New On Kickstarter – Musica Automata, A Multi-Sensorial Robotic Experience

Same old same old… Are you looking for music you’ve never heard before? We got you covered. Musica Automata is the name of a new project and upcoming album by Leonardo Barbadoro, an Italian musician, active since 2002. This album will contain music written for robots controlled by a laptop computer. These robots consist of more than fifty acoustic instruments which receive digital MIDI messages that contain precise information for their performance.

Musica Automata is a multi-sensorial experience where the listener can hear and view where the sounds come from; one can observe the robots and find a precise correlation between the movement of the instrument and the sound perceived.

The robot music performance, due to its extreme precision, can often surpass the ability of a human performer and, therefore, introduce completely new expressive possibilities. However next to the precise digital controls, the real performance and acoustic sound of instruments playing in a real acoustic space is preserved.

Despite this particular instrumentation in fact it’s the music that leads the instruments and not the opposite; the emotional impact of the music is still there due to the versatility of the robots, which are not limited to mere artificial reproduction.

It’s a performance that comes from a human idea, however devoid of direct human contact with the instrument. This means that the conceived musical idea, once processed and translated into MIDI language, is executed by robots without losing its artistic value in any way.

The project will be financed through the crowdfunding website Kickstarter from 21st May to 8th July, where it will be possible to buy the album in vinyl, CD and digital download.

A ticket for an exclusive concert with the robot orchestra will be also available to pre-order.