Read on to discover just how good - or not - robotic conductors are...
Are robotic conductors really the future for symphony orchestras?
All I want for Christmas is a massive robot conductor. Too much to ask? If Tamagotchi are back – those electronic pets returning from two decades ago to take over Christmas 2024 – then why can’t I be opening an animatronic maestro under the Christmas tree?
We could finally be near the utopia of so many orchestral musicians. Imagine never having to deal again with the all-too-fallible vicissitudes of human conductors. Instead, give those pesky time beating responsibilities to the robots who will never get a beat wrong: down with Abbado, all hail Asimo!
Robotic conductors: Honda's Asimo
Asimo is Honda’s robotic project, whose zenith of creativity was reached in 2008, when it conducted the Detroit Symphony in The Impossible Dream. Honda quoted a mere $2.5m if you too wanted Asimo to conduct your next concert. But there was a wee problem: it took engineers six months to programme the two minutes of Asimo’s performance, and the robot could neither react in the moment nor come up with an encore. In fact, so impossible was Asimo’s robotic dream that Honda shut the project down in 2018.
The next generation: EveR 6
But last year, the spirit of Asimo lived on in South Korea, with EveR 6, which swapped Asimo’s Daft Punk style visor for a creepily human-ish face. It replaced Asimo’s pre-programmed gimmickry with something approaching collaboration – using EveR 6’s precision alongside a human conductor’s expressivity to create a musical cyborg, both homo sapiens and robot, that pushed boundaries of coordination and improvisation with the National Orchestra of Korea.
MAiRA Pro S: a robotic conductor with three arms
And just a few weeks ago in Dresden, the snappily titled MAiRA Pro S made her three-armed debut with the Dresdner Sinfoniker. Although MAiRA’s pronouns are human, she has no face, just three robotic arms with lightsaber-like batons protruding from a bank of futuristic servers. Dresden’s Robot Symphony also tried to fuse the possibilities of robotic precision with the expressive power of human players: MAiRA’s arms conducted ensembles in three different time streams, in music by Andreas Gundlach.
Karlheinz Stockhausen might have wished MAiRA had existed in 1958 for his piece Gruppen, designed for three groups and three conductors. But then again, he might not. Because none of these robots can meaningfully react to the music that’s happening in front of them, and all of them, I reckon, are destined to become like the Furbys of Christmases past, ending up in the landfill of broken musical dreams.
Robotic conductors? Or just a good old metronome...
And anyway, if you really want to play precisely in time, there’s a much better and cheaper solution: just use a click-track, available on any metronome app on your phone. Less exciting under the tree, I admit. So, if anyone’s got a spare Asimo – or a spare $2.5m – come and make my Christmas Day!
