BliK
Supported by New York State Music Fund
“BliK” is a networked musical composition method based on collaborative “Web 2.0” principles. The composer/participant types directives/keywords — referencing one of the LEMUR ModBots — into a blog post to create a musical score. The LEMUR ModBots are a set of single-function percussive bots that work as a percussion ensemble. They reside at LEMURplex in Brooklyn, New York. Some are scrapers, some are shakers, some strike different surfaces. They each have their own name, for instance, “bucket” and “shake.” By typing “bucket shake shake shake,” into a blog post, the user causes both bots to improvise algorithmically, with the shake being 3 times more present in the section than the bucket. The user controls the tempo by typing keywords such as ‘fast’, ‘slow’, and ‘medium’.
TAXONOMY
Algorithmic | Animatonics | Blog | Installation | Music | Networked | Participatory | Robotic | Score | Translation
REQUIREMENTS
This piece no longer exists.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
The “BliK” algorithms are based in Cycling 74’s Max/MSP software, some of the external tools made by Ali Momeni at the University of Minnesota, and a JavaScript parser written by the author.
League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists who create robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer, LEMUR creates exotic, sculptural musical instruments which integrate robotic technology. LEMUR’s philosophy is to build robots that are new types of musical instruments, as opposed to animatronic robots that play existing instruments.