I've written before about artificial life researchers from the 18th and 20th centuries working to create robots that attempt to recreate the human voice. I recently saw this terrifying video over at the PopSci blog of a recent robotic voice machine and wanted to share it:
Over at Noise For Airports, Nick shares a very different way to combine biology, computer science, and music--The Heart Chamber Orchestra, which plays music generated from the rhythm of their combined heartbeats in real time:
More like this
There's been a lot of news about robots lately, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to synthesize what's going on in this field and offer a bit of speculation about where robotics is headed.
Kids love robots. I have a three-year-old friend who can identify the 1950s cult icon Robbie the Robot at 20 paces. My own son Jim could do an impressive multi-voiced impression of R2D2 by age five.
Either I missed it in your writing, or you may have missed this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_von_Kempelen%27s_Speaking_Machine
Kempelen is, of course, better known for a brilliant hoax, the chess-playing "Turk".
Creepy and interesting.
But I will one up you.
Ever wonder why certain white people can't find the beat to music?
(it's all in the hair cells baby :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo9bwQuYrRo&feature=related
Great videos.Can I suggest an interesting article/video that we are covering one our blog about the first living cell that is controlled by synthetic DNA. This discovery will help people all over the world and is very exciting. . http://cbt20.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/biotechnology-news-25/
Nice post! You have said it very well. Keep going.
This is a fascinating post!