Number Five is a ...tam-tam player?

A Grand Opening for an Only-in-Brooklyn-esque Institution

Location: LemurPlex
Date June 11, 2006 (The event is past, but it looks like the LemurPlex will be hosting other activities and classes "for children and adults" in the future)
Cost: Free
Bohemian Factor: (Speculative) High
Geek Factor: (Speculative) High

While it is, unfortunately, a bit too late to attend the open house event at LemurPlex, which I missed this past Sunday, it sounds like the grand opening of this new headquarters was a fascinating experience for the truly romantic, old-school robotophiles among us who wait in line to get into Heddatron and still get misty-eyed at the phrase Number Five is Alive.

Not to be confused with scary prosimians that look like raccoons on steroids, the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) was founded in 2000 by musician/engineer Eric Singer, and, according to their web site, “LEMUR's philosophy is to build robotic instruments that ‘play themselves.’ In LEMUR designs, the robots are the instruments.” Hmm, is this really a philosophy per se , or just promotional copy? Yet how can I bring myself to pick on a group that created, as they did this past March, custom robotics for an all-mechanical version of Antheil's Ballet mécanique, which was written for “three xylophones, four bass drums, tam-tam, two pianists, seven electric bells, a siren, three airplane propellers and sixteen synchronized player pianos"??

While only folks in D.C. were lucky enough to witness such an, um, well, complicated aural experience, New Yorkers in lower manhattan can, for free, check out Drumming on the Ceiling, an interactive installation at 45 John Street, that sounds considerably less melodic, but could nonetheless be interesting.

I shall have to visit LemurPlex in the future, but if any of you have heard their work, do send me a comment!