[ERIC SINGER PLAYING A BRENDAN ADAMSON COMPOSITION ON THE LEMUR GUITAR BOT]

ERIC SINGER: You know, one thing that's great about musical robots is that they're physical and they're there and they're a lot more interesting to look at than the blinky lights on a piece of rack gear or the glowing apple on the back of someone's laptop or, you know, whatever other logo.

GRETCHEN HASSE: [LAUGHING]

ERIC SINGER: So, they have this physical presence, they're interesting to watch, and, you know, this really rang true for one of our early collaborators, Mari Kimura, who is a violinist, and she has for a long time done interactive music for violin and synthesized sound. So, she plays the violin, she analyzes her playing in the computer using Max/MSP software, and she generates a synthesized or effects processed output. So, you know, I called her up one day and I said, "Hey. How would you like to work with robots?" and she said, sure. So she came down and she started writing software and music and composing for the Guitar Bot, and created this duet called "Guitar Bot Anna"...

[VIDEO OF MARI KIMURA AND GUITAR BOT PLAYING "GUITAR BOT ANNA"]

ERIC SINGER: ...and in that she plays a duet with the Guitar Bot where she's being analyzed by the computer and the computer is generating the Guitar Bot's part in real time. Now, this affected her in a way that was much different than playing along the synthesized sound, because the Guitar Bot kind of bounces up and down when it plays. You know, it's really there and it slides, it's physical, and she said that that movement of the Guitar Bot could affect her in turn, so she's controlling the Guitar Bot, the Guitar Bot is influencing her, and so it really is like a duet for guitar and robot.