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Playlist "34C3: TUWAT"

Robot Music

jacob remin and goto80

Once full automation hits, we will have a lot of free time on our hands. This project demonstrates early explorations in computer generated music via robot hands, old computers and generative algorithms. While the robot performs, we sit next to it and invite people for a conversation about robots being “creative” and “stealing our jobs”.

“Robot Music” is an ongoing robotic research project between artists Goto80 and Jacob Remin centered around automation, creation and loss of control.

The project was initiated in 2017 and has been shown in other forms at Illutron (Copenhagen), Algomech Festival (Sheffield) and Internetdagarna (Stockholm).

In this installment at CCC robotic arms play music on a Commodore 64 and other sound machines. The robot loads songs that we have made and re-works them live by changing the notes, instruments, arrangements, effects and by applying a general “robot cool” to the mix.

While the robot performs, we sit next to it to talk to people about robots being “creative” and “stealing our jobs”.

For CCC we will bring two robots. One for performing and one for hacking. We are inviting all hackers to join our conversation, and we are excited to meet people with skills within robotics, programming, neural networks for music composition and live coding.