Planet Arduino

If you take an object and turn it into something else, does that constitute a hack?  Can a musical robot call to question the ethics of firearms exports? If you take a disabled shotgun and turn it into a flute, does it become an art piece? Deep questions indeed — and deliberately posed by [Constantine Zlatev] along with his collaborators [Kostadin Ilov] and [Velina Ruseva].

The Last Gun — a mechano-robotic flute, as [Zlatev] calls it — is built from recovered industrial parts, played using compressed air, and controlled by an Arduino and Raspberry Pi. After graphing the annual arms exports from the United States, the installation plays a mournful tune for each year that they rise, and a jubilant theme for each year they fall.

While The Last Gun appears to be a modified and improved over the previous version — which looks somewhat like a mad engineer’s harp — details are sadly scant on the machining and build processes. However, left to their own devices, one can expect to see many more mechanically musical projects in this team’s future — wherein the actuating of servos pluck at the hearts and minds of its participants.

If instead you’re keen on a jam session with a more humanoid robot, that’s also an option.

[Thanks for the tip, Itay!]