She does not lack charisma or passion, but she maintains perfect rhythm and is never prone to temperamental outbursts against the musicians under her three batons. Meet MAiRA Pro S, the next-generation orchestra conductor robot that made its debut this weekend in Dresden.
Their two performances in the eastern German city aim to showcase the latest advances in machine masters, as well as music written explicitly to take advantage of 21st century technology. Dresden Sinfoniker artistic director Markus Rindt said the intention “was not to replace human beings” but to perform complex music that human conductors would find impossible.
The Sinfoniker, long known for its innovation and political statements, celebrates its 25th anniversary with the Robotersinfonie in the Hellerau hall in a concert divided into two parts, one purely human and, after the intermission, another directed by robots.
In the second half, the three-armed MAiRA wields a trio of stubby lightsabers, each a different color, to mark time. The ensemble is divided into three parts, each responding to its own baton to create cross rhythms.
Composer Andreas Gundlach wrote the aptly named semiconductor masterpiece for 16 brass players and four percussionists playing wildly divergent time signatures. Some start slowly and speed up while others slow down. Gundlach told local public broadcaster MDR that MAiRA’s technical skills ensured the music sounded fluid, “as if it came from a single source.”
To achieve a two-decade dream, Rindt worked with specialists from the CeTI of the Technical University of Dresden, which stands for Center for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop. It pursues innovation based on the principle that robots and people can cooperate rather than compete.
Rindt taught MAiRA to lead as she would a human, demonstrating arm movements up to 40 times so she could integrate and adopt them with increasing complexity over two years of development.
Each “arm” has seven joints, allowing it to move and stretch in all directions. But if she gets too forceful and hits a beat, a safety mechanism activates to prevent her from harming herself or the musicians.
Rindt told MDR that he had the idea to leave the position for a sophisticated robot 23 years ago while rehearsing an intricate composition. One of the bassoonists said to the conductor: “You conduct the clarinets in 3/4 and I have 5/8, a totally different tempo. What should I do, no one directs me?” And the driver replied: “I’m not a robot.”
Local media reported an enthusiastic reception for the world premiere on Saturday night, which will be followed by a live streamed concert on Sunday.
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MAiRA is perhaps the most technically advanced robot for conducting music, but it is not the first. In 2008, a 4-foot-tall automaton with a baton led the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Mitch Leigh’s The Piper Dream. Nine years later, the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and the Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra made in Pisa with YuMi, billed as a “collaborative” dual-arm driving robot. And in South Korea, in July 2023, a android robot took the director’s podium at the Korean National Theater in Seoul.
During its quarter century of existence, the Dresden Sinfoniker has often pushed the boundaries of contemporary music. In 2006, he played an arrangement of the soundtrack of the classic silent film Battleship Potemkin from the balconies of a communist-era housing estate in central Dresden, while the British pop duo Pet Shop Boys played on the roof.
And in 2017 he organized a festival “against isolation and intolerance” during the Trump presidency. near the US-Mexico border wall near Tijuana and performed with Mexican and American musicians.