Robots are playing ASMR-infused techno at SXSW

In 2012, Moritz Simon Geist left a promising career as a research engineer in Germany to build robots and travel the world playing music full-time. He'd studied classical music in school, starting with the clarinet and piano, and toured with punk bands since he was a teenager in the '90s. That was when he started tinkering with equipment, building cheap solutions for complex audio problems and creating brand-new tools. Eventually, Geist's aptitude with electronics and music transformed into a new beast. Today, he's a solo artist who plays robots as music, relying on physical motion and contact microphones rather than electronics to create his beats.