Video: Violin vs. Robot Guitar, With Mari Kimura and GuitarBot

Mari Kimura is an experimental string player extraordinaire, regularly venturing to the edge of what’s possible at the meeting of acoustic and electronic technology. GuitarBot is a “guitar”-playing robot (perhaps more reminiscent of a shamisen), an invention of Eric Singer, founder of the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. The two meet above in a lovely video – not new, but well worth watching any old time, as reminded to us by Richard Swelling’s Etherbomb blog. Mari writes in comments on YouTube:

HI, Mari here. For those wondering what’s happening: Behind the white box, there is a Mac and an audio interface. I am running a software MaxMSP, which is LISTENING to the pitch. loundess and the timing of the violin. The ‘patch’ I created in Max contains certain interactive instructions such as “listen to the E (highest open string on the violin)”. For example in the beginning, if you listen carefully you notice when I play above E, it stops. Iinteractions change in predetermined time frames.

It’s a reminder that, technology aside, the key ingredient in electro-acoustic music is great musicianship.

Quite nice stuff! And the video is shot by my friend Liubo Borrisov; Liubo, if you’re out there, say hi.

Originally from Create Digital Music by Peter Kirn
reBlogged by InterAccess to Geekery – Audio

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