TEDxGrandRapids - Patrick Flanagan - Innovate: Cyborg Musicality
Music-making machines have existed for centuries, but interacting with them in live performance poses new technical challenges and aesthetic questions about the locus of creativity and musical expression.
Speaker Bio: Patrick Flanagan serves as the token human in the cyborg percussion ensemble Jazari, which fuses African rhythms, algorithmic composition, computer music, and electro-mechanics into beat-driven steamfunk. Jazari has been lauded on tech blogs as "fully rockin'" (Boing Boing) and "utterly brilliant" (Create Digital Music) and was featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Before he began soldering circuits together, Patrick studied composition at Columbia University and the University of Minnesota.
Jazari -- Quick Minute (Arduino Robot Drums)
Improvised robot djembe solo with beats inspired by footwork, drum n bass, and trap music.
All of the machines are controlled by Arduino microcontrollers, which receive MIDI signals sent from a laptop running MAX/MSP.
