The Ghost Man – where the beat, discrete and elite come to talk about sheet.

Interactive installations let online visitors create music with intelligent machines.

In early 2008 ABSOLUT is launching a project that explores what happens when cutting-edge technology meets the creativity of art, music and design. To emphasize its deep commitment to the subject, ABSOLUT turned to some of the greatest technology visionary teams of our time, and asked them to create THE ABSOLUT MACHINES. The result is two artificially creative and highly interactive music-making machines, as visually stunning as they are technologically pioneering.

This project marks the first collaboration between premium vodka brand ABSOLUT and cutting-edge visionaries from the world of technology. THE ABSOLUT MACHINES are designed by Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman, both with a background from MIT in Boston, and Teenage Engineering, a Swedish studio in the fields of media, art and technology.

“Technology is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives and is a key driver for contemporary culture. With THE ABSOLUT MACHINES, we explore how technology merges with creativity, and we are thrilled to have such fantastic visionaries with us on this journey”, says Ulrika Lövdahl, responsible for trend communications at V&S Absolut Spirits.

THE ABSOLUT MACHINES are currently being constructed and will be launched globally on January 31. Users from around the world will be able to interact with the machines over the Internet. The musical input from online users will be processed by the machines, which will respond with a unique musical composition – co-created by man and machine. The machines will immediately perform the songs, and their performances will be live-streamed to a global audience at absolutmachines.com.

For THE ABSOLUT MACHINES, Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman have created the “ABSOLUT QUARTET”, an automated multi-instrumental orchestral machine, which does not look like anything you have ever seen before. It is a large-scale electromechanical sculpture consisting of three instruments and thousands of parts, working together to create one piece of music. The main timbre is a marimba played by balls shot from a robotic cannon. Other components include a series of wineglasses played by little robotic fingers and an array of robotic percussive instruments.

“ABSOLUT has collaborated with great artists such as Andy Warhol, Tom Ford and Louise Bourgeois. ABSOLUT has the tradition of the past masters as well as the vision to do something new. Of course we were excited when they asked us if we wanted to be part of a project exploring artificial creativity”, says Dan Paluska.

Teenage Engineering has constructed the “ABSOLUT CHOIR”, a multi-channel robotic choir, made up by 10 singing characters of various shapes and sizes. It is an architectural installation with an advanced framework of speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence software at the back end.

At absolutmachines.com you can follow the work in progress. You can also download high-resolution images, films, interviews, biographies, and find in-depth information about the project. After the launch, this is the site where visitors can interact and create music together with the machines.