Abstract

Human-robot musical interaction typically consists of independent, physically-separated agents. We developed Cyther - a human-playable, self-tuning robotic zither – to allow a human and a robot to interact cooperatively through the same physical medium to generate music. The resultant codependence creates new responsibilities, roles, and expressive possibilities for human musicians. We describe some of these possibilities in the context of both.

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Barton, S., Prihar, E., & Carvalho, P. (2017). Cyther: a human-playable, self-tuning robotic zither. New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 319-324. https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/humanitiesarts-pubs/7

*denotes a WPI undergraduate student author