The robot can now sing with an eccentric human voice and compose songs with collaborators. In the meantime he makes expressive gestures and swings his head to the rhythm of his compositions.
Shimon is a robot composer and musician (and recently also singer) created a few years ago by Gil Weinberg, professor of music technology of Georgia Tech. Today its features make it a respectable robot.
The goal of the Shimon project is “creating amazing and inspired music through human-robot collaboration“, in the words of its creator.
Shimon's latest piece
Shimon's latest work is a song written with four...six...well, with many hands.
It's called "into Your Mind", and it is indeed a rather singular song that presents a jazz sensibility, has something prog and enhances all the new characteristics of the project.
The robot musician wrote the entire musical score of the song and almost all of the lyrics (just a pinch of help from humans). Even the marimba sounds better than it ever did, but what more do you want from this pile of scrap metal?
Check out Shimon's wild performance in this video of his song.
Do you think that after yet another step forward in his 'artistic evolution' Shimon will stop? Maybe, I don't know, he'll end his career in a box?
An album by the robot will be released this spring, and a supporting tour. How should we view such an event? It will be a cross between a concert and a scientific presentation, and the idea of the crossover is really fun.
Anyway, appointment on Spotify between March and May, and the rest will be seen.
