-
A robot will soon be at the conductor’s desk in Dresden
The Dresden Symphony Orchestra is adding a few new beats to music history. To mark its 25th anniversary in mid-October, the ensemble will be conducted by a robot in the Hellerau Festival Hall. To be precise, there will be three robot arms that will show the musicians the way. In the “Robot Symphony” program, Michael Helmrath, a flesh-and-blood conductor, will first take to the podium. After the break, he will hand over the direction to a mechanical colleague called “MAiRA Pro S”.
Advertisement
At least, symphony director Markus Rindt assumes that the conductor is female because of the name. The piece “#kreuzknoten” by Wieland Reissmann is a particular challenge for the robot conductor: “Two of its three arms lead the orchestra through crossing tempos. Some of the musicians start slowly and accelerate, while the other half slow down. ‘#kreuzknoten’ would be impossible for a human to conduct due to its rhythmic finesse,” explains Rindt.
Robot is equipped with baton
The robot woman, equipped with a baton, also takes a bold approach to “Semiconductor’s Masterpiece”, a work commissioned by the composer and jazz pianist Andreas Gundlach for the Dresden Symphony Orchestra. Gundlach uses the machine’s ability to guide the divided ensemble through complex passages independently of one another with all of its arms, thus breaking new musical ground. What will it sound like when three orchestral sections play together in different meters and speeds, moving away from one another rhythmically, only to finally meet again?
For the project, the symphony director was able to recruit specialists from the CeTI (Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop) excellence cluster at Dresden University of Technology. There, the electronic conductor is currently “learning” how to beat bars and display dynamics. Rindt had the idea 20 years ago. “At the time, it was a bold idea and pure utopia. Today’s technical possibilities were not even remotely imaginable,” says the director.
Frank Peters, group leader for robotics at CeTI, mentions safety aspects in particular, which made it impossible to use the robot in concert operations earlier. At that time, there were only industrial robots and no collaborative robots, i.e. machines designed specifically for interaction with humans. “Industrial robots are there to carry out pre-programmed movements precisely. They don’t stop if something gets in their way,” says Peters.
Audience should be confronted with socially relevant topics
Peters and Rindt have been working on the project for more than a year. The movements are shown to the robot using a data glove, for example, and then saved. With seven joints, the mechanical conductor’s arm can move very smoothly. Rindt makes it clear that artificial intelligence plays no role in these processes. The aim is to surprise and confront the audience and, as with previous projects, to address socially relevant topics and ask questions.
“How do artists, how do we deal with new technologies that have the potential to fundamentally change our society? Where could there be great opportunities alongside the known risks? Could a new, very unique musical expression emerge as a result of the collaboration between man and machine? Where are the interpretation and charisma?” Rindt himself formulates some of these questions. In “Robot.Symphony” the human has the creative control and the final say. But the boundaries are becoming more fluid.
Cluster of Excellence focuses on cooperation between humans and robots
“The cooperation between humans and robots has always spurred our research at CeTI. Our vision is an active collaboration in which robots support humans and human skills are transferred to robotics,” says CeTI spokesman Frank Fitzek. This becomes exciting and relevant for tasks that a single person cannot do alone, but also for complex work that requires a high degree of reliable precision, says the professor.
The “Robot Symphony” also includes an educational project with Dresden high school students. In collaboration with the Cluster of Excellence, choreographer Norbert Kegel is developing a choreography with the young people in which they interact with Spot, the robot dog from Boston Dynamics. A short film of the creation of the choreography can be seen in the two anniversary concerts on October 12 and 13.
Rindt founded the orchestra at the end of the 1990s together with the composer Sven Helbig. It is made up of artists from the independent scene and musicians from well-known orchestras from Germany and abroad. Only contemporary music is played. The projects often dealt with political topics. In 2013, the symphony orchestra performed the “Symphony for Palestine” with Arab colleagues in the West Bank, and in 2017 they protested musically on the border between Mexico and the USA against the wall planned by then-US President Donald Trump.
But the symphony orchestra has also repeatedly made headlines with other spectacular performances. In 2020, they played on high-rise buildings in a Dresden district under the title “Sky over Prohlis”. The format was repeated in Hamburg and a Greek city.
In 2021, the musicians let off some steam with the “Elbkarawane” project. In “Vapora Fortis” – a piece for paddle steamer and orchestra, they played on a barge on the Elbe, with the steamers’ steam whistles setting the tone.
(emw)
