Gil Weinberg, the director of the music technology program at Georgia Tech, spends much of his life researching ways technology can expand musical expression. Weinberg created a robot, Shimon, that plays the marimba and can improvise like Thelonious Monk.
Anyone with access to an iPhone can jam with Shimon, that’s all the musicians in Japan were using. And you don’t even have to be a musician. Basically, you create a track using the iPhone app, ZOOZbeat, play it for Shimon, Shimon repeats it and then starts gettin’ super funky with the marimba.
[Source: NPR All Tech Considered]
