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Press Kit: Troy Rogers | semi-nomadic robot herder | composer | musical robot maker
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Clippings
Press Clippings
Nailgun Blog, Charlottesville VA
“For the past decade…troy has been raising an army of [musical] robots trained to destroy your sense of what it means to create.”
“the truth is he is a twisted genius.”
“getting them geared up until, one night, as they are all plucking and drumming in a gradually cacophonous rage, troy stands in the middle, laughing–at first quietly, then: the voice rising as he is immersed in the generative power these machines are capable of. his laughter reaches a maniacal pitch, throwing troy’s head back as arms rise in triumph.”
TONIGHT: Troy’s Last Ever Robot Extravaganza — Crozet Pizza on Elliewood, 10pm
April 14th, 2014 · By coogan
Peter Kirn, Create Digital Music
“The first law of musical robotics: rock hard.”
“We’ve seen plenty of robotic musical experiments, but finding a robot that can seriously shred is another matter altogether. Meet the robotic string instrument, Poly-tangent, Automatic (multi-) Monochord – let’s just call her PAM. Built by Expressive Machines Musical Instruments, a group of University of Virginia PhD students and composers, PAM is capable of creating raucous musical performances”
Rock Robots: PAM Can Seriously Shred, Open Source MARIE Could Do Even More
SingularityHUB.com
“Just as portable synthesizers changed the realm of what was possible in the 70s, these robot instruments could open up whole new fields of music in the 21st century.”
“The next wave of upcoming musicians don’t have soul. Or heart. Or even blood. That’s because these cutting edge instrumentalists are robots. Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI) is an organization geared towards automated acoustic performance.”
“Far from simply replicating human performance, EMMI is actively exploring how robots expand the kinds of music we can produce. The music of the future may be shaped not only by new instruments, but by a new species of performers as well.”
“EMMI seems to be about pushing the boundaries of what music we can make when we extend ourselves through robotic instruments. When I see PAM shredding, or MADI pounding a beat it would take humans on several instruments to replicate, I envision a new generation of robotic-acoustic devices whose very nature includes mechanical performers.
Robotic Musicians Push Boundaries of What Machines and Instruments Can Do
By Aaron Saenz. Apr 06, 2011
The Creators Project Blog
“Everyone loves musical robots it seems. There’s Bjork, who is currently touring with some custom-designed bots for her Biophilia project, there’s the robot band The Bit-52s, and there’s also Troy Rogers, Scott Barton, and Steven Kemper, who created three mechanoid instruments using applied their knowledge of robotics and acoustics. Collectively known as Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), they are seeking to unite art and science, man and robot.”
“Positing a future where man and machine can play music side-by-side, jamming together in harmony to produce the blissful sounds of man/machine unity. But a noisy kind of unity, the sort that Luigi Russolo might’ve been into.”
The Instruments Of Change: Expressive Machines Musical Instruments
By Kevin Holmes — Jul 27 2011
Kickstarter Blog
“A rowdy band of DIY tinkerers who call themselves EMMI (Expressive Machines Musical Instruments), they’re designing, building, and composing music for a miniature army of handmade musical machines. Woah!”
-Kickstarter Blog
This Robot Can Shred Better Than You
Broadcast and podcast segments
Broadcast and Podcast Segments
Musical Robots Take The Stage For Harmony, Not Domination -National Public Radio’s All Things Considered September 14, 2013 Story by Priska Neely
“On the altar of a former cathedral in Duluth, Minn., an ensemble of musicians begins to play. Their notes are piercing and sometimes dissonant. It’s not your typical cathedral music—but then again, these aren’t your typical musicians. They’re robots. None of them look like robots, though. They look more like futuristic instruments. Troy Rogers is their creator, and he introduces them one by one.”
–The Really Big Questions Podcast #12 — I, Musician
July 1, 2014
Northland’s News Center: Duluth Homegrown 2014 Artist Profile
“Musical Robots”
by Dan Greenwood for KFAI, Minnesota
Print, Blogs, etc.
Articles, Blogs, etc.
Slashdot: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/12/30/2213231/a-guitar-robot-that-can-really-shred
Robotic Ensemble MARIE Will Jam With Humans (If the Money’s Right)
WIRED Magazine Blog
wired.com
By Hugh Hart 12.29.10 | 5:29 pm
EMMI + EAR Duo Residency with robotic musical instruments at STEIM by Michael Straus for STEIM blog.
Composing Music for Robots
by Melissa Maki
Hometown Focus, 2/18/2010
Troy Rogers performing with vocal robot Stemmetje and various EMMI musical robots
Composer and robotic musical instrument builder Troy Roger performs at the Duluth Homegrown Festival. 2014.
MADI and PAM with Troy and Steven of EMMI
Composers Troy Rogers and Steven Kemper at NIME 2009 with robotic musical instruments built by Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI)
Troy Rogers: Music
Troy Rogers is a composer and instrument builder who firmly believes that if all goes extremely well, there is a nonzero chance for humanity to ultimately leave some skewed semblance of a lasting musical legacy for the robotic remnants of other failed planets. As a musical robot maker, he co-founded Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), a group of composers dedicated to exploring and expanding the potential of robotic musical instruments. As a Fulbright scholar, he spent time at the Logos Foundation in Ghent, Belgium working with Godfried-Willem Raes and what is perhaps the world’s largest robot orchestra, where he developed a singing vocal robot, Stemmetje. Living the life of an early 21st century semi-nomadic robot herder, he resides in Duluth, MN when not touring the country in the RoboRig, a mobile platform for the development and dissemination of music for robots. He performs on streets and stages alike as Robot Rickshaw, an act that earned an Editors Choice Award at the 2015 Bay Area Maker Faire. Recognized with a Minnesota Emerging Composer Award by the American Composers Forum, he is currently at work on a new set of live music for his robot band, slated to be recorded by acclaimed Chicago producer Steve Albini later this year. Rogers is also a committed independent educator, regularly presenting lectures and offering Making Music with Robots and STEAM education workshops at universities, galleries, community art centers, makerspaces, and schools throughout the US.
Check out a few recordings below:
***New Album***
Get it now, name your price, on Bandcamp:
An ensemble of robotic musical instruments improvise with drummer Steve Snider. Sneak peak of a track from the subsequently released ablum. Musical robots: vocal robot Stemmetje, string robot AMI (Automatic Monochord Instrument), and clarinet robot CARI (Cylindrical Aerophone Robotic Instrument). The robots listen to the audio signal from the drums in real time, deriving pitch (which leads to interesting output given the noisiness of drums and cymbals), rhythmic, and timbral patterns. Steve also hears and responds to the robots, and the robots hear each other, giving rise to some beautifully chaotic feedback and noise in the control signal pathways, pushing the human-robot system into rock overdrive.
When I arrived at the Logos Foundation in Ghent, Belgium for a residency in 2009, Godfried-Willem Raes had just completed <HAT>: the “Hit AnyThing” robot commissioned by Richard D. James. I was tasked with creating a compositional study to explore and test the instrument’s capabilities in advance of the instrument’s eventual delivery to Aphex Twin. This is a recording of the resulting music.
Troy Rogers performs music for robots at Sacred Heart Music Center in Duluth, MN.
MARIE (Monochord Aerophone Robotic Instrument Ensemble), a robotic musical instrument system created by Troy Rogers with Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI).
Expressive Machines’ robotic musical instruments AMI, CARI, and TAPI perform at Let There Be Light Festival, Charlottesville VA, Dec. 2012
Stemmetje: a singing vocal robot created by Troy Rogers
A video posted by a fan documenting an Expressive Machines performance at the Wormhole in Savannah, GA, Dec. 4, 2011.
A human + robot improvisation performance featuring the EAR Duo and EMMI’s MARIE at the Logos Foundation in Ghent, Belgium.
Troy Rogers at MN Made Festival
Presentation, Robotic Musical Instrument Workshop, and Performance
St. Cloud State University, MN
Feb. 27-Mar. 1, 2014
Study No. 3 for PAM and MADI, composed with Expressive Machines, Live at NIME 2009
A video created at the University of Virginia in the early days of EMMI, not long after the creation of our first robotic instrument PAM (Poly-tangent Automatic (multi-)Monochord). Looking back on this now, it’s interesting to note which of our predictions have since come to fruition.
Robot Rickshaw, a human-powered cart of robotic musical instruments created by composer Troy Rogers and Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), performs on the Lakewalk in Duluth, MN. Photo credit: Melissa Maki
Composer Troy Rogers performs with the robotic musical instruments Stemmetje (a vocal robot), AMI (Automatic Monochord Instrument), CARI (Cylindrical Aerophone Robotic Instrument), and MADI (Multi-mallet Automatic Drumming Instrument).
Troy Rogers performs with Expressive Machines Musical Instruments’ (EMMI) MARIE and the EAR Duo at the Southern in Charlottesville, VA
Stemmetje (Dutch: little voice): a vocal robot created by composer and robotic musical instrument maker Troy Rogers. This singing robot consists of multiple robotically tunable Helmholtz resonators tuned to the ranges of human vocal formants.
Stemmetje (Dutch: little voice): a vocal robot created by composer and robotic musical instrument maker Troy Rogers. This singing robot consists of multiple robotically tunable Helmholtz resonators tuned to the ranges of human vocal formants.
The robotic musical instrument system MARIE (Monochord-Aerophone Robotic Instrument Ensemble), created by Expressive Machines Musical Instruments. This modular electroacoustic robotic instrument system (MEARIS) comprises CARI (Cylindrical Aerophone Robotic instrument), a clarinet-like musical robot (left), and the robotic string instrument AMI (Automatic Monochord Instrument), right. Photo credit: Troy Rogers
Troy Rogers with Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI) at Art Basel Miami, 2012. With composer-collaborators Steven Kemper (left) and Scott Barton (right) as well as various robotic musical instruments created by Expressive Machines.
Composers Troy Rogers and Scott L. Miller performing with musical robots at MN Made 2014 at St. Cloud State University, MN. Photo credit: Melissa Maki
Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), a troupe of composer/robotic instrument maker/performers performs in front of the Harold Golen Gallery as part of The Street Festival during Art Basel Miami, 2012.
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