Mechanized music has surrounded us for generations. It burst forth in George Antheil’s 1924 score Ballet Mécanique, which revelled in the affordances of industrialized sound. Since then, the sounds of automatic performance devices – from pianolas and phonographs to disclaviers and iPods – have resounded through homes and concert hall to the extent that a world without loudspeakers seems as foreign as a world without the tunes themselves. The advent of computerized composition in the 1950s began placing creativity in the transistors of “the machines,” and in recent years newly widespread mechatronic technologies have allowed music by artificial intelligences to find expression in performance by artificial entities.

On December 3rd, mechanical hammers will fill the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre with their exuberant fanfare, as the Disclavier mechanized piano, Notomotion mechanized percussion apparatus and Modulatron robotic marimba-player will get together to do their thing, (hopefully) according to the instructions of SFU composers and meta-composers. They can move, they can think, and they can do both at once! Post-human music is upon us. Hear it before it’s cool. Because it won’t be niche for much longer.

Tickets for Botmancipation: Music for Mechanized Performers are on sale now here as well as available as part of the SCA Series Membership. Click here for more information.