LEMUR (Robot Music) March 11, 2004

From nonsense-nyc:

LEMUR
League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots
hosts evening of exciting & strange robotic music
at Gigantic ArtSpace (GAS) Gallery on
Thursday, March 11, 7 pm

Performers include Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), violinist Mari Kimura, and Zaftig

New York, NY - Brooklyn's robotic collaborative LEMUR - League of Electronic
Musical Urban Robots - hosts a free show of exciting & strange robotic music
on Thursday, March 11, in conjunction with its installation at Tribeca's
Gigantic ArtSpace gallery.

LEMUR's robotic slide guitar - aka GuitarBot - serves as the evening's
backbone, performing in three pieces. GuitarBot performs Lee Ranaldo's
musical composition "Madonna Generation for GuitarBot," created specifically
for Gigantic ArtSpace's Gen.R.8 show. Ranaldo also plays live guitar with
other LEMUR robots and musicians; simply stated, this can be called "a
robotic jam session." Violinist Mari Kimura performs "Interactive
Improvisation for Violin and GuitarBot," based on GuitarBotana, a piece she
debuted at NYU in early February. Rounding out the trio of GuitarBot
compositions, Joshua Fried's "Emergency Bot TV Theme" will also be played.

Zaftig improvises infrasonic music on an arsenal of gigantic amplified
aluminum instruments, which are contained in LEMUR's installation and
include "the silverfish", an overgrown and mutated mbira (thumb piano).
LEMUR member and ModBots creator Bil Bowen works with recursive generative
sequences in Generative Improvisation 1. LEMUR founder Eric Singer performs
live on exotic electronic musical instruments of his own design, including
the bendable tubular Sonic Banana.

WHO: LEMUR with Lee Ranaldo, Mari Kimura, Zaftig, Bill Bowen,
Eric Singer, and Joshua Fried

WHAT: A FREE performance of exciting & strange robotic music
WHERE: Gigantic ArtSpace, 59 Franklin Street, New York, NY
(1, 9 to Franklin Street; A,C,E to Canal Street)

WHEN: Thursday, March 11, at 7 pm

NOTE: This evening is presented as part of Gigantic ArtSpace's (GAS)
current exhibition titled Gen.R.8, which opened in early
February and has been extended through April 3. LEMUR's
installation can be viewed at GAS during the gallery hours of
Tuesday-Saturday, 11 am - 7 pm.

LEMUR's growing ensemble consists of a wide variety of musical robots.
GuitarBot, an electric stringed instrument, is comprised of four
independently controllable stringed units which can pick and slide extremely
rapidly. It is designed to extend - not simply duplicate - the capabilities
of a human guitarist. !rBot (pronounced "chick-r-bot") fuses traditional
musical instruments with mechanical design. Inspired by the human mouth, its
malleable cavity opens to expose and play a Peruvian goat-hoof rattle.
TibetBot is a robotically controlled percussive instrument that creates
atonal rhythms and tonal droning soundscapes. It is designed around three
Tibetan singing bowls, which are struck by six robotic arms, producing a wide
range of timbres. ForestBot displays a forest of 25 egg rattles sprouting
from 10-foot rods that quiver and sway over onlookers. Rather than a single
robot, it is a magnificently beautiful robotic installation. ModBots are
miniature modular percussion robots in a variety of styles and functions,
including singing bell bots and percussion "beater" bots.

LEMUR is Eric Singer, David Bianciardi, Kevin Larke, Jeff Feddersen, Milena
Iossifova, Bil Bowen, Chad Redmon, Kate Chapman, Brendan FitzGerald and
Michelle Cherian. More information about LEMUR members, including
contributions and expertise, is available upon request.