Well, that's a relief.
When the final robot uprising takes place, it might not turn out like "Terminator" at all.
As it turns out, the robots are less interested in enslaving humanity than, well, jamming with us.
At least, that's what Eric Singer's robots do. The robots created by his group, the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, have shared the stage with performers as varied as smart-pop specialists They Might Be Giants, avant-garde composer Jim Thirlwell and electronic music godfather Morton Subotnick. Recently, LEMUR built an entire band of 40 robotic instruments, the Orchestrion, for jazz guitar trailblazer Pat Metheny.
For now, the robots that aren't out working lay in bits and pieces in Singer's Squirrel Hill basement, awaiting assembly. A complete GuitarBot -- a contraption featuring four ski-shaped "guitar" necks arranged side-by-side -- stands sentry in the corner.
Singer, who moved to Pittsburgh from New York City, was just awarded a 2010 Design, Art and Technology Award (DATA) by the Pittsburgh Technology Council.
"I've lived here for nine months, and already got an 'Artist of the Year Award,' which makes me feel slightly fraudulent, not having been here a year yet," Singer says. "You can look at it as 'for the coming year' -- so now I feel the responsibility to make more and better art."
Singer's distinctive skill set practically demanded that he do something unusual. After studying computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, then saxophone at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts, he became captivated by a Berklee professor's enthusiasm for new kinds of nontraditional electronic instruments.
"I started using strange or nontraditional instruments that were human-playable, like a Nintendo Power Glove, and a radio baton, things like that," Singer says. "Then, I started making my own instruments, like the 'Sonic Banana,' which is a rubber tube that you bend, and it sends information to the computer. That's where my software picks up, and decides what sounds should come out based on how you're bending it.
"Up to a certain point, I focused on these instruments that a human would play," he says. "It would send information to a computer, and the computer would make the sound. Around 2000, I started thinking about how I could go in a new direction. I decided to turn the equation on its head -- let's have the information come out of the computer and go somewhere else. Traditionally, that's been people composing music for synthesizers. I thought it would be more interesting to remain in the physical world, so that led to creating musical robots."
As a result, LEMUR's robots don't sound like synthesizers. They sound like regular acoustic instruments played live.
Learning to build robots was a bit daunting, at first.
"At a certain point, we had all the skills we needed -- electrical engineering, software, sculptors, visual designers and people familiar with instruments -- except those needed to actually build a robot," Singer says.
Singer got some metalworking lessons from a friend, then bought the tools and a mill. LEMUR, which has had 100 members with Singer as the only permanent one, began to acquire the mechanical expertise the hard way -- by trial and error. GuitarBot was the group's first successful robot.
"You look at it and see the belt on it -- 'Oh, isn't that an ink-jet printer?' " Singer says. "Not having any mechanical engineering experience, I just looked around for things that did what I wanted, and stole them. But now, it's at the point where I can kind of make things up in my head, and go into the lab and try them out."
The expense of New York City, however, had begun to take its toll. Singer and his wife had friends in Pittsburgh and family nearby. So, after careful consideration, they packed up their robots and moved the family to Pittsburgh.
"By moving to Pittsburgh, I cut my expenses by 90 percent," Singer says. "The starving artist is something I never aspired to, and don't think artists should. I still have plenty of friends in New York who are living in hellish apartments in hellish neighborhoods, and paying too much for them, and spending too much time on day jobs and creating art only on the weekends."
Singer's robots have a certain elegantly utilitarian simplicity. They tend to look like their function -- ClangBot looks like a small percussion instrument, TelBot clearly repurposes a doorbell.
LEMUR robots are often featured as art installations in museums -- including a recent run at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh -- so they typically have to run eight hours a day for three months without malfunctioning. They're also built tough enough to withstand the rigors of the road without breaking down.
The biggest test, though, was when Metheny came calling, saying he had an idea about touring with mechanical instruments.
Building the Orchestrion involved integrating 40 to 45 instruments that Metheny could control onstage -- including 10 cymbals, 10 drums and tom-toms, a full-octave xylophone, marimba and orchestra bells, and an array of "shakers," "clangers," "scrapers" and "bangers." If you need a tireless 18-armed drummer, for instance, Orchestrion can provide it.
Pittsburgh's art and technology communities have welcomed Singer with open arms.The city already has Carnegie Mellon University's renowned Robotics Institute, the Robot Hall of Fame, and an ever-increasing array of local robotics companies -- why not have a robot music sceneâ¢
"I think Eric is a good example of the kind of people we want to honor with our initiative," says Kim Chestney Harvey, director of the Art + Technology Initiative for the Pittsburgh Technology Council. "Aside from the advanced nature of his technical expertise, the way that he's meshing technology and creativity, it really breaks down some of the traditional boundaries that people are used to seeing."
Eventually, Singer wants to start a community fabrication center in Pittsburgh, where artists and other interested parties can learn metalworking and work on technology-related art projects without having to buy their own equipment.
