The world of music expressed mixed feelings after Honda’s robot made history by conducting an orchestra.
The 1.3 metre Asimo led the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a performance of The Impossible Dream, having been pre-programmed with the movements of a human conductor.
Music technology experts say that if, one day, some electro-mechanical means of sound reproduction were to be devised, machines might even make music all by themselves. “I envisage some kind of rudimentary engine – let’s call it a gramophone, or maybe a radio – which might, with God’s grace, have some slight ability to ape the sweet, uplifting cadences of musical instruments,” said leading 217-year-old technologist Sir Michael Faraday. “However, some poor deluded fools have lost their reason entirely, going so far as to foretell that some fiendish kind of ‘synthesizer’ contraption may one day be conjured up by evil scientists in their darkened laboratories - which could, entirely through the misapplication of electrical currents, contrive horrible noises all of its own and usher in entirely new kinds of so-called ‘music’. Let me state with authority that such an infernal machine - if it can even exist in the sight of the Lord - would only be capable of belching forth a staccato series of soulless, repetitive rhythms which would inevitably drive its unfortunate listeners into a mindless, animalistic frenzy. Heaven help us all.”
Honda, meanwhile, are said to be looking into the possibility of attaching Asimo to the front of a farmyard wagon in place of the familiar, trusty ox, with the ultimate goal of producing some form of self-propelled conveyance.
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