Robots! Machines! Music! Robots and machines making music! What is not to love, I ask you? Being the robotophile (and serial anthropomorphizer) that I am, I offer you, from my special vacuum-sealed vault, some choice selections from the crossroads where things get positively blippity blip!

Here is a great gallery of audio — recordings of the sounds hard drives make when they are broken. Sort of beautifully heartbreaking. Start up your favorite sound editing software and mix me up a robot love song, stat! [thanks boing boing]

Big Ideas (don’t get any) from James Houston

This is one of the best Radiohead remixes ever. From the video creator:

I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.

Superb. Isn’t is kind of touching, seeing these earnest little guys plugging away, trying to create? Don’t throw away that dot matrix printer, hug it instead! [thanks, darling andrew]

Ballet Mécanique by Georges Antheil

A 30-minute symphony, played automatically by player pianos, airplane propellers, electric bells and other instruments. It was created in 1924, originally intended to be the soundtrack to the Fernand Léger animation of the same name. I saw this performed live in San Francisco in 2000 and just was thunderstruck; I really thought the new century was going to bring technological treasures beyond compare. It was exciting to see this composition honored (even if two of the player pianos refused to work, charmingly), and it was even more exciting to see museums starting to take technological and electronic art more seriously.

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The Spotnicks

Swedish astronaut surf band from 1961. A little lower-tech but no less awesome. [thanks tamar]

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The Robots by Kraftwerk

And, of course, my favorite Man-Machines. We’re charging our battery and now we’re full of energy!

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