Toshio Iwai (media artist) launches Tenori-On at Phonica
Records, 51 Poland Street London W1 4-9-7
http://www.global.yamaha.com/tenori-on/
I almost missed this event completely, and only found out about it on
the day through an old Rhizome digest that I had neglected to read. Drew
Hemment publicizing the Manchester launch also mentioned that Toshio Iwai
(media artist) would be talking about his new musical instrument ‘Tenori-0n’
at an official launch in the basement of a record shop in Soho.
This seemed to good to be true, an opportunity to See Iwai San present
and talk about his latest project. It was actually even better than that
as he started by presenting to us documentation of previous projects that
were forerunners of Tenori-0n, these included some of his installation
and game projects, as well as previous collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto.
The only real letdown on the night was the fact that the event was largely
taken over by Soho bores, and music industry types, many of whom were
more interested in the free bar, and listening to the sound of their own
voices, than the presentations and performances that were taking place.
Iwai started his presentation, revealing his love of both music and computing,
by showing us images of an old 8-bit Yamaha computer on which he had first
created music and multimedia, the keyboard of which he had inscribed with
musical notes. While his initial attempts at composing music on a computer
as a student were fraught with difficulties, (these were the early years
of personal computing), his creative impulses were sparked by a little
hand-cranked musical box. The music box played music via a punch card,
and the first composition he heard on it was ‘Happy Birthday’.
To the delight of the audience, he played the tune on the music box for
us, and then, turning the card around, explained how he had wondered what
Happy Birthday might sound like played in reverse. The sound that emanated
from the little box was as Iwai described, a “beautiful, lonely”
version of the original song. The holes on the grid of the punch card
were much more understandable to Iwai and made him wonder, “what
is top, what is bottom?” the transcription of a visual element into
a musical one provided a different take for him on creating and playing
music and was to have a direct bearing on the development of many future
projects, including and perhaps even culminating in the Tenori-On.
These projects, which Iwai discussed and showed examples of, included
the early Nintendo game ‘Starfly’. Starfly invites users to
create music by activating stars, and connecting them via lines that they
draw in a grid like space on their screens. These visualised musical scores
are then ‘played’ by a series of insects that traverse this
virtual cosmos, following the paths transcribed by the user and playing
notes whenever a star is encountered. Starfly combined music and pictures
to create an early example of immersive multimedia.
The next project Iwai presented was the gallery installation, ‘Resonance
of 4’(1994). Four gallery visitors are able to interact by using
four linked consoles. Together they manipulate a musical grid system that
is projected onto the gallery floor. Iwai commented that what was interesting
about this project for him, was the way that melodies gradually overlapped
throughout the day as different visitors came and went and added their
individual compositions to the overall work.
This piece led on to a collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto, ‘Piano
as Image Media’(1995) enabled the sound of a piano to be visualised.
As Sakamoto struck each key a corresponding vector on a grid was plotted
and projected behind the instrument. With each note played the projected
score scrolled up and away from the piano, creating a virtual musical
box in reverse. While in this version sound generates images, a further
collaboration treated live video footage of Sakamoto’s movements
in front of a video camera and turned them, via a grid system, into a
visualised musical score which was then played directly on to a piano,
in a kind of virtual, real-time, physically created, musical box.
Musical Chess (1997) developed these ideas further. Users position glass
balls on a chessboard, once more utilising Iwai’s familiar grid
as musical score system. Once positioned the balls glow and trigger musical
notes. What interested Iwai was that the work fell between the virtual
and the physical, while the installation has physical weight and temperature,
“sound and light we cannot touch”.
So the scene was now set, the prehistory written and everything previously
described lead directly to Tenori-On!
In 2001 Iwai started working with Yamaha on a new product with which he
sought to transform the way that musical instruments are perceived of
and used. The device presents itself as a laptop sized 16 by 16 matrix
of LED’s that are also buttons. These buttons are accessible, and
can be activated from either the top or the bottom of the device. Together
with several other push button controls around the Tenori-On’s frame
and a small LCD display, which tells you the current BPM, these are all
the controls required to create and play your own musical compositions.
Tenori-On can work with your own sampled sounds and you can also save
your compositions as midi files and share them with your friends. In basic
mode a playback head scans (in the form of a line which traverses the
screen from left to right, one LED column to the next) ‘playing’
each note it comes across upon its journey, but Tenori-On has much more
hidden depth and sophistication, with six different performance modes
and each LED being musically programmable on many different levels. Tenori-On
is marketed as “a new digital musical instrument for the 21st century
that allows everyone to play music intuitively, creating a "visible
music" interface”.
Interestingly it will only be available in the UK, Yamaha higher up’s
don’t seem that convinced of it’s potential, and will retail
at £599. The marketers at the event assured everyone that demand
would outstrip supply but we wait to see what musicians think about the
product, certainly those I spoke to on the night were very keen to play
with it and saw potential in the product.
I certainly enjoyed the presentation, and it was great to see Iwai talk
about the product and his previous projects, but my main criticism is
that there is no opportunity to output the visuals that Tenori-On creates.
Iwai has created a beautiful instrument that enables those without musical
training to create and present complex soundscapes. I do think however
that he and Yamaha have missed a trick, in not creating an opportunity
for the visuals the instrument creates to be interpreted and projected
(or simply projected as they are) Tenori-On does not fulfil its full potential
as a 21 Century musical box, but perhaps version two is on its way…
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