Ranjit Bhatnagar's proposal for a found object percussion machine
Gord says: "Cory's blogged about Ranjit Bhatnagar before ('Crazy' performance). Here's his latest artbot. I *love* the way this guy's mind works!"
Simple automatic instruments are constructed from local materials and objects on site. The system learns the sounds it can make by trying out its instruments, and then uses its range of sounds to try to reproduce the rhythmic and melodic qualities of sounds such as the voices of visitors. It then loops and alters these imitative sequences into improvised compositions. (That last part's not done yet, so you won't see it in the video.)
In this example, the source audio is a bit of the soundtrack from the movie Citizen Kane, and the noisemakers are a set of found object percussion machines and an electromagnetically fretted electric guitar. Link
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yay, i love ranjit! no one does more interesting mad arty scientist stuff from the confines of a park slope bedroom. more of his stuff on his homepage: moonmilk.com.
I'm sure there's a bad joke about Stephen Hawking in here somewhere.