The Editor’s pick of videos by some awfully talented people.
Steam Funk
Patrick Flanagan brings a little more humanity to the human-cyborg relations known as modern music. His ‘band,’ Jazari, combines the powers of the increasingly ubiquitous Wiimote with a number of leather drums (djembe, bongos), shakers, and other percussion instruments traditionally operated by hand. To link these two extreme branches of the technology tree, the composer-turned-inventor employs a laptop and an army of tiny machines and robotic arms reminiscent of some Wellsian fantasy circa 1902.
The contraption allows Flanagan to literally play all the instruments at the same time. That is, unlike a standard digital drum track, Flanagan feeds detailed information into his machine in real time, using the physical motions and attitudes of his body. He manipulates the buttons, the tilt, and the rotation of a pair of Wiimotes in a kind of dance that tells the instruments how he wants them to play. (See minute 2:00 in the video.)
As a bonus, Flanagan has crafted his machines to look more like imaginary antiques than science fiction fantasies. They are almost as much fun to look at as they are to hear.
Flanagan started as an academic, earning a master’s degree in music composition from the University of Minnesota, studying at Columbia University, and even traveling to the Musik Hochschule in Cologne, Germany, as a Fulbright Scholar.
But, for the moment, his interests lie outside esoteric music conferences. Jazari has played between punk bands, at outdoor rock festivals, and in reverent art spaces. Flanagan likes to talk about his music and does workshops and demonstrations for groups of students and adults. He believes that “academic fields can grow new vocabularies and tools for fashioning an improbable but weirdly intuitive musical future.”
We’re not sure about all that, but we definitely love the groove.
