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So the next talk you're going to hear is
by Ya'akov Rimming and go to
our next speaker.
Jacob is an artist designer, Anthony
and community builder from Copenhagen and
go to 80 who came here
from Sweden and calls himself an old
media artist with many talents.
They both were present ongoing robotic
research project, robotic music,
which is centered around automation,
creation and loss of control.
I'm so excited for this presentation.
And let's welcome our new music,
Robot Overlords and
Jakob and go to.
Thank you and
thanks for inviting us.
Thank you for the introduction.
Not so sure about the overload part,
but let's see
down the road.
Yeah, I'm Yaacov
and and I'm go to
that's my artist name.
I do a lot of music with old computers
like this Commodore 64 that
we're going to see.
Yeah. Some more of I have
kind of shared passion for
old machines or just technology in
general, and I
normally don't do music
as much more sound and media
arts in general. And you can see
one movie that I've made in the
video lounge at one tonight,
which is kind of investigating
rare earth elements and kind
of the materiality of the Internet.
This is something different.
Yeah, I mean, we're very happy to be
invited here because it's kind of a new
project for us.
We've been working on it for about six
months. So it's
it's very open still.
We're not really sure where we're
going with this yet.
I mean, we'll we'll figure it out along
the way.
Yeah. So it's important for us to stress
that this is artistic
research in the sense
that not like scientific research,
it's more explorations in a field
that we are not specialists
in. And also it's
important for us to stress that we're
really excited to be in a place
like C.C.C.
with so many so
much more talented people than US
presence like really.
And we're really hoping
to somehow, you know, start
a conversation with you guys.
So we're also aiming to leave some some
space for Q&A.
But also we have the robot standing
outside and we'll make
some music on it after the talk.
And tomorrow will
bring a second robot and a drum
machine and maybe we can kind of jam
and talk. And people are very welcome to
come and hack on these robots
with us. We really.
Yeah, we'd love that.
Yeah.
OK, but so we've we've worked
together for about 10 years.
This was the first project that we did
together. It's called a H.T.
Gold, and it was presented on this
huge screen in the main
square of Copenhagen.
And it's basically an old
hockey game for the Commodore 64
that we manipulated it.
So while you play it, it's sort of just
destroys itself and becomes this
beautiful mess.
But it's still playable and it's still a
lot of fun for,
you know, people who can take take the
heat.
And when Under says that we've been
working together for 10 years, it sounds
like with this kind of tool, it's not
like we're actually not working
together that often.
We've seen each other more
during the last half year than we
have maybe in the previous
nine and a half or so.
So we live in two different cities
and so we get together
when doing projects, but it's not like
we're kind of going to work in
the same studio.
Just to clarify, this
is a different project we made in
2013
memo blasts.
It was one of the performances
that like opening the tunnels, Woody
Allen in 13.
And it was yeah, we had
open fax lines.
People could fax in different content
to us. And we were basically
emulating this kind of dysfunctional
office environment,
receiving faxes and kind of copying
them and trying to signify them at the
same time.
Yeah, so the faxes that came in, we
we tried to process them and I tried
to adapt the music from the faxes,
basically, which was very difficult.
But
this is another project called Data Slave
in kind of the same vein where
this is an old police station that I'm
sitting in and people
write fill in forms with what kind
of songs they want.
And then I get something like five
minutes to make the song
and then I save it on a floppy disk and
give it to them. And then it's it's their
their song.
And this is an example of how an
order could look like.
So that was quite difficult
as well.
Yeah. I guess we like to sort of punish,
punish ourselves a little bit.
Yeah, and I guess kind of following in
this tradition of
scripting ourselves and working
within some kind of scripts, like
some call it Fluxus
or whatever, but like kind of.
Giving up control to to some
other system
of.
So like most
people, I guess we're fascinated
about robots, but
we're also a little kind of I don't
know, there's a lot of emotions
connected with robots.
And mostly it's also,
I guess, at least personally, for me,
it's been this kind of frustration about
fascination of robots.
And they're coming. They're coming.
They're coming. But they're never really
coming and never really
getting a robot. But then suddenly this
summer, we we actually got
a robot. Like we got a possibility of
fooling around with
a robot, basically. And we we
grabbed that possibility
without
maybe completely knowing what we were
heading towards.
I mean, we had ideas
and we shared some of these ideas.
And we set up.
A small mini residency
at Copenhagen, floating
hackerspace called Lutron.
Yeah, we were basically this
this robot is called the you arm
swift pro, it's just kind of open,
easily hackable robot.
And we were just using
this week to
try to gain control of the robot
enough that it could kind of be an
extension of underoos.
So basically what you're seeing
here is a..
With a keyboard controlling.
This little laptop
stand on the left
that is then controlling the robot
arm with some
serial commands decode
and then the robot arm is basically
just kind of replicating the key process
that UNVERSED is doing on the keyboard.
So it's just an extended
arm somehow, very elaborate
prosthesis.
Yeah, elaborate, but then on
the other hand, it has only one finger.
Commodore 64 computer
that I mentioned before from the early
80s, and the software
is called Death Metal.
It's a it's a new software, it's not
old stuff. So you can really do
some pretty amazing stuff with
it. And what you're seeing is basically
the robot inserting
notes, changing the
notes in a in a loop that's
that's running
with only one finger.
Yeah.
So with this kind of first
video prototype, we got
booked to do
a lot of stuff suddenly
and we got invited to
to this algorithmic
festival in Sheffield,
this festival of algorithmic
and mechanical movement
to basically play at a rave.
So we had to.
We had to work a bit on on
that, but we kind of
we managed to get the robot to a state
where it could load songs and,
you know, insert notes, delete notes,
mute voices, bring
stuff up and down.
And basically, in the end, it actually
could play kind
of a full set,
like we played half an hour or something
or the robot played half an hour.
And I guess because we were still.
Maybe doubting if we could pull it off.
You were there playing as well,
like kind of head to head with the robot,
but actually,
you know, you were mostly just kind
of filling in little
extra things.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, so it was more like
under trying to keep up with the robot
maybe or playing on top of a small
clip.
Why, why, why,
why, why, why, why,
why, why, why, why?
Why, why?
Why.
We got
right on it, but I feel
maybe that's why you see my face
sometimes and sometimes the scream I
make the other.
Scream, it's my scream.
Uh, just to show us what's going
on, you know, we have way
too little.
Yeah.
Yeah, so, I mean, this experience
of of.
That the robot already kind of after
after just, I
don't know, a couple of months of fooling
around was able to you
know, we were basically could reduce
ourselves to technicians, setting up the
robot. And then, you know,
in Sheffield, I literally push
the button. And then I went and saw
the show.
I don't know. That kind of started some
things. That was.
That was kind of emotional somehow
and
and we got invited to play at the
Internet base in Stockholm,
like doing the lounge
music or the kind of
chill out and beer session after the
days. So we basically
took the challenge to let the robot play
dub techno type stuff
for five hours
unsupervised.
And then we
we were just kind of hanging out
in the bar and.
Well, I mean, you'll see in the video, I
guess we set up two tables basically
like we're doing out there.
So the robot on one table and we're kind
of next to it.
And we have a lot of time
to have conversations
with people about like
kind of the future of robotics
and like when they become creative and.
Yeah, hope so, whatever,
and it's like this kind
of I'm imagining at least there will be a
lot of these jobs where you just have to
kind of hang out and just once
in a while fix the robot up
or something.
Yeah. For this one, we actually
put a lot of effort in making
the what the robot does a little bit more
dynamic, like adjusting it for
each song and making it more
sort of diverse what it's doing.
So so actually now we
yeah. I mean we sort of knew
what it was supposed to do, but it was
still somehow a surprise
and it was just this kind of
magic of seeing a robot
do something that it was just
it's a really strange feeling
like I mean, it's
still a we do
the music, the songs, but the robot
performs our songs.
So so the songs actually become something
something new.
Yeah. Which is.
Yeah. It's like a weird mix of
sad, just sadness, happiness.
A bit scary.
Scary sort of or just
fun. It's a
yeah.
It's a weird stuff.
Definitely. And on top of that I mean
we're talking a lot about electronic
music and how it's hard to make
stuff minimal enough to basically it's
kind of shut up and just repeats long
enough. Like we both have a tendency, I
think, to fill in too many notes
maybe for mainstream
techno or something.
But the robot is like super cool,
like, you know, it can really,
you know, hold it, you know.
Yeah, it's a little bit longer.
Yeah, that's.
Yeah, so I guess it's also important for
us to say that the Commodore
is a good place to start because it's
got keys and it's easy to push keys,
which if you just have one finger, you
know, and the chaos
part is also really good for just one
finger.
So right now, we're more like and we're
thinking about drum machines now as well
because they're good for one finger.
So right now, the kind of the musical
of, I don't know, the gear is kind
of dependent on kind of
one finger push interaction,
which is kind of beautiful to
take some of all the choices
out of production, I guess.
Yeah.
So it's not to say that this is
only 64 or project
or something like that. We can imagine
doing all kinds of things with this robot
around.
You know.
Yeah, so now we're here
and we brought two robots
and one, like we said, for playing
and then one for hacking, and
I mean, we really encourage
you guys to come and play
with us. And, of course,
I mean, most of the coding we're doing is
relatively banal.
It's more like kind of
generative code based,
a lot on randomness and so on.
But of course, we know that there is all
this neural network A.I.
stuff that's really booming and
it's apparently good at making
music. So if there's some people out
there that kind of
are into that or know how to maybe
remix what the robot has already done
or compose
new stuff, I mean,
we really like to to
talk with you.
And yeah,
I mean, we have really good training
data as well. I guess you should kind of
explain. So, I mean, I have
because I've used these old computers for
so long and the files that you save,
it's all like self-contained
source files or whatever.
So everything is in there and they're
really, really small.
These files as well, I think.
Yeah, I checked my folder earlier
today. It's like 50 megabytes for
20 years of of everything
that I made, like all
the work files and everything.
So, you know,
and then, yeah, we just realized, like,
wow, imagine, you know, feeding
some neural network with this stuff,
then we can really just.
Yeah. Fuck off and do nothing
maybe.
I mean, we'll see or maybe it doesn't
work at all or
like, you know, jam with the robot,
you know, it doesn't have to be that
we're just kind of leading.
I don't think we will.
But it's it's it would just be really fun
to I mean, also for me
to have others hanging around in
Copenhagen. And I can jam with him when
he's, you know, back
home now,
come tomorrow.
There was the ten minutes.
So I'm skipping a fast.
But tomorrow from 11, we're playing
there. The gig starts at nine, I think.
Yeah. And we'll play around.
The robot will play around two
hours.
Yeah. Yeah.
So probably starting a bit slow
but then ramping it up.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah,
questions.
And what
a cool robot you've
built, so we have about ten
minutes for questions, please.
We have to, first of all, because
you follow a bit more why you chose
such a simple robot of like the symbolism
or the systematic aspects of it attracted
you to using such a simple system as
opposed to all the huge and cool software
solutions that would be able to automate
music and all these things.
Yeah,
no, I guess, you
know, you were making music on a
Commodore 64.
We're not, you know, software
guys so much.
It's kind of I guess
you mean specifically the robot, why we
didn't choose a more complex robot
or or doing it all in software.
Right. That's what you're talking about.
Yeah, both that. And why don't you just
build a software interface where you just
get the signals right to the Commodore
like there's other solutions as opposed
to using such a mechanical
simple right
now, because it's just it's a completely
different feeling to have,
you know, a robot arm doing it rather
than just, you know,
something invisible.
And I guess we need to add also that
we're not we don't really know what we're
doing. Right. I mean, we got together
with the robot because we thought
the robot was cool, you know,
and it turned out that it was
actually kind of pathetic.
But that was fun.
So I guess if we'd known
what we know now, maybe we wouldn't have
started, but, you know, it's
that's not the way this project works.
It's very much kind of exploration.
And and again,
I mean, we also really like these
old machines. So it makes sense that
we have a robot interacting with
64. And I mean, the C
64 doesn't take MIDI or
like fancy protocols
like that. So we have to actually touch
the keys.
Yeah, um, thanks so
microphone, too, please.
Hey, how much of the
what the robot does is preprogramed
and just replaying a pre
composed piece or
how much randomness or
computational patterns involved in that
music?
Well, I mean, the base the base is always
a pre composed song,
basically, and then it's.
Yeah, what it does is it's
yeah.
I mean it's pretty random, but
within some kind of boundaries,
like we say what notes it should
press, but we don't say when
it should press it, for example.
Or we say, OK,
maybe you can change the rhythm
a little bit, but not just
completely destroy
everything. So I mean everything
that happens is at least a little bit.
Random, I guess
you can say, yeah, more or less,
everything is actually based on random,
but of course within some kind of logic
structure, right?
Um, yeah.
So it's it's it's never
it's there's no kind of direct
playback of anything.
It's like that's that's.
Yeah. We haven't figured out how to do
that.
All right. Thank you.
I'd like a future challenge is to make
time to compose stuff
that will be more useful
for the robot, basically, like we didn't
really have time to do that yet, but we
wanted to be more more free
and do its own
music from from scratch.
More or less
now. Yeah.
So right now it's loading stuff and
modifying it. But we of course, wanted to
start saving stuff and
then be stable enough that we can kind of
leave it for a week and then come back
and see what it's been up to.
Yeah, no, but I really like
this kind of idea of making music
for the robot so that I
adapt to the robot and it's one
finger because then I
really, really have to,
you know, delete nine
fingers and some, you know,
it's just a completely different
way. So I have to adapt
to to the robot,
which I think is cool
things like from one.
And since there is
a source called, is it available on
guitar or are you planning to do it and
get it put putting on up?
It is on GitHub.
It's a mess.
But it's there.
It's there.
Yeah, OK.
It's called robot music.
It's there thanks
to police.
So is your robot very precise
or have you ever had the situation where
you just made a mistake and you thought,
well, that that wasn't planned, but
sounds OK as well I guess?
Or is there or is it just precise enough
that that doesn't happen?
I mean, in theory,
it's really precise.
People put printhead on it and
use it as a 3D printer and so on.
But I mean, we it messes up all
the time. We have kind of a big headache
on calibration and so on, because
every time it yeah, it
bounces into the key.
We have to kind of restart.
And it's I mean, it's
so far we survived all gigs, but
we were just having a lot of trouble
right now.
So hopefully it's going
to run, but it doesn't have
an effect on your creative process.
Well, it has some stress.
Yeah, some adrenaline.
Right. Yeah, I know. But when it when it
sort of messes up, it just completely
messes up and it.
Yeah. Just presses somewhere
else completely.
So then it's just out of OK so it just
gets out of order.
Yeah. All right.
So it's not, it's got no feedback like
there's no camera on it or it's just like
it has to basically just remember all the
coordinates.
So it's a super fragile system if
it messes up.
Yeah.
Things no place.
So I'm going to creep out like
more than half of the people here.
So my question is, have you
ever thought about putting
that robot in a club and then,
like, trying to measure how happy
the crowd is with the music it produces
and then kind of
so, I don't know, facial recognition,
recognizing how many people are on the
dance floor and stuff like that, and then
giving the feedback to the robot again.
So making kind of
smart music for the masses.
I guess the short answer is no.
But but
we have been thinking a lot about putting
the robot maybe in the forest and then
just kind of playing music
for the animals.
Or or even better, like this kind
of the idea of removing
the deejay and like having a wall in
front so that nobody knows it's a
robot if it's playing in a club.
That's an awesome idea because
I don't know
one thing that's kind of interesting
with the robot and all this talk about
robot overlords and so on is that,
I don't know, dealing with it.
It's like it's a thing, it's an entity,
but it's more like an maybe an animal or
something like that that might grow up to
be really powerful.
But it's it makes us look differently
at the world somehow.
And it's right now, I think it relates
very nicely to
animals almost.
So so kind of putting it in the forest
and wood would really make sense,
I think.
Happy animals and
no one, please.
My question is kind of kind of related.
Is the robot using any sort of input
from what's happening to trigger those
random processes are
for now, it's just randomly, randomly
triggering stuff.
Yeah, it's yeah, there's no
no input like that.
Not not yet, anyway.
No, I mean, we've been talking about
riding our own random
like we've been talking a lot about
random. Right.
So riding our own random
functions, of course, that are then
pseudo random somehow and feeding
something into that.
But I don't think we're very interested
in making it like super interactive
as such because
it.
Yeah. Well, yeah,
yeah. I don't I mean, I don't
I don't see the need for all this kind of
interaction.
I think it's actually nice that it has
this kind of weird inner life and you
have to to understand it.
It's not like understanding us,
but I think that this is what I mean is
if it by itself can trigger its
own randomness, by whatever is happening
around it or whatever is happening that
record. Explain.
I don't know that that's my question.
I don't know.
Well, not now, but of course, it could
go that way.
But yeah, I think it's it
doesn't really have to be so,
you know, complex to to
to to make me
feel like it's somehow, you know.
Yeah. A thing in itself.
It's just like just this
tiny movement.
It's like magic to me, even though I know
it's not magic,
but but it feels like
it's it's enough to just be really
a simple system.
I think that's cool.
And it's the result is is amazing.
These amazing things
you do is signal
angels. We have a question from the
Internet. No shakes head
OK, one last question from
like four, please.
I think from a performance perspective,
it's really interesting, your placement,
you know, just sitting and watching the
robot. And it also brings
like it brings a lot of questions.
And also it reminds me of how
all of the discourse of how labor is
more going towards like roles
of supervision that you're supervising
the robot. So my question is, even
if after some time
it wouldn't be doing a lot of errors,
would you still sit next to it?
Like, I'm just wondering about the role
of, like, yourself
while the robot is performing.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a good good
question because I guess you can.
Yeah. I mean, we could send the robot
off to just do shows on
its own, I guess,
which I think is pretty cool.
I would like to do that, but I
would also like to jam
with the robot and actually do stuff
together. I think that's something
that interests me more,
that it actually become someone that you
can work together with.
But in the video you were showing, you
were just sitting there was the part
where you were just sitting and the
robot. And I was saying that this
part is actually very like
potent, really strong.
You know, you're just sitting and the
robot is doing its thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, it has all
these connotations about robots stealing
our jobs. And I know and all of it
somewhere we're playing with this idea
to, but I guess we're not really
sure
where to go with it.
Yeah. For now, it's really interesting to
sit there and I guess we'll be sitting
there as long as the conversations we
have with people sitting next to it are
interesting.
Um,
no,
thank you.
Thank you. Speaking of sitting, people
are sitting here for a while.
I know. Thanks to all of
you for the wonderful questions.
And thanks again to pack up and
go to Haiti for this wonderful talk.