Machines replace humans: heavy metal robot 3-piece
"I'm impressed with Compressorhead - the three-piece robot band (three and a half if you count the little robot who drives one of the cymbals). I went to their website to see if I could discern the origins of the project, DIY, corporate, academic, or whatever and couldn't really find anything on the makers. Then I tracked down the drummer. Stickboy was created by Robocross Machines and a whimsical roboticist named Frank Barnes. ... Reminds me of the Survival Research Labs robot machines, built for public performance and disturbance."
(Maxwell Schnurer, 5 January 2013, Life of refinement)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Oramics to Electronica: Revealing Histories of Electronic Music
"The story of Electronic Music, from the sound experiments of the 1950s through the digital revolution to today, is one of invention and innovation. Developed with a team of electronic musicians, our exhibition charts this history with examples of music making technology spanning more than 50 years. ...
The story begins with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Electronic Music Studios (EMS), two organisations that broke musical boundaries in the postwar years. Objects from this era include the EMS VCS3, the first portable synthesiser.
Also on display is the Oramics Machine, a revolutionary music synthesiser that was created in the 1960s by Daphne Oram, founder of the Radiophonic Workshop. Daphne created this visionary machine that could transform drawings into sound, and it was recently acquired by the Science Museum in co-operation with Goldsmiths, University of London."
(The Science Museum, 2011)
Fig.1 "Oramics to Electronica", Directed, Produced, Filmed and Edited by Jen Fearnley & Nick Street, Commissioned by The Science Museum, London.
Fig.2 "Daphne Oram", Mick Grierson, Director of Creative Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Director of the Daphne Oram collection.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Dyson: new ways of doing the familiar
"New ideas are the lifeblood of Dyson. Every year, we invest half our profits back into harnessing them at our research and development laboratory in Wiltshire. There are 350 engineers and scientists based there. Thinking, testing, breaking, questioning.
They're a varied bunch, too. Many are design engineers developing new ideas and technology. Then there are specialists who test and improve different aspects of each machine, from the way they sound to what they pick up. Some will have years of experience. Others are fresh out of universities like the Royal College of Art, Brunel or Loughborough."
(Dyson Limited, UK)
Fig.1 Sean Poulter (15th September 2011). "Sci-fi: The bladeless fan heater quickly warms an entire room without any visible moving parts" [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2037565/Get-hot-Dyson-unveils-new-heater-warms-room-using-jet-engine-technology.html], Associated Newspapers Ltd.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Voder: first attempt to synthesise human speech
"The Bell Telephone Laboratory's Voder* was the first attempt to synthesise human speech by breaking it down into its component sounds and then reproducing the sound patterns electronically to create speech.
That sounds simple in theory and, in fact it was. The Voder actually produced only two basic sounds: a tone generated by a radio valve to produce the vocal sounds and a hissing noise produced by a gas discharge tube to create the sibilants. These basic sounds were passed through a set of filters and an amplifier that mixed and modulated them until what came out of the loudspeaker sounded something like this.
Unfortunately, as is often the case, what was simple in theory was extremely difficult in practice. To get the machine to actually speak required an operator to manipulate a set of keys and a foot pedal to convert the hisses and tones into vowels, consonants, stops, and inflections. And the operator needed a year's practice just to master the keys."
(David H. Szondy)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Man as Industrial Palace: Animated
"The visual crossover between industrialization and science in Fritz Kahn's artwork demonstrates surprisingly accurately how human nature became culturally encoded by placing the knowledge in an industrial modernity of machine analogues. He produced lots of illustrations that drew a direct functional analogy between human physiology and the operation of contemporary technologies. Therefore, by illustrating the body as a factory, Kahn was able to relate the body’s complex organic interior to the industrialized space so common in society during that period of time (the poster was created in 1926).
From the moment on that Henning Lederer got to know Kahn’s poster 'Man as Industrial Palace' in 2006, he had the idea to animate this complex and strange way of explaining the functions of a body. He wanted to continue Fritz Kahn’s act of replacing a biological with a technological structure by transferring this depiction with the help of motion graphics and animation."
(Henning M. Lederer)
Concept & Animation: Henning M. Lederer; Sound-Design: David Indge
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
