In 2015, Jesse Stiles was commissioned to create a spatial sound installation in the great hall of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon. He set out to create a network of instruments that communicate with one another, performing a generative/algorithmic composition.

He used five robotic toy pianos and programmed them to communicate over a wireless network. The pianos were once normal children’s toy pianos, but Stiles installed solenoids that can pull down the keys, and equipped them with Arduinos and Xbee radio modems.

The great hall is extremely reverberant, and this complemented the sounds well. It was quite the statement creating robots that essentially played themselves and with each other in a building where that is exclusively done by humans.

Photos:

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNSxDKJIAr7HJQ6ELAJ0u7N3EVbK6_rUkg7CbfxxcHtXdRpWEsckKtIgs80DYaHFA?key=Q2FfTjRqeklnbVR0NUpQQzhTVnJNRVBIdG5pODBn

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