Can you resonate with this? (Animusic and the Resonant Chamber).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toXNVbvFXyk[/youtube]

I recently came across Animusic’s other-worldly “Resonant Chamber”.

I rather liked the music, but my ears kept reaching for a sense of the feeling and depth of sensation that typically accompanies a piece of music. Is it the roundness of the tone that I was missing in this piece? Is it maybe the slight variations in rhythm that I reached for?

Concentrating on the visual component, I found myself making comparisons, first to a guitar with its strings and then to a piano with its hammers. The image of odd, clawed fingers striking the strings of the resonant chamber was vaguely discomforting, and led me to compare it to other similar items I had encountered. I found myself thinking about the mechanical, birdlike contraptions I had viewed springing across a desert scene, remembering them to be the “military walkers” in Star Wars.

(Sourced from StarStore.com)

This led me to look them up once more, whereupon I discovered that the Koreans have been working on a similar-looking, robotic walker, the HUBO FX-1, to transport the elderly, help after accidents and disasters, and lift heavy items in an industry setting.

As I imagined the futuristic creatures that could formulate resonant-chamber-type music, and even enjoy listening to it, another image sprang to mind, that of the intergalactic bar, again from Star Wars. I wondered, then, if we as humans will one day have to widen our awareness to accept not just humans with a different skin colour, race, religion, genetic orientation or set of social customs, but strange transhuman creatures reminiscent of the broad assortment of life/robotic forms in futuristic movies and science fiction novels.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zd_khk6zXo[/youtube]

When I read the comments posted about Resonant Chamber, I thought that many might find this challenging. Comments ranged from  “impressive creativity” (ladidazz) to “creepy weirdness” (zen). Someone with a user name of “lala” (no connection to Essentia’s lala crib, I am sure) objected that the resonant chamber was a “soulless contraption that lacks a human spirit”. Someone named Whodat commented, perhaps ironically, “Yay for transhumanism! Even a musician can be replaced by a robot.” More guardedly accepting comments came from ladidazz, who remarked that the music was “so unique my mind got sort of twisted (in a good way)” and John Cook, who found the music “spookily beautiful.”

How do you resonate with this type of music?