Congratulations! You have been selected as a finalist in the 2023 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. Your innovative work in new musical instruments at the intersection of engineering, design, and musicianship represents an inspiring vision for the future of musical creativity.                  GATech EMail 12/2022

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  ....Do violin automatons dream of electric flutes, the future thinker of the Munich music scene Karl F. Gerber might ask. The composer (and graduate physicist) already writes music for non-robots that breathes a certain machine aesthetic. One lasting memory, for example, is a miniature he presented in 2013 at the MGNM (Munich Society for New Music) music festival at the Schwere Reiter: a small harpsichord composition that sounded more computer-based than any synthesizer, but was played completely analog by two human pianists. But through his music automata, which most recently also became interactive, an art emerges that is far more than the fascination of a machine imitating humans.

Probably the most ambitious project of his human-machine music is the violin automaton, the prototype of which Gerber presented for the first time at the Deutsches Museum in 2012. Placing the violin, an instrument that is so difficult in itself and requires listening to hear whether one is playing the right note, in the care of a machine seems at first to be megalomaniacal. And then again quite urgent:

For here, in hearing, in the musical classification of perception. must there not be somewhere the difference between man and automaton? When one now sees the violin automaton in action, something frighteningly fascinating emerges. It is a machine whose automatism and inner workings are evident in numerous cables, joints, circuit boards, three bows and many hooks (for the pizzicati and the different pitches). Somewhere underneath, the violin lies as if in a coffin.

But the shiver of this engineered artist is really felt when he begins to play. For he responds. He can react to the human and very grandiose flutist Karina Erhard as his musical partner. From this emerges in the piece "Approaches" (premiered in 2020 at the Schwere Reiter) an initially gently baroqueized piece from which the inhuman gradually crystallizes. For example, when the bows of the automaton move so lightning-fast over the violin, which only has three strings. Note value? One hundred and twenty-eighth. Or even more? So fast that all that remains is a tremolo tremor that is of overwhelming regularity. Sharp as a jigsaw. Like the shudder of the human body in the face of such superhuman machines.......

RITA ARGAUER in Münchner Feuilleton December 2021, Page 28.

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 ...sin mekaniska Violinmaskin, fascinerande i såväl sin klangliga som tekniska uppenbarelse.

 Johanna Paulsson in Dagens Nyheter 4^th May 2019.

  ...his mechanical violin machine, fascinating in both its tonal and technical revelation. (Translated with deepL from Swedish)

 Johanna Paulsson in Dagens Nyheter 4^th May 2019

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In times of increasing virtualization, three musicians take a different approach: sounds are electronically controlled, but what vibrates are air columns, strings, skins or wooden sticks. Thus the natural connection between sound and sound source becomes searchable. Each mechanical-acoustic instrument is at the same time a unique sound sculpture......

Münchner Feuilleton, Editor's Favorites July 2017

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 A truly special unicum is the Violinautomat by Karl F. Gerber, because it further interprets what ist probably the most difficult traditional musical instrument - the violin. Perhaps it´s more about polyrhythms on three seperate bows than about bel canto. And enhanced playing techniques with musical automats as well now? The sounds visualise themselvese through the chosen concept.

Program Booklet „Das Eröffnungsfestival: 100 Jahre Bauhaus“, 2019

From Facebook Group Homemade Instruments

posted 2020, 24. Juni um 22:13

„Computer driven snare drum: Computermusic without loudspeakers...Eigenklang Research by K.F. Gerber 2018-08-20“

„This makes me think that computer music is so poor; limited to what can be seen on a rectangular screen and heard through a speaker. Here I see a real machine with many moving parts, interacting with a snare drum in a way that produces complex and nuanced sounds. It has its own shape, appendages, and moves mechanically. The resulting music is something not human, but it's obvious that a human crafted the situation. It's cool, kind of steam-punk.“ 2020-06-25

(Edgar Girtain, Director, Casa de Las Artes bei Universidad Austral de Chile Sede Puerto Montt)

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Regarding Performance  „Anregungen“ für Violinautomat 2017 at Akademie der Künste, Berlin

"It's incredible the range of emotions this machine can produce ...has caused me: From horror to admiring astonishment to amused laughter: Horrified at the sight of the >>poor violin<<, which
defencelessly clamped rather rough from three violin bows at the same time is maltreated, amusement about the partly absurd movements, to which the control motors brought the violin bows, but also Admiration at the mind-boggling complexity of this machine.

This would be a gigantic expansion, of course:
Feedback... that the sound of the violin in turn controls the real-time influenced ... wow ..“

(Jan Jacob Hofmann, Frankfurt, composer, architect and photographer 2017-10-10)

Saarbrücker Newspaper 6.11.2022

Music automatons create special sound worlds
SAARBRÜCKEN (kek) Does Fischertechnik now also build musical instruments? One wonders in view of these bizarre metallic constructions: As if guided by a ghostly hand, 16 violin bows are bowing away on the right, while on the left, set in the right light by a floor lamp, dulcimer strings are made to sound by little machine hammers in an installation. "Streichpsalter" and "Zitherautomat" are the names of these original sound generators, which function mechanically but are controlled electronically, by computer or midi controller. Consequently, their inventor Karl F Gerber sees himself as a "music mechatronics maker". And at the latest at the sight and squawking of the artificially breathed alto recorder - here, however, only present via video projection - in which, among other things, a helium-filled balloon functions as a bellows, some in the audience have to laugh heartily. Amazement and smiling were definitely desired at the start of the small but fine music festival "eviMus":

On Thursday, the "Saarbrücken Days for Electro-Acoustic and Visual Music" started into their ninth edition in the canteen of the cultural center at the Eurobahnhof (KuBa). The title of the opening concert, "Robot Jazz," was misleading: "It's more about interaction with music machines," Gerber explained.

The human part was played by Gerber himself and the flutist Karina Erhard. She played flutes in various pitches live with Gerber's machinery and used a whole arsenal of foot pedals to call up sound effects. Sometimes she blew according to arranged notes, sometimes she improvised - also in dialogue with Gerber, who presented his "Sensorarray" as a world novelty. This is a hybrid instrument that is controlled without touching it by means of 32 analog sensors whose signals are processed digitally. Partially illuminated LED strips help the player to find his way around.

 
In terms of function, this sound device, which can be operated by gestural navigation in the three-dimensional data space, is comparable to the theremin, although the latter is much more precise but monophonic - the polyphonic "Sensorar-ray" virtually embodies 16 Theremins simultaneously.
In addition, Gerber can control his music automatons and influence the sound of Erhard's transverse flutes in real time, which in turn influence the acoustic events solely through their positioning and movement in the room.

A fascinating experience.

modulo="\" (1999) (4-channel live electronics, algorithmic computer music)

The alleged connection between mathematics and music has occupied me from a musical perspective for many years: the possibility of "improvising" is important to me.

The title of the piece refers to the mathematical operation of calculating the remainder. Applied to an ascending sequence of numbers, it generates repetitive patterns e.g. 0, 1, 2, 0, 1' 2, which form the basis for the organisation of sound parameters.

My playing attitude moves between improvisation and listening selection, on the one hand changing prepared structures from within and on the other hand evaluating and exploring the resulting sequences of events.

The playing is explorative in the sense that spontaneous changes are made to mathematical formulas whose results are only partially predictable for me. The control of a process interests me here more than the targeted joining of individual objects.

Sound masses, polyrhyhthms, spatial patterns and fanned out cyclical sequences always retain a high degree of transparency and an impression of order and power, even when different parameters are linked and increased complexity and density is achieved.

 At transitions from rough surface sounds, which approach granular synthesis to polyrhythms and finally to gliding patterns of minimal music, we touch fascinating border areas of rhythm in the intermediate areas. Structure and as yet unheard-of relationships form the numerical series here; they guide us through music between music

A program text from 1999. To distinguish it from livecoding (2004?) I call it formelimprovisation; the "coding" is behind the music making.... So I already did formelimprovisation and livecoding "avant la lettre" in 1999.

Program Notes Gerber/Erhard 9/22, Performance at Schwere Reiter

Limit II was created due to changed tuning of the zither as a version for piccolo.
In the composition process, the GDR instrument was first activated (tuning, preparation, automation of the hammers). On this basis Karl Gerber selected algorithmically generated complex patterns by ear. These were composed in a flow chart. Karina Erhard developed the flute parts after analyzing the recording from the zither automat. Considering that the composer also created the "zither robot", the roles of instrument maker, composer:in, performer:in and videographer gradually dissolve. The automaton is present in the concert as a video feed.