Composer Frederik Gran is no stranger to writing music, but his latest piece is most certainly unlike any other. Why? He wrote the piece for a robot cellist equipped with two arms, each with their own job. One of them draws the bow, while the other does all of the fret work. This composition was designed to explores the specific and unique playing techniques afforded by this system.
The piece also underlines the idiomatic potential of the robot cellist, while investigating its anthropomorphic characteristics and its scenographic implications. What he ended up with was a robot cellist with an individual playing style, complete with techniques as well as a reflexive compositional perspective. For those who can’t afford to build their own robot cellist, there’s Google’s machine learning Tone Transfer tool, which can turn simple humming into a beautiful violin solo.
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I recently wrote a composition to accompany Olafur Eliasson’s Symbiotic Seeing at the Kunsthaus Zurich. Here is the incredible Cello Playing Robot playing it live at the exhibition,” said Gran.
