No wonder Christine Southworth couldn't wait
for rehearsal. Who wouldn't worry when you're introducing
a 50-foot-high electrostatic generator that produces 5 million
volts of electricity to an ensemble of musicians who'll be
playing along with it.
Oh, and there's also a very tall musical
robot in the shape of a DNA molecule that's contributing
to the fun.
Composer Southworth,
robot-creating sidekick Leila Hasan, nine musicians and
several programmers expect to get a major charge out of
the world premiere of "Zap!
Music for Van de Graaff Generator, Robots, Instruments and
Voices'' at the Museum of Science's Theater of Electricity
on Friday.
When Southworth and Hasan say there's never
been anything like it, believe them.
"It got
kind of insane,'' said Harvard native Southworth with a
laugh.
She and fellow
recent MIT grad Hasan cooked up the project about a year
ago. The MIT connections run deep on "Zap!'' - starting
with the fact that the duo met as members of the school's
Gamelan Galak Tika, an ensemble that puts a funky twist
on the music of Bali.
It turns out that once Southworth started
writing music she discovered human musicians often couldn't
keep up with what she was composing.
"Players
are often flummoxed by the things Christine wants them
to play, and often feel it's nearly impossible,'' Hasan
said.
The solution? Hasan volunteered to create
robots to handle Southworth's contemporary music charts,
which often feature blurringly fast passages.
"She creates music that only robots
can play,'' said Hasan, who was captain of the first all-female
team on the cable TV program "Junkyard Wars'' a couple
of years ago.
Southworth actually
goes a bit easier on her musicians than Hasan would lead
you to believe. She calls her compositions "post-minimalist
acoustic electronica,'' influenced by everyone from Steve
Reich and Meredith Monk to Kraftwerk and A Tribe Called
Quest. She says her pieces can be as gently balladic as
they are hard-driving and otherworldly.
"Some parts are very pretty and
slow and chordal,'' she said. "Other parts rock and
groove.''
When the museum's Van de Graaff generator
kicks in, it will all get thunderclap loud for an instant,
no surprise given that the generator is the world's largest.
"That's why we wanted to have
the musicians finally meet with the robots and the generator,''
said Southworth about the rehearsal earlier this week. "When
the machine zaps, it's very loud and everyone has to get
used to not reacting too much to that.''
Southworth and Hasan founded Ensemble Robot
after graduating in 2002 and 2001 respectively. They convinced
Cambridge's LEF Foundation to provide seed money to build
the robots for this project.
Don't think C-3PO
or R2-D2 of "Star
Wars'' fame, however.
"There's a conception that robots
are supposed to look like human beings,'' said Hasan, who
works on instrumentation and automation for a local biotech
firm. "But in industry, 'robots' usually mean something
that performs a task like a human being, although they don't
necessarily look like a human at all.''
A musical robot will greet audience members
as they enter Friday, while at center stage will be a 10-foot-high
xylophone robot in the shape of a double helix that essentially
plays itself. It has a large column of xylophone keys programmed
to be struck by small valves.
"It's really
beautiful and cool looking,'' Southworth said.
"The thing
I like about robot music is that it's very, very precise.
You can time things exactly the way you want and get parts
to interlock exactly how you'd want them. I can do that
on robots, and it's really hard to do with humans. But
I'm combining them because where humans do some things
well, robots can do other things well.''
What's next?
Hasan wants to create robots that are interactive
and can learn from human players and create their own music.
Southworth is hoping to take things on the
road.
"I'd love
to bring this music to other electrostatic generators all
over the world,'' she said. ``It would definitely be fun.''
("Zap!
Music for Van de Graaff Generator, Robots, Instruments
and Voices'' takes place Friday at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum
of Science's Theater of Electricity. Call 617-905-6804
or go to www.ensemblerobot.com. )
