Manchester Robot Orchestra
FEATURE
ost computers make noise,
whether that’s the whirr of the
fan or the ‘grrr-chunk’ of a hard
drive. Older readers will remember
the ‘cluck ‘of a floppy drive and the
‘burdung-burdung-beep-chrrrrrr’ of
a modem connecting to the internet. In general, these
noises are unfortunate side effects of the computer
doing its work. However, it doesn’t have to be like this- the whirrs and clanks can come together to make
music. Manchester Robot Orchestra is doing just this,
with a collection of instruments made from recycled
PC parts, adapted instruments, and just about anything
else that can be pressed into service.
We spoke with Dr Will McGenn to find out how this
set of instruments came into being.
“It started initially when Professor Danielle George
did the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2014.
Their big finale was to have a robot orchestra.
“The robots for that came together from various
research groups and universities, so it wasn’t
something that could be kept together – lots of it was
actual research hardware and things like that. It had
to go back after it was finished. In 2016, Manchester
was European City of Science, and that was when the
Robot Orchestra really started up in its current form.
Initially it was meant as a one-off thing – just for one
performance, which we did at the Museum of Science
and Industry.
“We played quite a lot of songs with human
musicians that day, and since then it’s just snowballed.
People have been grabbed by it and are really keen.
People keep on writing to us: ‘come to our event’;
M
Manchester
Robot
Orchestra
Why learn a musical instrument when
you can build a bot to do it for you?
By Ben Everard @ben_everardRight
Musical robots
don’t have to
be complicated