Absolut Machines

Maybe it's the fact that I just came back from camping that I feel the impulse to make a technology post but here goes...

Absolut makes fancy flavored vodkas. One time I had a cocktail that was made with Absolut Peppar (which is supposed to taste like green bell, chili and jalepeño peppers), but didn't care for it so much. Anyways, I'm not an alcoholic -- in case you were wondering why I'm writing about vodka on a Sunday night -- I just randomly fell upon this rad project Absolut did last year called "Absolut Machines". Below is an excerpt from the project's press release and some video.


For the ABSOLUT MACHINES, Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman have created the “ABSOLUT QUARTET”, an automated multi-instrumental orchestral machine, which does not look like anything you have ever seen before. It is a large-scale electromechanical sculpture consisting of three instruments and thousands of parts, working together to create one piece of music. The main timbre is a marimba played by balls shot from a robotic cannon. Other components include a series of wineglasses played by little robotic fingers and an array of robotic percussive instruments.

“ABSOLUT has collaborated with great artists such as Andy Warhol, Tom Ford and Louise Bourgeois. ABSOLUT has the tradition of the past masters as well as the vision to do something new. Of course we were excited when they asked us if we wanted to be part of a project exploring artificial creativity”, says Dan Paluska.

Teenage Engineering has constructed the “ABSOLUT CHOIR”, a multi-channel robotic choir, made up by 22 singing characters of various shapes and sizes. It is an architectural installation with an advanced framework of speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence software at the back end.

Stay tuned for culinary adventures from camp.