Earlier this year, we posted an article about Shimon Robot, an artificially intelligent musician with the capability to actually improvise. Shimon’s ability for music learning is a remarkable feat unto itself, but the natural progression was to integrate him into a band. Fortunately, after reading our article, the hybrid electronic duo In Flux saw parallels to their own philosophy of combining music and technology.
Based out of Brooklyn, In Flux is comprised of guitarist Johnny India and drummer Joshua Trees, each of whom brings their unique musicianship to the table. Johnny India studied sitar in India, and adapted his Eastern influences into a psychedelic rock and roll sound. Meanwhile, Joshua Trees merges the worlds of electronic beats and live drumming, creating a percussion soundscape all his own.
Johnny India tells us the full story behind In Flux’s collaboration with Shimon The Robot:
When In Flux formed last year, our concept was simple. We wanted to breathe life into electronic music. Our goal was to filter the improvisational spirit of bands like Phish and the Grateful Dead through the sounds and textures of bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails; artists that seamlessly blend the organic and synthetic.
Inevitably, we faced a major problem. How could we harness the spontaneous musical freedom of improvisation, creating new ideas on the spot, while being locked to the grid, using modern electronic production techniques? This question led us to begin thinking about Artificial Intelligence, and we wondered if it was possible for our computer to improvise with us.
We spent the better part of the last year programming a crude approach to AI using Ableton Live. We used midi controllers, randomizers, arpeggiators, loopers and delay lines to allow for our multi-layered electronic compositions to shift dynamically and spontaneously on the fly. While we were getting close to our vision, something was missing.
Around this time, I discovered Shimon Robot in an article that Live For Live Music posted. Shimon is a Marimba playing Robot that is the brainchild of Gil Weinberg and his team of Roboticists and Computer Programmers at Georgia Tech.
Gil is doing something unprecedented with music technology. He is creating an Artificial Intelligence that can “listen like a human, but improvise like a machine”. This means that the Robot can take auditory and visual cues from other live musicians, make creative decisions spontaneously, decide what it likes and dislikes, take the improvisation to new places autonomously, and play things that only a machine could play. For example, Shimon has 4 arms, holds 8 mallets and each limb can play in different time signatures, with patterns that would be impossible for any human to play.
Inspired by the article, I contacted Gil directly. After an hour long phone conversation, we realized that we shared the same vision of improvising robots. We met in NYC for lunch and began to discuss the collaboration. We would start by taking one of our compositions, and teach Shimon how to jam with us.
This past week, we spent four days at Georgia Tech working around the clock with Gil and some of his students. We collected tons of data on our playing styles, and fed the information into custom coded java based max/msp devices, designed specifically for In Flux. We tweaked the devices, brainstormed possibilities and furthered the process of collaboration with Shimon Robot.
While we’re still in the beginning stages of the collaboration, the results are promising. By the end of the 4th day, we managed to get through an entire composition and jam with Shimon. There were moments of pure improvisation led by the Robot, taking us into new musical territory. It was a surreal experience, trading licks with Shimon while looking at each other for cues (Shimon has a camera in his head).
We’ll be making multiple trips down to Georgia Tech this year to continue to work with Shimon, Gil and his team, and hope to eventually perform full shows with the Robot. However, the brilliance of the technology they’re developing for In Flux, is that Shimon’s “Brain” can be separated from his “Body”. So while we can’t tour with Shimon just yet, we can bring his brain along in our laptop, and have the Artificial Intelligence control our Ableton sessions and all of our electronics, merging man and machine in the process of spontaneous creation.
We’re excited about the prospect of this new project! To give you a taste of the Shimon/In Flux, the band has shared two videos of their recent four day sessions with us. Check out the exciting improvisation, below.