TENORI-ON is happy-making

Animation, Exemplary Work, Interactive Design, Music,
9/5/07

Toshio Iwai, interactive media artist and creator of Electroplankton, gave a solo performance of his new instrument, the TENORI-ON, last night at a launch event in London. Composer Gary Kibler was there and posted a number of videos of the event. Check out the clip below—there’s a very specific joy about this device that occurs when he creates a loop and then hides it to begin work on another layer. Creating a tangible rhythm out of light, and then hiding the light while the rhythm persists… it immediately engages the maker instinct. The promise is one of building music with smart light, light that’s better than light because it remembers and holds its state in secret while you go to work on another facet of the composition. Great concept, can’t wait to see where it goes.

Source: Create Digital Music

Update: Further reflections on the device from Gary Kibler: Hands On Tenori-On: Close Encounters of the Interactive Music Kind

 

Recollections of “Recollections”

Animation, Exemplary Work,
8/28/07

There’s a wonderful reverberation in there. It’s the concrete floors that propagate it–reminding you that you’ve been welcomed inside an experiment, a work in progress. Even though I enjoyed the Reuben, it was carpeted, and thus robbed of that reverberation, that sound that came to represent a massive space filled with physically principled play. I assume the reverberation is still there, but I haven’t been to the Exploratorium in probably 20 years, so maybe one of you can leave a comment and reassure me that it hasn’t changed.

My favorite memory there is of an installation called Recollections, by Ed Tannenbaum, which I must have seen in the early 1980s. Standing in front of a large video projection, your silhouette is captured, colored, and added to the image being projected, in real time. The result is that your movements leave cycling washes of color, creating a hypnotic feedback loop between your actions and the screen’s reactions. (Ed periodically updates the piece to keep up with the technology curve.)

I remember being aware of the pixelation of the display, which makes sense, seeing as its resolution was only 256 x 240. I remember an indistinct realization that the colors were passing through the pixels—that the silhouettes weren’t actually self-contained objects, but data passing through a static grid. I remember the palette shifts that would change the whole tone of the experience, and waiting for my favorite ones to reappear. I think I was vaguely aware that the piece was running on an Apple II—the technology felt within reach. Mainly though, I remember just being really happy, and not wanting to leave. Yeah. Stuff like that would be good to make.

Thanks, Ed, that was awesome.

 

I got to play a Theremin!

Fun, Music, Wii,
8/24/07

Some pure geeky fun today. A few weeks ago I was at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in San Diego, and was psyched to find a Theremin included in their new audio-related exhibition (which is quite good). I’d never seen one in person, much less played one, so I immediately ran over and launched into my best rendition of Bernard Herrmann’s theme from The Day the Earth Stood Still. I’m sure I embarrassed myself mightily, but who cares! I got to play a Theremin!

The Theremin I saw was the classic “piece of furniture with antennae” form factor you see in the image of Leon Theremin himself to the right, not the sleek Moog version you can see below in a performance of the Zelda theme.

This may qualify as a geek singularity: using the Wii remote to simulate a Theremin playing the theme from Star Trek. Enjoy…

 

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