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 | LEMUR League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots by Giulio Lotti | |||||||||||
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LEMUR is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists developing robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer, LEMUR's philosophy is to build robotic instruments that "play themselves." In LEMUR designs, the robots are the instruments. LEMUR is supported in part by generous grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation (in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial and in recogntion of the valuable cultural contributions of artists to society) and Arts International. LEMUR is also sponsored by Harvestwork Digital Media Arts Center. LEMUR is Eric Singer, David Bianciardi, Kevin Larke, Jeff Feddersen, Milena Iossifova, Bil Bowen, Maya Gorton and Marshall Wilson LEMUR composers are Joshua Fried, Mari Kimura and Lee Ranaldo. Other Contributors are Michelle Cherian, Brendan J. FitzGerald and Chad Redmon. lop: Maki Kimura and GuitarBot | ||||||||||||
How did League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots group begin? ERIC SINGER I founded the group in 2000. For me, it was a personal reaction to my earlier work in creating alternative musical instruments. These are exotic instruments such as gloves, electronic batons, photoelectric Theremins and rubber tubes. What they have in common is that they are all "musical input devices" - that is, they are played by humans and send information into a computer to create synthetic sounds. I thought it would be interesting to reverse the equation - send data out of a computer and use it to create live, physical sounds - thus, "musical output devices", or in other words, robotic musical instruments. So, I began soliciting colleagues and recruiting others that shared interest in this idea. Knowing that the project would require a wide range of disciplines, I called upon, electronics and robotics experts, programmers, instrument designers, sculptors and others. This lead to the formation of LEMUR. How did you get involved with LEMUR? BIL BOWEN I met Eric at a show I went to see at ITP. I was at a party on the Lower East Side and mentioned to someone in conversation that I had been experimenting with using midi to compose for physical objects and he told me that if I was interested in things like that, to come and see a show at NYU that Thursday, that there was an exposition by students working on things like this. I went to check it out and there I met Eric Singer (whose Max software I had been familiar with). He told me that if I were interested, to come by the shop later that evening, that he could use some help on something called a GuitarBot. So I did and by 4 or 5 in the morning I was machining parts for GuitarBot's pickwheels. I learned more in that night than I had in the months I'd spent blowing up chips and burning out motors, trying to get simple electro-mechanical things happening in my studio. So it all kind of grew from there, I now had the resources and know-how to think about my instruments on an entirely new level. The people in LEMUR were extremely helpful and full of great suggestions I would've most likely given up on the idea of midi-controlled mechanical instruments if I hadn't met them. KEVIN LARKE I got involved in LEMUR as a way to spend time working with like-minded people on topics of common interest. My main responsibility on the GuitarBot project is to develop and maintain the software for the on-board computers. Lately I've also acted as the technician for composers working with the instrument. MARI KIMURA Eric Singer of LEMUR approached me last summer for me to write a piece for GuitarBot. I created GuitarBotana for violin and GuitarBot, which was commissioned by Harvestworks, Digital Arts Media Center in NYC. JOSHUA FRIED Eric Singer asked me to composer music for GuitarBot. I don't make robots. I compose music for robots to play. LEE RANALDO The LEMUR bots were to be exhibited in the same group show that I was showing work in, at the Gigantic ArtSpace in Tribeca. I was invited to compose a piece for GuitarBot. As the piece I was showing had to do with a xerox generation of an image of Madonna (Madonna Generation, 1987), I thought I would continue the theme and derive my composition from the same photo--a further generation of the original picture. JEFF FEDDERSEN I knew Eric through NYU's Interactive Telecommunication Program - I had been a student there and at the time was a researcher and adjunct professor, working with audio and physical computing - chips and sensors. I also had a background playing and building musical instruments, and had worked a bit with robotics studying computer science in undergrad. So when I heard Eric was looking for collaborators on this robotic musical instrument project, it was clearly a perfect fit. How would you explain what LEMUR is about to audience having no experience with your performances? ERIC SINGER Our creations are new musical instruments which are played by means of robotics. When we design a work, we conceive of the musical instrument design first, then design and integrate the robotics around the instrumental concept. They are not what one typically thinks of when they hear the word "robot". That is, they are not humanoid or animatronic figures which play existing instruments. We say the are robots that _are_ instruments, as opposed to robots which _play_ instruments. BIL BOWEN I suppose I would tell them to imagine an orchestra where, instead of all of the instruments being orientated around the performers on a stage, the instruments are instead arranged throughout a space around the 'audience'. Furthermore, there are no 'performers' playing the instruments, the instruments are controlled remotely by a computer running software that 'conducts' the orchestra in real time by sending the appropriate messages to the appropriate instrument(s) at the appropriate times. So instrument, performer, orchestra, conductor, score... everything becomes part of one's experience in the space. In today's world, sound coming out of speakers just isn't that compelling to me unless it's a live radio broadcast, an announcement over a PA system, or bass-bins rocking a club. In this global corporate media culture we now find ourselves in, listening has become a passive experience by which consumers are programmed, accepting as 'real' anything that comes out of both stereo speakers and to a certain extent I see my work as a reaction to that. At Chelsea Art Museum this fall, I had all of the ModBots attached to a grand stainless steel and glass stairwell and used the steel rods and support structure of the stairs as instruments that were then played by the bots. So as museum-goers climbed these transparent stairs toward the skylight above, they were surrounded by the orchestra from all sides. Sometimes we make things interactive too, so the audience is contributing to an improvisation both in obvious and in more subtle ways. In the current show at Gigantic Art Space, Gen.R.8, I've programmed the score to be an algorithmic evolution/decomposition/re-evolution of patterns played by the instruments. Through iterative decision making processes carried out by the computer, recognizable patterns emerge, morph, and fall apart within a time period which is itself elastic. So everything is constantly in flux, constantly generating but never quite resolving or settling. KEVIN LARKE ... each composition requires a separate explanation - the only common feature are the instruments. The music can be described using the usual experimental music terms: improvised, through-composed, interactive, aleatoric, generative, good, not-so good .... JEFF FEDDERSEN LEMUR is all about expanding possibilities. When you have a robotic musical group, you can compose something linear for it like Josh's piece - every time its performed its the same - or you can write something algorithmic for it - something that evolves and changes based on rules in the computer and is never the same twice. You can jump in and control the instrument directly, or you stand back and watch as it does its thing. You can set it up to react or respond to people. So there are a lot of options that are there that aren't with a traditional ensemble. MILENA IOSSIFOVA LEMUR is a group of artists and technologists building robotic musical instruments. Many people expect our robots to be human-looking like, or some sort of robotic doll that plays the instrument. Our designs do not think of robots as antropomorphic, or as things which replace humans and human tasks. For example, robotic instruments can play in ways that humans can't or generally don't play. Some of these capabilities include speed, pitch and expression granularity, complex polyrhythms and extended duration playing. We aim to create instruments which are different - the robots are the instruments. In contrast to music played on synthesizers, physical instruments resonate, project and interact with sound spaces in richer, more complex ways. Clearly, they have a more commanding physical presence as well. When performing with LEMUR robots, we expose audiences to an entirely new musical experience. Few audiences have witnessed music performed on virtuosic robotic instruments. Those attending LEMUR concerts and exhibitions have consistently been fascinated, engaged and impressed on both a musical and a visual level. | ||||||||||||
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