Absolut Quartet is one of 2 machines that Absolut sponsored as an initiative called Absolut Machines. Quartet is here in NYC on the Lower East Side and it’s basically a huge musical art installation. It was created by the artists Jeff Lieberman and Dan Paluska and it’s a wonder to behold.
It has a number of musical elements but the largest, most visible, and coolest is that it shoots little rubber balls several feet into the air and when they come down they land on wooden bars that make a tone similar to if they were struck by a rubber mallet. So basically it’s a huge marimba, but the mechanics of all these precisely launched balls gives it the feel of a Rube Goldberg machine. There are also spinning wineglasses that ring against dampers and some interesting percussive elements. You can see it all in this video produced by the artists.
All by itself, this would be a really cool machine. But what makes it blog-worthy here is that the whole thing can be remote controlled from Absolut’s website. Using a deliberately very retro design (it looks like a DOS app) visitors can enter a simple musical sequence and have it played by the machine. But honestly, controlling it is not as much as just watching it. Definitely worth a trip to the LES.
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