Five Robots Playing Pentatonic, Polyrhythmic Songs
Christian Faubel
Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression
- Year: 2024
- Location: Utrecht, Netherlands
- Track: Installations
- Pages: 49–53
- Article Number: 12
- DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15027177 (Link to paper and supplementary files)
- PDF Link
- Video
Abstract
Five robots playing five tuned bells by striking them with a mallet. Each robot is controlled by a minimalist, neurally inspired analogue oscillator. These oscillators are mutually connected and connected to a pacemaker oscillator, and through network connectivity, they will synchronize at different ratios with the pacemaker. Slow-running analog oscillators of the same type switch on and off the connectivity and modulate the activation of the robots' oscillators. Only through these changing network configurations does a musical score that alternates between coordinated polyrhythms, random structure and moments of silence emerges. The complex interaction between the analogue oscillators is visualized with a computer program that graphically displays the changing relations of the oscillators as multiple x-y plots.
Citation
Christian Faubel. 2024. Five Robots Playing Pentatonic, Polyrhythmic Songs. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15027177
BibTeX Entry
@article{nime2024_installations_12, abstract = {Five robots playing five tuned bells by striking them with a mallet. Each robot is controlled by a minimalist, neurally inspired analogue oscillator. These oscillators are mutually connected and connected to a pacemaker oscillator, and through network connectivity, they will synchronize at different ratios with the pacemaker. Slow-running analog oscillators of the same type switch on and off the connectivity and modulate the activation of the robots' oscillators. Only through these changing network configurations does a musical score that alternates between coordinated polyrhythms, random structure and moments of silence emerges. The complex interaction between the analogue oscillators is visualized with a computer program that graphically displays the changing relations of the oscillators as multiple x-y plots.}, address = {Utrecht, Netherlands}, articleno = {12}, author = {Christian Faubel}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression}, doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15027177}, editor = {Laurel Smith Pardue and Palle Dahlstedt}, issn = {2220-4806}, month = {September}, numpages = {5}, pages = {49--53}, presentation-video = {https://vimeo.com/912950719}, title = {Five Robots Playing Pentatonic, Polyrhythmic Songs}, track = {Installations}, url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2024/nime2024_installations_12.pdf}, year = {2024} }