Our robot is hungry for humans, so Berlin beware! We will play some more live shows there during the Club Transmediale

25.01.2013 Club Transmediale MusicMakers Hackdays (Opening) Kunstquartier Projektraum Betanien 19:00
28.01.2013 14:00 Talk at Kunstquartier Bethanien FREE Entrance
28.01.2013 20:00 Talk and Performance for Dorbot Berlin at C-Base (more soon) FREE Entrance
01.02.2013 Berghain Kantine Club Transmediale MusicMakers Hacklab 20:00, 8€ / 10€

On day 4 at the hacker congress 29C3, when everyone was stunned and stoned from the first 3 days, I was holding my talk “Marvin und der Blues” where I tried to explain the theory of robot music instruments in general and gave some inside view on the installation MR-808. The most exciting part for me was the sheer scale of the “saal 1″ at the congress centre hamburg, and then the talk itself of course. Thanks to everyone for the lovely feedback!

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A list of the most interesting (and this is fully subjective!) papers on robotic musical instruments and Human-machine interaction.

[pdf] Toward Robotic Musicianship MIT Press, GIL and Scott, 2006
We present the development of a robotic percus-sionist named Haile that is designed to demonstrate
musicianship. We define robotic musicianship in this context as a combination of musical, percep-tual, and interaction skills with the capacity to pro-duce rich acoustic responses in a physical and visual manner. Haile listens to live human players, ana-lyzes perceptual aspects of their playing in real time, and uses the product of this analysis to play along in a collaborative and improvisatory manner

[pdf] A HISTORY OF ROBOTIC MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, Kapur, 2005
This paper presents a history of robotic musical instruments that are performed by motors, solenoids, and gears. Automatic mechanical musical instruments from pianos, to turntables, to percussion, to plucked and bowed strings to wind and horns are presented …

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In case you have not seen one of our performances so far (and chances are good as there was only one) – we have some more shows for this year:

15.12.2012 Dresden, Kukulida 20:00, Free
27.12.2012 Wismar, Tikozigalpa , 20:00, TBA
28.12.2012 Hamburg Gängeviertel, Free, 20:00
30.12.2012 Hamburg, CCH 29C3, Performance TBA

The shows will be with our band SCIENCE FICTION CHILDREN

Due to of the high interest that hits us at moment we’d like to say a few words about our equipment. As stated [in another article], our (Moritz Simon Geist and [SCIENCE FICTION CHILDREN] ) – our vision is to have a decent electronic pop-band where no sound is generated inside a computer, but where robots play the structures humans are not able to. We want the haptics, the error and the visual behavior of machines playing the beats and notes! We want a crowded and dirty stage with cables, machinery and lights all over! [Continue Reading...]

It seems we might have underestimated the internet-love for the 808. It’s overwhelming how many blogs featured the MR-808! Thank you all! So, we picked the comments we liked the most (german / english mixed) for your amusement: 

(CBS News) The election is over and we can get back to the “serious business” of cat videos, amazing technology, geek culture, music and all other things viral here at The Feed. Hip hip, hooray! So let’s start the post-election fun off with an 80s drumming robot in the video above.CBS

 Moritz Simon Geist recreated the iconic 808 drum-machine using analog parts and robotic controllers, experimenting with many instruments in order to recreate the 808′s repertoire.BoingBoing

“ZDF Kulturpalast Dokumentation 08.11.2012 ZDF Kulturpalast

That’s a fine gimmick, but there’s a lot of craft here. First off, the band itself is making some great music. They really are a band, and the project’s flash still passes the “close your eyes and you’ll still like it” test. CreatDigitalMusic

 This machine, built by musician/roboticist Moritz Simon Geist, is a love letter to the classic 80′s sound maker. And it’s a truly beautiful love letter.this8bitlife

Robot rock: The incredible giant drum machine where samples are replaced with real instruments.Daily Mail (UK)

Every now and then, something so genius pops up that delights and moves.Talent Blog

Moritz Simon Geist appreciates the effort [of the orginal 808, Anm.], but has built a solution for those who think the drum machine is a little too perfect.Engadged

German musician cum robot-hacker cum sonic-terrorist Moritz Simon Geist had tired of his trusty TR-808; deciding to put his experience in robotic music making to the ultimate test. Henceforth, the MR-808 was born.weheart.co.uk

 Wie super muss man eigentlich sein eine TR-808 mit Robotern nachzubauen? Erschaffen von Moritz Simon Geist, verschlägt es mir die Sprache.” xsteadfastx
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Photo: CC from Flickr mightyohm

I guess anyone is knowing Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy”, and the depressed robot Marvin? Well, robot Marvin sings the blues and moans about his existence and is probably one of the more favorite and tragic musical robots (maybe beside Futurama’s, Bender, who maniacally turns into a folk singer when approaching magnetism).

With this in mind, I prepared a talk about robots and music, which I will be holding at the famous hacker conference 29C3 end December in Hamburg (Germany)! Yeeeha!
The main theme will be: [Continue Reading...]