Musical pieces are created with Apple's Logic Studio and sometimes Bidule (made by Canadian-based commercial software company Plogue Arts and Technology) and the sculptures are scavanged from a variety of sources and musical instruments (eg: an old piano, guitars, drums, an old shoe polisher brush, a towel rack...). Thorn also incorporates LED lights into his sculptures that flash on and off in time with various beats.
Parts of Felix's Machines frequently break, or come undone and this is all part of the natural process. (Sometimes double-sided tape can be a robot's best friend) Thorn, who was born in 1985 and lives in southeast London, UK, continually builds new robots, adds to and revises his existing machines, and is apparently in the process of developing a method of incorporating wind instrument sounds into his mechanical orchestra.
Why go to all this trouble when you could easily play your compositions on a computer and be done with it? Thorn explains that what drives him, is the desire to see music played live, without human intervention, in a way that matches what humans can do, and he does achieve that with his machines. Each note is physically hammered out or plucked and the experience of listening to and seeing the music, feels remarkably warm, human and emotional.
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