The future is Frankie
August 14th, 2002 by freddie96
La Finca
Kennington, London
25 July 2002
Frankie the Robot was born back in 1995, when he started life as a test character for a 3D graphics engine. A product of software designer and coder Ash Nehru of Autopilot, Frankie has danced before crowds of people at events such as Glastonbury, Burning Man, the MTV Europe Music Awards and The Big Chill’s Enchanted Garden. But in these appearances, he was like a marionette; all movements were controlled manually by an operator at a computer keyboard.
Much like Pinocchio, Frankie longed to become more like a real boy; he wanted to dance autonomously, but more than that, he wanted to have a go behind the decks himself. And in his latest incarnation, that’s exactly what he did.
Ash combined Frankie’s visuals with another Autopilot software project, Hummingbird: an audio performance tool that enables performers to seamlessly mix any of thousands of audio tracks, up to twelve at a time. Once programmed, Hummingbird itself does all the beatmatching – in perfect time – allowing the performer to focus on track selection and flow. Using a combination of keyboard & mouse, the performer can throw in loops or tracks in real time, control volume on each channel (instead of using a crossfader) and select tunes from a bank of music files as big as the hard drive will allow. For Frankie, each of four Hummingbird channels was assigned to a ‘turntable’ that is visually represented on the screen.
The real breakthrough for Frankie is that his visual self is now directly linked to the audio software, meaning his movements automatically sychronise to the beat of the music. Frankie is free to dance with no strings attached, and his hands are free to ‘mix’ music on his new turntables. He has been programmed to visually mimic DJ movements – cueing up and throwing in tracks on the various decks, waving hands in the air, shaking those funky hips and even spinning round when the mood takes him. All of this is happening automatically, in perfect time with the music, which is more than most of us human DJs can manage!
It’s a shame I didn’t know any of this before I went to see Frankie’s debut performance. It’s quite an interesting life for a seven-year-old. Although I was initially intrigued by Frankie’s computer-generated construct dancing around behind a set of virtual decks on the screen, I became a little bored of watching his repetitive movements before it got too late in the evening. I have since learned that this performance was a prototype, so it’s early days yet. Ash indicates that, ‘as time goes on we’ll continue to add depth to the show in all kinds of ways … add more subtlety and personality to Frankie himself, and of course backgrounds, animations, even other characters.’ Thinking about it, I suppose very few flesh-and-blood DJs are lively enough to keep both eyes and ears interested for a whole evening.
When I left the performance, I still felt a twinge of yearning for the human touch. The human involvement was hidden: the audio performer was in the dark next to the screen, looking preoccupied as he intensely selected tunes on the computer. And as the music was made up of loops – not entire tunes – programmed in perfect time, the tempo stayed the same. There was little build and decline in the music, making it seem a bit, well, mechanical. The performance was technically extremely impressive, but I still felt Frankie’s crisp & clean mixing style was lacking a little soul. Maybe that’s just because the music style wasn’t really my cup of tea. It’s too early to tell. .
Nonetheless, Frankie the Robot is one of the only things I have witnessed in recent history that is truly pushing DJing forward. Just when DJ culture seemed to have fallen flat, along came Frankie to challenge all perceptions about what a DJ is. Ash Nehru has created something truly innovative in a culture of mash-ups, remixes and recycled classics – and it’s an amazing achievement, by any standards. I feel privileged to be witnessing the evolution of something that is breaking the stagnant ground of clubland.
Right now, I think there’s a reason people dance facing the DJ booth. In current club culture, we’re all still accustomed to seeing a real person up there, mistakes and all. Who knows – maybe Frankie will change all that. After all, he’s only seven. If this prototype is any indication of things to come, I think we’ll all be watching him grow up. And we’ll relish every moment.
Miko Coffey
