The Plink Jet is a robot made by entirely out of parts from inkjet printers. Made by Andrew Doro and Lesley Flanigan, this DIY project that was made for one purpose: to play the guitar.

The ink cartridges slide around and play four guitar strings by both plucking and strumming. It changes pitch by fretting the strings just like a regular guitar player.

The mechanical parts of four printers are diverted from their original function, re-contextualizing the relatively high-tech mechanisms of this typically banal appliance into a ludic musical performance.

The user gets to determine how much control they have over the robot, as it’s just as happy playing itself as it is being played by a human.

Plink Jet has been shown at Bent Fest NYC 2008, NIME 2008 in Genoa and ISEA 2008 in Singapore.

Now, we really need to get this thing teamed up with WABOT-2, the synth playing robot, Haile, the drumming robot and LEV, the theremin-playing robot.

You can get a ton more information from their PDF paper on Plink Jet.

Via Noise For Airports

• LEV, the Theremin-playing robot
• Synth playing robot
• Guitar-playing birds
• 8-bit arcade guitar synth