San Francisco rocker Jay Vance had it with broke, debauched, unhygienic and irresponsible bandmates — wait, is he living The Rock Life or what? — so he decided to replace his band’s rhythm section with robots (insert dumb-drummer joke here). Vance built his first rocking droid out of scrap-metal in his bedroom back in 1997; its chest was an autoharp. Now he has a whole band of them, Captured! By Robots. Vance powers the entire group — yes, they play metal (insert rim shot here) — using three computers plus pneumatic actuators that make the robots’ mechanical digits play like rock stars. Captured! By Robots’ opening act is Butterscotch and Cocoa, two bear-inspired robots. Vance’s goal is to create a scenario in which the audience’s human reaction to the robots make them real: “When the robots swear at the crowd and the crowd swears back, that’s when you know they’re real to the audience.”

[Photo by Snapcult]