Ever wanted to see Daft Punk as LEGO men? Of course you have. And now, you can. A band of robotic LEGO figurines and their grand human ruler have graced YouTube with their most recent offering.
Having previously covered Depeche Mode and also created their own techno jams on their YouTube channel, the Toa Mata Band have now covered Daft Punk’s classic, Da Funk, using drum pads, bass guitar, Nintendo DS and more.
The Toa Mata Band is made up of several tiny robotic LEGO figures programmed to play a variety of musical instruments. Known as ‘The World’s First Lego Robotic Band’, they are made up of figurines from the LEGO’s Bionicle range and are controlled by Italian music producer Giuseppe Acito.
Each ‘member’ of the band has been built from LEGO Bionicle pieces. Their arms are controlled by an Arduino Uno microprocessor connected to an iPad running Nord Beat (bear with me), which is a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) app, a communication protocol that allows MIDI-equipped instruments to communicate with each other.
That’s a lot of tech words for LEGO pieces rigged with rubber bands and pulleys attached to a computer. The tiny bots essentially hit the instrument they’re facing when prompted by the software program.
However it works, it is by far the coolest thing I have seen in a very long time.
