None of this was automated.
There was a man playing the harp near a bus stop beside the hot dog man called Ernie the other day on Chapel Street in New Haven. He claimed his name was
Andrew Guthrie.
"Man quits his job to play the harp" is not how this article should read; rather, instead it should say: "
Man quits his job to build robot to play the harp (so he can quit his job)." Makes more sense.
Andrew mentions being inspired by the music of the videogame The Legend of Zelda. He finds Ernie's hot dogs to be delicious. Sitting in an armchair on the side lot of Chapel amidst the hubbub and chaos of the vagrant and the vacant-minded, his music accompanied the sound of a school bus of chanting children (
you can hear it in the background from 0:23 to 0:28). The experience added a surreal sense of serenity to the otherwise busy urban city street.
Andrew Plays Harp on Chapel St. from
New Haven, Connecticut on
Vimeo.
To hire a harp player for that corner, by any estimates, would cost more than a hot dog a day. But if Andrew completes his project, the cost of hiring a robot to play the harp in that lot next to Ernie could be a lot more affordable, although robots in urban environments have proven to not survive for long in the wilderness, as
bar patrons discovered on their phones, recently. There are very few other things that we can do at this moment in time to ensure a better standard of living than to improve the quality of life in meaningful ways every day.
Andrew's website is mostly poetry. Robotic poetry from the future, about an automated and simpler world.
