Ensemble Robot was founded in 2003 by Christine Southworth and Leila Hasan, as an organization of artists, engineers, programmers, and musicians, working to: (1) design, construct, and program an orchestra of robotic musical instruments and dancers,  (2) commission music compositions and dance choreography for this ensemble, and (3) design, organize, execute, and promote performances for robotic instruments in collaboration with human musicians and dancers. The primary goal of Ensemble Robot is the creation of new, visually and sonically attractive, robotic instruments and music, in order to push acoustic instrumentation beyond traditional boundaries imposed by physical limits of the human body.

Our goals in using robots in music have been to make music in a new way, unconstrained by the traditional notions of human music or by preconceived notions of how robot music should sound. Additionally, we see the robotic actuators (the “performers”) and the acoustic musical instruments as unified rather than separate entities.  We believe that our robot orchestra, as art, will expand the horizons of both music and humanity’s relation to machines.

Since 2003, we have created five musical robots, commissioned seven new pieces by emerging and established composers, and produced concerts and installations at the Boston Museum of Science, Mass MoCA, Wired Magazine’s Nextfest, Brown University, Boston University, RISD, and the Boston Cyberarts Festival.  Our robots have performed with over fifty musicians, and after performing with Ensemble Robot, four of the musicians decided to compose for them.  We have received two rounds of funding from the LEF Foundation as well as support from Meet the Composer, New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Museum of Science, and we’ve received praise from multiple newspapers and magazines including the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Boston Phoenix, MIT’s Tech Talk, the Providence Journal, Computerworld, Linuxworld, Boston’s Weekly Dig, CNET News.com, and two radio interviews/features on WBUR’s”Here & Now” and “Morning Edition.”

For more information about Ensemble Robot, please visit our website at www.ensemblerobot.org or email us at info@ensemblerobot.org