The League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, or LEMUR, was a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists developing robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer, LEMUR's philosophy was to build robotic instruments that play themselves. In LEMUR designs, the robots are the instruments. [1]
LEMUR was supported in part by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, Arts International and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center. [2]
Other LEMUR members included R. Luke DuBois and Michael Hearst. [3] [4] Musical artists who have utilized LEMUR include; Todd Reynolds, Mari Kimura, Lee Ranaldo, Morton Subotnick and They Might Be Giants. [1] [5]
Guitarbot is four independently controllable stringed units which can pick and slide extremely rapidly. !rBot (pronounced chick-r-bot) is inspired by the human mouth, its cavity opens to play a Peruvian goat-hoof rattle. TibetBot is designed around three Tibetan singing bowls, which are struck by six robotic arms. ForestBot is 25 egg rattles sprouting from 10-foot rods. ModBots are miniature modular percussion robots. [2]
Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means. Pure electronic instruments depended entirely on circuitry-based sound generation, for instance using devices such as an electronic oscillator, theremin, or synthesizer. Electromechanical instruments can have mechanical parts such as strings, hammers, and electric elements including magnetic pickups, power amplifiers and loudspeakers. Such electromechanical devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, electric piano and electric guitar.
Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of musical styles and sound-based creative practices that feature noise as a primary aspect.
Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist or the spectators to become part of the artwork in some way.
Pauline Oliveros was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music.
Laurie Spiegel is an American composer. She has worked at Bell Laboratories, in computer graphics, and is known primarily for her electronic music compositions and her algorithmic composition software Music Mouse. She is also a guitarist and lutenist.
Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media. More broadly, it refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and electronic music. It is considered an outgrowth of conceptual art and systems art.
Clara Reisenberg Rockmore was a Litvak classical violin prodigy and a virtuoso performer of the theremin, an electronic musical instrument. She was the sister of pianist Nadia Reisenberg.
The Thai Elephant Orchestra is a musical ensemble consisting of as many as fourteen Thai elephants near Lampang in Northern Thailand. The elephants play music, essentially as conducted improvisations, on specially designed heavy-duty musical instruments. The orchestra was co-created by elephant conservationist Richard Lair of the National Elephant Institute and the American musical artist and neuroscientist Dave Soldier. They have released three CDs on the Mulatta Records label with an orchestra ranging in size from six to fourteen elephants.
Trimpin is a German born kinetic sculptor, sound artist, and musician currently living in Seattle and Tieton, Washington.
GuitarBot is a self-playing guitar created by the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) in 2002. The instrument consists of four modular string units, each of which can be controlled with MIDI. GuitarBot was used by guitarist Pat Metheny on his 2009 Orchestrion tour.
ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show is an international robot talent show held in New York City and other cities. It is sponsored by a variety of arts organizations, produced by an army of volunteers, and is directed and curated by dorkbot founder, and teacher Douglas Repetto.
Ian Craig Marsh is an English musician and composer. He was a founding member of the electronic band the Human League, writing and playing on their first two albums and several singles, until leaving in 1980 to form the British Electric Foundation and later Heaven 17.
James Powderly is an American artist, designer and engineer whose work has focused on creating tools for graffiti artists and political activists, designing robots and augmented reality platforms, and promoting open source culture.
A lemur is a Malagasy primate.
Intonarumori are experimental musical instruments invented and built by the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo between roughly 1910 and 1930. There were 27 varieties of intonarumori built in total, with different names.
The Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music (BC-CCM) located at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (CUNY) was one of the first computer music centers at a public university in the United States. The BC-CCM is a community of artists and researchers that began in the 1970s.
Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the city of Linz. Ars Electronica's activities focus on the interlinkages between art, technology and society. It runs an annual festival, and manages a multidisciplinary media arts R&D facility known as the Futurelab. It also confers the Prix Ars Electronica awards.
Michael Bruce Odland, known as Bruce Odland, is a composer, sound artist and sonic thinker. He is known for large-scale sound installations in public spaces, creating unique instruments that reveal music inherent in natural and urban environments, and for his pioneering work in theater, film and interactive multi-media. He lives and works in Westchester County, New York. Odland's musical sculptures and sound installations have been shown in major cities such as New York, Berlin, and Zurich; in art museums including the Denver Art Museum, the Field Museum and Mass MoCA; and at the international documenta14, Ars Electronica, Edinburgh International and Salzburg Festivals. Many of his installations are collaborations with Austrian sound artist Sam Auinger, with whom he formed an artistic partnership O+A in 1989. Together they have created more than 50 sound installations in Europe, North America and Asia.
Marco Donnarumma is an Italian performance artist, new media artist and scholar based in Berlin. His work addresses the relationship between body, politics and technology. He is widely known for his performances fusing sound, computation and biotechnology. Ritual, shock and entrainment are key elements to his aesthetics. Donnarumma is often associated with cyborg and posthuman artists and is acknowledged for his contribution to human-machine interfacing through the unconventional use of muscle sound and biofeedback. From 2016 to 2018 he was a Research Fellow at Berlin University of the Arts in collaboration with the Neurorobotics Research Lab at Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin. In 2019, together with bioartist Margherita Pevere and media artist Andrea Familari, he co-founded the artists group for hybrid live art Fronte Vacuo.
Eric Singer is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician and software, electrical, computer, robotics, and medical device engineer. He is known for his interactive art and technology works, robotic and electronic musical instruments, fire art, and guerilla art.