Jazari
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Jazari

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States | SELF

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States | SELF
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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

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"Wiimote-Controlled Robot Drum Circle Makes Human Hippies Obsolete"

A musician has harnessed the power of two Nintendo Wiimotes to become a cyborg percussionist with the robo-band Jazari. His playing of one drum machine can evoke an automated response from another, so that he can go around the drum circle in a beautiful display of human-robot improvisation.

The man behind the machine, Patrick Flanagan, is a composer who cites music theory, music cognition, and machine learning as the three "chin-stroking disciplines" that influence his work. He created Jazari with a nod to Al-Jazari, a polymath of the Arab world in the 13th century who supposedly created the world's first robot band.
Each of the Wiimote buttons can control higher or lower tones on certain drums, while tiling down or up controls volume. Tilting the Wiimote to the side and holding down a button can increase or decrease the repeating beat, ranging from quarter notes to 32nd notes.

Dually wielded Wiimotes also allows Flanagan to reverse the drum patterns on two drum machines, speed up one drum machine faster than the other, and do other neat tricks that alter the rhythm. Music geeks and curious readers alike can check out a full explanation below. - Popular Science


"Wiimote-controlled 'Jazari' robot percussion takes us back to our tribal, Nintendo-hacking roots"

We've seen the hacker-friendly, Bluetooth-based Wiimote used for so many purposes by now that it's hard to get excited about just any amalgamation of accelerometer-based fun. Patrick Flanagan's 'Jazari' project breaks past the yawn factor with a veritable museum's worth of robotic instruments, which are all controlled from a pair of Wiimotes and some rather intelligent software. It all seems a little too complicated to be live-controlled, but as Patrick himself explains in true music nerd detail, there's pretty much a button or a twist or a tilt behind every bit of the wild djembe, bongo and cowbell stylings that make up Jazari's "steamfunk" (his term) music. Check out both videos after the break. - Engadget


Discography

Still working on that hot first release.

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Bio

Patrick Flanagan, who serves as Jazari's token human, became interested in music and artificial intelligence while studying composition at the University of Minnesota in the late 00s. After leaving academia, Flanagan decided that the best way to realize his ideas about artificial musical agents in performance was to build machines to embody them. That decision gave birth first to a bongo machine and then a machine that plays the djembe. Eventually a host of percussion playing robots came to form the core of the band. Stylistically, Jazari's most obvious influences are dance genres like house and drum 'n bass, but in the background is an improvisatory ethos from jazz and an interest in algorithmic manipulations informed by academic computer music. Jazari is based in Minneapolis.