"Its like a Mach piece, really"

I was thinking about the robot band Z-Machine today, and wondering why they weren't as interesting as they should be.
They've got wires and bright lights and jerky motions. They have batteries of fingers, salvos of effects. They're about as interesting to watch as a dog sleeping.
Its not their fault - or Kenjiro Matsuo's for that matter. He just doing what so many people have done through the years, trying to push the envelope by going  bigger, faster, brighter.
But that is the wrong approach. You push the records with scale, but you push the envelope with style.


There is a real lack of interesting art robots - visually interesting, that is, as I don't think I have seen a conceptually interesting one since Papert's Turtle. Badly engineered, badly aesthetic, typically they sulk in the no-man-land between Snow's Two Cultures, festooned with dangling wires and blinkenlights. Its sad at a art show, and tends to make the participants interested in the cheap wine and cheese. Its even sadder as musicians. Because we expect musicains to entertain - I beleive Beethoven had some terse and biting things to say about this - and a tangle of pneumatic actuators and aluminium has little entertainment capacity, no matter how many bright lights you employ.

 So ignoreing the fact that several centuries of self-playing instruments exist, and that servos, actuators and sensors are now dirt cheap, why arn't we seeing more unusal machines?

The drummer for Compressorhead*  is probably the most interesting I've found, with his strange hunched spine and almost bobbling head. That is pretty much the best of a sad lot.

Is it because the artists in question are too conceptually hung up on the idea of robotics itself? Strange, but a lot of art robotics remind me of homemade fetish porn, on some level that escapes conscious elucidation.

So, I intend to do something different.

The band will be called Metal Dinosaur ( perhaps spelled Dynosaur?)**
The band is self described.
The band will be robots. Not automata. Not MIDI machines.

The current lineup is:
Ankylosaurus on drums. His 808 is behind him, so he can work it with his tail.
Tyrannosaurus Rex is lead guitar/vocals. As a dramatic touch, when he gets excited enough, his slaver will burn. That's right folks, a robotic dinosaur with a mouth full of flame. In all honesty, I would have given him pulsejets if they could be used indoors. Perhaps the bass player, if the note could be tuned right?
Stegasaurus  on keyboards.

What will they do beyond being cool impedimentia to fill my living room?***
Well. they'll play music. Together. Not in the sense of everyone running through a sequenced series of moves and notes, but in the sense of trying to play a piece of music together, trying to match beat and harmony.

As I am still in the concept phase, this is all broad strokes of

• Dinosaurs seen through eight year old eyes.
• Interactive robotics, with a very heavy emphasis on interaction.
• Music. Fire. Metal. Volume. A complete lack of dangling cords and wires.

I will also never use the term 'cyberpunk' .
I will also consider the project a sucess if they play a set with Meytal Cohen.



...The Yellow Drum Machine is pretty cool, though.

*Who also do not have a mention on Wikipedia...come on, guys!
**Props to the worse names airplane ever.
***Or just lead to tedious dinobot jokes.