town car salesman, an inventor, and an animatronic rock band, that quickly becomes an eccentric portrait of childhood memories, broken dreams, and the resilience of the human spirit.

With the closing of Showbiz Pizza Place in the early nineties, and the subsequent removal of the Rock-afire Explosion, a small but determined group of fans persisted with the hopes of reviving their fallen obsession. It wasn’t until 2007, with the resurgence of the Rock-afire Explosion on YouTube with songs like Miss New Booty, Hey There Delilah, and Love in This Club, that the animatronic band found its way back into the public consciousness.

Chris Thrash, a car salesman from Phenix City, Alabama who recently purchased a Rock-afire Explosion, has led the charge with his inventive programming and clever song choice. Aaron Fechter, creator of the Rock-afire Explosion and the sole employee of Creative Engineering, hopes to revitalize what was once a 300 employee, 20 million dollar per-year industry.

It looks like it should be very interesting.

Directed by: Brett Whitcomb
Written by: Bradford Thomason
Sound / Production Assistant: Luke Lukas
Music by: The Super Furry Animals and Data vs Data

Remember David Byrne’s Julio – the creepy realistic animatronic singer?

Byrne has written a post from the opening, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. In the post, he elaborates on the show and his throughts on his man-machine:

I don’t think what I’ve addressed thus far really engages the supposed theme of the exhibition; many works seem to address the uncanny, the creepy, and the vaguely lifelike….

Julio, the singing robot made in collaboration with David Hanson’s lab, fits in mainly with the creepy uncanny side of the show. Julio is old-school creepy — he resembles a person, uses lifelike motions, and — yikes! — smiles and looks around, mumbles to himself, and then bursts into song. He recalls a Frankenstein monster, although, instead of being outwardly and obviously scary, he’s quasi-friendly looking and bursting with emotion. I hope the sense of realism together with the singing make him doubly creepy. How can a machine be feeling what’s expressed in the songs.

Like many animals, humans sing for pleasure, for sex, for attention, to express pain, to relieve angst and to join and participate in a social group. All of these urges seem, if not uniquely human, at least not at all machine like. To see machines mimic these aspects of human life, is to watch some part of our imagined souls being appropriated.

While machines can mimic aspects of human, animal and biological processes, they still lack souls, or whatever it is that leaves us sentient, independent beings. Machines, even computers, are for the most part still modeled on digital, binary and logical thought processes, clutching the legacy of Descartes and the Enlightenment. For machines to truly simulate human beings, they will need to reason with their hearts, their emotions, as we and other animals do. We may like to think that cool logic guides, buffers, and tames our hot emotions, but many now believe that the amygdala and other emotional areas of the brain do most of the “thinking.” It seems that much of our thought process is unconscious, based on impulse, gut feeling, and instinct — and no less wise because of it. This is what’s absent in these machines.

For me, an important part of this show is about this lacuna, this missing part. Witnessing a machine approach being human — and for it to be almost believable, but not quite — can be a creepy and unsettling experience.

Machines and Souls (Máquinas y Almas)

Participating artists in the show:

Antoni Abad, 1956, ES
David Byrne, 1952, UK & David Hanson, US, robot
Daniel Canogar, 1964, ES
Vuk Cosic, 1966, RS
Evru / Zush, 1946, ES
Harun Farocki, 1944, CZ, football
Paul Friedlander, lights
Pierre Huyghe 1962, FR, anime girl
Theo Jansen 1948, NL, insect machines
Natalie Jeremijenko, 1966, AU, recycling
Sachiko Kodama magnet forms
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, 1967, MX
Chico MacMurtrie
John Maeda, 1966, US
Antoni Muntadas, 1942, ES, map
Daniel Rozin, 1961
Ben Rubin & Mark Hansen 1964, US, blog feed

Says cinnamonjuly: “I plugged up my Bleeplabs Thingamagoop to my EMS Synthi and it immediately started using the Synthi as some kind of weird transmitter to contact home.”

Isidore is the funky modular synth of DamagedMeat:

This video is a demonstration of the latest version of Isidore with a screen in the head displaying waveforms and Lissajou shapes comin’ out from the MFB Videoscope module.

All sounds by Doepfer A100 except micromoog bass in the 1st part and little melody in the 2nd one. The theme is played live by the A100, MIDI sequenced by a protools. The red and white lights are controlled by MIDI and CV.

Here’s an earlier, crappier video of Isidore in action:

Says DamagedMeat: “I was testing the voltage controlled lights with some 16 steps sequence MIDI running in cubase, then converted to CV by Doepfer MCV24. All sounds by Doepfer A100 modular synth.”

via Matrix

RozzoBianca is a Swiss “Robotical Freak Show” – a band with 4 different robots playing guitar, drums, megaphone and accordion made out of old industrial parts, controlled by MIDI, plus a singing skeleton.

Here’s a video of them in action:

via MusicThing