The long road to humanity’s eventual fate as the prisoners of cruel robotic masters—locked within nutrient-harvesting apocalypse pods for our entire lives—is a strange and unpredictable one. Just as we were starting to get comfortable with the idea that the machines are ready to replace us as astronauts, theme park employees, factory workers, Halloween decorators, cheerleaders, and (admittedly terrible) dancers, we now have to face up to the fact that these cold, unfeeling affronts to nature are getting good at creating avant-garde music, too.
Thanks to musician and robotics engineer Moritz Simon Geist, a popcorn maker hooked up to a drum kit has emerged as the jazz world’s unlikeliest new star. As demonstrated in a video showing off its chops, the contraption consists of a bunch of sensors hovering above a frying pan filled with oil and popcorn kernels. When one of the kernels pops, it triggers a connection to a drum kit, setting off unpredictably timed hits on the bass drum, snare, and cymbals.