Life in the Fast Lane

The ABSOLUT Machines — a pioneering technology project from ABSOLUT — explores what happens when cutting-edge technology meets the creativity of art, music and design. Online interactive installations enable you to be the composer to create music with intelligent machines.

ABSOLUT turned to some of the greatest technology visionary teams of our time and invited them to create the ABSOLUT machines. The result is 2 artificially creative and highly interactive music-making machines, as visually stunning as they are technologically pioneering. The ABSOLUT MACHINES are shown in New York and Stockholm — and online users from around the world can interact with the machines at absolutmachines.com.

The ABSOLUT MACHINES are designed by Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman, both with a background from MIT in Boston, and Teenage Engineering, a Swedish studio in the fields of media, art and technology.

“Technology is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives and is a key driver for contemporary culture. With the ABSOLUT MACHINES, we explore how technology merges with creativity, and we are thrilled to have such fantastic visionaries with us on this journey.” says Ulrika Lövdahl, responsible for trend communications at V&S Absolut Spirits.

The ABSOLUT MACHINES launch globally on Thursday, February 28 2008. You will be able to interact with the machines at the website to design your own unique musical composition – a co-creation by man and machine. The machines will immediately perform the songs, and their performances will be live-streamed to a global audience at absolutmachines.com.

ABSOLUT QUARTET
Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman created the “ABSOLUT QUARTET,” an automated multi-instrumental orchestral machine — unlike anything you have ever seen before.

It’s a large-scale electromechanical sculpture consisting of 3 instruments and thousands of parts, working together to create one piece of music. The main timbre is a marimba played by rubber balls shot by its 50 robotic cannons. Other components include a series of wineglasses — turned to various pitches all spinning at the same time — played by little robotic fingers and an array of robotic percussive instruments. The “Wino” can play nearly 40 notes at once.

A highly sophisticated technology works within the machine as its brain, providing the robotic automaton its artificial creativity and ‘life,’ so to speak. The resulting high level or artificial intelligence allows it to behave incredibly creatively — responding in various styles according to the inspiration it receives from you — the user.

It functions exactly like a jam session. You first provide a melody theme, which is heard over a speaker near the machine. The machine interprets the melody and then creates with its own version which it begins playing. It also matches the user-generated melody with a composition from its algorithmic music library. As the machine plays, you can interact and inspire the machine to play in different ways. The result is a complex robotically generated song, co-produced by you and machine — and performed live by the “Quartet.”

“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.

ABSOLUT CHOIR
Teenage Engineering has constructed the “ABSOLUT CHOIR,” a multi-channel robotic choir, made up by singing characters of various shapes and sizes — all reflecting how you interact with them and inspire them with your own words. It’s an architectural installation with an advanced framework of speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence software at the back end.

The ABSOLUT CHOIR consists of 10 colorful wooden characters — varying in size and styles with the smallest being 4 inches (10 centimeters) and the largest nearly 8 feet (2.5 meters) tall. There are men, women, tenors and sopranos, each with a unique and synthetically produced voice. The mother character holds a master clock, and each character contains a small, embedded Linux device — a DA converter and a speaker — making it possible to distribute sounds and to virtually conduct the members of the choir.

As the Choir begins singing, you can input words to the machine. As the machine receives the words, it immediately uses them to generate a musical composition and lyrics. The robotic choir follows your lead, and with the aid of generative algorithms, the machine creates a melody, tempo, dynamics, timbre and lyrics inspired by your input.

The composition is also infused with the machine’s current mood and from the most recently analyzed words input by previous users. A lot of short words with many consonants may result in a fast arpeggio-like song, while softer words may result in a slower composition. As a result of co-production between man and machine, ABSOLUT CHOIR creates a harmonic, yet surrealistic sound palette.

For the next 3 months, those of age 21 and higher will be able to interact with the ABSOLUT MACHINES at www.absolutmachines.com.

The machines are also on exhibit at guerilla galleries in New York and Stockholm. The ABSOLUT QUARTET is at 186 Orchard Street, Manhattan, New York, and the ABSOLUT CHOIR is on display at Restaurang Publik, PUB.03, Hötorget, Stockholm.

Giveaways
Life in the Fast Lane has a limited quantity of FREE VIP Codes to bump your position ‘in line’ to automatically place you ‘next’ in the queue, but you must be at least 21 years of age to receive them. Contact us by email to get your code — but hurry — they won’t last for long! Then go to ABSOLUT Machines to try your hand at being the next greatest music composer online!

While you’re there, you can get free downloads for movies, music, wallpapers, and screensavers. Want to be a pro and impress your friends at mixing cocktails? Check out the impressive list of currently 10,862 recipes, where you can find drinks, get suggestions, mix your own, and even get well-informed at the bar school.

ABSOLUT MACHINES – ABSOLUT Quartet

ABSOLUT Machine

Design and Concept

Viewers must be at least 21 years of age to view. Warning, some language may be deemed unsuitable or offensive.

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