lev plays patsySeptember 22nd, 2007
Here’s LEV again, because one “Crazy” wasn’t enough.
Lev plays Patsy from ranjit on Vimeo.
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project documentation
Here’s LEV again, because one “Crazy” wasn’t enough.
Lev plays Patsy from ranjit on Vimeo.
Here’s LEV, my theremin-playing robot first seen at Artbots 2003, playing a familiar song with the help of the newly built thumpbot and an obsolete synthesizer.
Lev and Thumpbot play “Crazy” from ranjit on Vimeo.
(also on youtube)
They don’t play so well, but what do you expect from robots?
Time Out NY magazine has a small feature about handmade music nights at Etsy Labs, and it includes a little bit about me and a photo of one of my handmade music gadgets.

Etsy Labs, Create Digital Music, and Make Magazine have been holding a series of handmade music nights at Etsy’s Brooklyn headquarters, where people share the musical gadgets they’ve made. It’s just been featured in Time Out NY (scan). CDM’s got nice wrapups of the first (with video, including me!) and second events.
Here’s a video of the wind-up noisemaker I made for the second handmade music night:
Six keys, four springs, one knob from ranjit on Vimeo.
Misericordiam visited the Figment Festival on Governor’s Island, New York City, this July. For the first time, I suspended the piece from a tree in the open air rather than from an indoor framework. It was a beautiful day to hang accordions in trees. Here’s some video from the festival.
There’s some photos of Misericordiam al fresco over at flickr.
There’s no attempt to create a humanoid with Misericordiam, by Ranjit Bhatnagar, an accordion hung from a rope. It compresses and, thanks to gravity, decompresses with a convulsive abandon. I don’t know if it had any other purpose than humor, but I didn’t feel like I needed more.
– roberta fallon and libby rosof’s artblog: The human side of artbots
Some of my vegevision has been featured in Edible Brooklyn magazine! More information about the project and about purchasing prints from the series can be found on the project page.


MONUMENTAL MOMENT
A playful approach to Tatlin’s MonumentWhen I heard the title of Flux Factory’s latest show, Response to Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International Conceived in the Mood of Ambivalence, or R.T.T.M.T.T.T.I.C.I.T.M.O.A. for short, I thought I was going off to see a ridiculous, pretentious show full of highfalutin communist propaganda.
I’m happy to report that I was completely wrong. [...]
– Aileen Torres, New York Press
My photo (above) from opening night was used to illustrate the article.

[...] The exterior appearance was plain– a sleek, seamless black wall that nearly spanned the entire lofty space. A silver crank handle and a small, clear, rectangular box encasing a pickle were the only ornaments. Clamped by wires on both sides, the pickle began to spark and light up as the handle was turned. Moments later, a halting melody churned out from the other side of the wall.
A journey through the maze-like interior of the melody’s physical architecture began when you infiltrated the entrances to the box, tucked away on either side. The artists created a series of small musical chambers connected by sharp turns, stairs, and an orange slide, producing curious textures of sound that played in sync, united in a single song. An old accordion hummed in a blue velvet room designed by Ranjit Bhatnagar. Draped with delicate strings of tiny white lights, it hung by a rope and pulley from the ceiling like a chandelier, playing itself with each rotation. [...]
– pp74-75, Sculpture 12/2006, International Sculpture Center

The sound of an accordion can be joyful or annoying, and artist Ranjit Bhatnagar has managed to add a dose of creepiness with his creation “Misericordiam.” Here, an accordion dangles in a black curtain-flanked booth, playing sinister sounds to no one in particular. White LEDs give it a festive air, but its intermittent noises and shakes make it seem like a prop escaped from a haunted house.
– Rachel Metz, Wired Blogs