Week 9 - Artist - Eric Singer & Ewa Xebra

Eric Singer - is an artist, musician, programmer, and electrical, robotic, and medical device engineer who works across multiple disciplines. His interactive art and technology works, electronic and robotic musical instruments, fire art, and guerilla art are among his most well-known works. Singer is a well-known designer of non-traditional MIDI controllers and musical instruments and interactive and computational music software and robotic musical instruments. 

He started creating interactive performance software in 1990 as an assistant to Dr. Richard Boulanger. He immediately established himself as a Max expert, producing a number of well-received Max plug-ins for video tracking, electronic conducting, and artificial life bird-flocking simulation. Around the mid-90s, he began creating his own novel electronic instruments, such as the Sonic Banana, SlimeOTron, ChimeOTron, etc.

 

Singer formed the groundbreaking musical robotics club LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots in the year 2000. Singer led the group to construct a vast body of robotic musical instruments, organize concerts with renowned musicians, present installations at well-known museums and galleries, and open LEMURplex, an early maker space for performance, gallery shows, and artist residencies, teaching, and fabrication. 

As for his work, Singer uses his Electrical and Computer Engineering knowledge and his music diploma with musical instruments to transform traditional instruments into computer-controlled automated acoustic musical instruments capable of performing music with and for human musicians. 

I think Singer's musical robots and player pianos are similar because both are automatic and do not require a human to play and control the instrument, so the music could be perfect. They are different in the sense that player pianos can read notes from internal piano rolls, however, Singer's robots are more robotic in nature because they are programmed to know which notes to play at what time or frequency to create an orchestra. 

Ewa Xebra - is a mother that started a photography journal of her daughter, Luna. She is no pro but a lot can be seen through the pictures from the love to the growth of her child. Her work doesn't have a theme, just pictures that capture the moment. She shows her daughter's growth and the emotions of parenthood that many may have experienced or can relate to. 

After looking at her picture, I see the cuteness of a little human being that is growing up. I wonder how many pictures she has in total of her children. Imagine how many flash drives with pictures.

Comparing Singer and Xebra's works, something similar about the two would be that they don't fall under the usual category of an artist or musician. Singer included his passion for electronics with his passion for music. Xebra included her motherhood in her pictures, it shows her love and a little life. They both started in different careers but managed to come to a form of art. The difference between the two would be the form of art they make, Singer with music and Xebra with photographs. 

If I were to make a musical robot, it would be something like a violin, the music that could be made by a violin is not limited in genres. 

If I were to take a photo day for 10 years, they would probably be of myself and my family, so I could see how far I've come, whether it be career-wise or health-wise.