Intel Australia has collaborated with musician Harley Streten aka Flume, The Monkeys and Finch to create a project, “Intelligent Sounds,” inspired by a contemporary music style and one of today’s most popular gadgets, a tablet device.

The project comes as a technological experiment that is “run” by human inspiration, cutting-edge technology and passion for music. In the computer-powered installation, “Felix the robot conductor” managed a huge set of musical instruments, enhanced with technology—it touched the tablets, which in their turn activated various instruments for sound and other components of the installation for visual effects. Equipped with specially created applications, the tablets also acted as instruments like Xylophone and Mini Plucker. The installation that used sixty Intel tablets performed a new track by Flume, created in collaboration with The Monkeys exclusively for the occasion.

All the elements in the installation were programmed with synthesized notes so that they performed their music tunes on cue. The robot, built by the Finch  in-house team, was also pre-programmed to perform the actions that “triggered” the required notes in time with the final track. The tech part of the project took over 2,000 developer hours on a 10-week deadline to realize—the elements of the installation were manufactured using laser cut and 3D printed materials.

”Intel is a fairly ubiquitous tech brand but it doesn’t have a huge footprint in tablets but they are in tablets so it was really, first and foremost an awareness thing. What we wanted to do was quite simply—someone creative plus Intel tablets equals something amazing. That was the simplicity of the idea,” commented The Monkeys’ digital creative director Jay Gelardi.