March 7, 2011

Musical robots

An unusual group of “musicians” created by Lemur—the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots—will be performing this week on the Homewood campus.

Founded in 2000 by Eric Singer, Lemur is a group of artists and technologists who create exotic, sculptural musical instruments that integrate robotic technology. The result is computer-controlled mechanized acoustic musical instruments that can perform music by and with human musicians. Singer will present examples of projects created by Lemur, and will talk about members’ work with robotics, programming art, cross-disciplinary collaboration and building musical instruments.

The event takes place at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 8, in B17 Hackerman Hall and will be followed by a short reception and Q&A session in the lobby, with light refreshments.

The artist’s lecture is made possible with support from the Whiting School’s Computer Science Department and Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, and the Peabody Institute’s Computer Music Department, and is offered in conjunction with Baltimore’s Mobtown Modern concert series, which is hosting a concert with Lemur and Todd Reynolds at 8 p.m. the following evening at the Windup Space.