As creative folk across the world work themselves in to a hurricane of hype over Tenori-On, Defunktion met with Japanese Media Artist Toshio Iwai, the visionary creator of this brave new instrument.
Born out of a unique collaboration between Iwai and Japanese über-corporation Yamaha, the Tenori-On was initially intended to be an instrument that would bring listeners in to the creative fold, enabling them to compose and create alongside professional musicians. What has resulted of the device’s long development process, is an instrument that brings the excitement of creating music to non-musicians and the depth of possibilities offered by state-of-the-art digital hardware to professional composers and producers.
Iwai calls the Tenori-On, “a world first.” He’s not wrong, the result of this development process, in particular the passion that was brought to the project by Iwai and his key collaborator at Yamaha, Yu Nishibori, is an enticing prospect - a device that allows anybody to compose in a way which is utterly tangible and utterly visual, empowering players to share and perform music in a manner that has never occurred previously.
In this first Tenori-On feature, Defunktion’s Editor, Olly Farshi, joined Toshio Iwai to find out more about this unique instrument. Accompanying the interview is the first in a series of exclusive Defunktion Podcasts recorded at the world launch of Tenori-On in Manchester, UK. This first Podcast features Iwai’s introduction to the instrument, a history of its development and a live performance from the device’s creator.
There’s been a great deal of hype surrounding Tenori-On - blogs, music and art sites, Flickr photofeeds, YouTube videos - it’s certainly getting an awful lot of people excited right now.
I’ve been checking the blogs and the news sites. The US readers are really jealous of the UK-exclusive launch! Of course, only a limited number of people have seen the Tenori-On, the final release was only yesterday. Most of the people talking about Tenori-On only saw the YouTube videos.
Have you been checking out the videos?
Yes, they’re really bad quality! The videos on YouTube were kind of pirate videos I guess. I love that people can see what’s happening around the world, that’s the good part, it’s a real pity though that the quality of the video is usually so awful. If I put the same thing on YouTube, I’d want to edit all the footage, get a professional camera-man and create a wonderful presentation. Still though, the Tenori-On has finally become a real product, so it’s great PR.
Culturally, it seems you may have had to adapt to work with Yamaha, coming from a Media Arts background to collaborating with a large corporation. Was this a big change in mindset for you or did it feel like a natural step in the progression of your career and practice?
A little bit, I really didn’t want to lose this artistic mindset and one of the saddest situations is when you see a big company with lots of money wanting to borrow the spirit of an artist. This approach isn’t collaboration, it’s just an exchange - something purely about fashion. The situation with the development of Tenori-On was a genuine collaboration between a real artist and a traditional corporation. I think it was a kind of miracle!
Like I said, usually these collaborations aren’t real, maybe you have a company that has created some technology but doesn’t know how to market it - they’ll do a deal with a famous artist or designer to simply brand an pre-exisiting product.
Clearly you played a major part in the Tenori-On’s development then. How did this come about?
The most interesting part was right at the beginning. When I met with Yamaha, they were familiar with my Media Art pieces. They were interested in allowing me to input all of this experience and all of my artistic sense in to their technology. So the collaboration in this project meant that the artist had not only a dream but a design - something realistic and attainable alongside proven experience. Yamaha supported this with their experience building and integrating technology, alongside their marketing background. It’s a really interesting situation to be in.
As you said, it’s some what of a miracle to have such a big corporation backing you in this way.
Absolutely, for example, Apple have beautiful design and beautiful technology for the iPhone and Mac and so on, but they have lots of in-house designers; when they release the product though, they’ll ask someone like Paul McCartney to appear on the advert, that always happens right? You get these companies making the hardware, then inviting lots of artists to appear alongside the finished product- it gives it a story, but it’s not a real collaboration
So in the case of Tenori-On, there’s a unique depth to the collaborative process.
Yes, with Tenori-On there’s a true artistic idea behind the piece. The reality right now is that many people, including professional musicians and kids and simply passive listeners, have the chance to create their own music. This isn’t a traditional musical instrument though, it’s got the perfect balance between being a musical instrument and a device for listening to ready-made pieces. This gives it great scope, the majority of people like to simply listen to music, the iPod is a wonderful invention - actually, I have three iPods [laughter] - being able to shuffle through thousands of pieces of music is an amazing experience but fundamentally this is still a listening experience.
As we listen, we’re adjusting our experience to be more passive. With Tenori-On though, the person using it starts from zero, and so it begins with this purity - the user begins by pressing buttons and creating new experiences, pushing one button then another. Gradually, these experiments begin to generate pieces of music and as the player discovers the depth within the instrument, the layers of opportunity, gradually the music they make begins to generate a new kind of experience. This is the concept. When people listen to ready-made music, it can indeed generate different feelings, but Tenori-On lets people engage with music and change music in different ways to suit their own desires.
Do you see Tenori-On players sharing the music they create with other players?
I really hope people will share their own creations via the Internet or via the SD card for example. One of my dreams for Tenori-On is that people will create their own music using the instrument, put the file on the computer - a very small file compared to an audio file - and then e-mail this to a friend. This friend, using their own Tenori-On, can then play back the file, listening to this piece whilst viewing all the actions and creative steps that occurred in its creation. This means we’re not just sharing the final piece of music, we’re sharing the patterns and the interactivity.
One of the most exciting moments during the instrument’s development was the Song stage. This was when we were able to start saving songs to the Tenori-On’s memory, in to a kind of extended-Midi file, then play back these actions - playing back my actions, it was like watching someone else performing on my own Tenori-On. This was a new experience for me, in the past of course we could watch people perform on video recordings, but with Tenori-On it’s so different. With a video, it’s outside of our body, the Tenori-On plays back on the same machine, the same LEDS blink showing the same actions. It’s kind of like the invisible man is performing on your Tenori-On. It’s a really great feeling to see it.
This has great potential in the future. Imagine To Rococo Rot’s Robert Lippok writing a track on the Tenori-On, all of the thousands, or tens of thousands of people, who have the instrument could buy and download his file. They could see exactly how the music was created in front of their very eyes.
With normal music, we can’t see how it was created but just watching a piece play on the Tenori-On, we can see absolutely everything occurring in front of us - every change is stored and entirely visible. There’s potential for great experiences and I would like to see people sharing these files all over the world.
Is it important then for you as an artist and a creator, to enable other people who maybe don’t play traditional instruments to create music?
Yes, myself and Yu Nishibori discussed this originally. We thought maybe we could create an instrument that wasn’t for the professional musician, having said that I think with the final Tenori-On we’ve created an attractive proposition for professionals. At the time though, we envisaged it as a musical instrument for the listeners.
Like I said, listeners love to listen every hour of every day. Listeners have a good ear: even if they don’t create music, they know what they like! So listeners have the ability and the sense to choose good music - for example, most people aren’t fashion designers but they have their own sense of style and what they like. This is a form of creativeness. Listening to music, should be the same kind of thing.
I want to give people a chance, the people who love listening to music, to contribute their own sense of sound and composition to a piece of music. Even a child could have a very good sense of music, the thing is that piano playing, for example, is really tough - we’re forcing kids to play for hours a day and a high proportion of these children end up hating the instrument. It’s a really sad situation when this kind of thing happens.
Certainly, within our climate of digital toys and electronic devices, traditional instruments can alienate children from learning to play, create and compose. With Tenori-On, there is the sense that the medium itself is attractive.
Yes, we’re creating positive possibilities for anyone to create. This is an instrument that’s very easy for everyone to operate, yet it still has great depth. There’s a wide range of potential players - from listeners to professional musicians - and it’s so flexible in terms of the possibilities.
The implication then is that this is could be the start of a very special era for composition, performance and musical collaboration. What’s the future for Toshio Iwai and Yamaha?
At this stage, we’ve worked so hard and almost finally reached the goal. Right now, the product has been released exclusively in the UK, so effectively Yamaha are at the market-testing stage. I really hope that the Tenori-On will be released across the world, though Yamaha will understandably be very cautious - this is an entirely new device.
There’s never been anything like Tenori-On before, it’s a world first, this is a big step for a corporation to take. I want it to be a success and we’re all hoping that we’ll sell enough over the next six months to bring Tenori-On to the world - US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and maybe beyond.
Right now, it looks like a very advanced experimental musical instrument. If people start trying it out and learning to play with it, it could become a very normal instrument to see people using. Maybe classical musicians will even start experimenting with it.
Even at this event today, we’re seeing interesting combinations - Graham Massey, of 808State, will be performing Tenori-On in an improvised session with a live drummer. I was really amazed to hear about the musicians who will be performing tonight with the Tenori-On, they’re all so different in their style. This is just what I wanted, to see all these different people creating music using the Tenori-On, it’s exactly what I wanted!
If the Tenori-On is a big enough success, maybe Yamaha will move to the next stage and develop another device. This is also the testing stage for Yamaha’s collaboration with an artist.
So if this does well for Yamaha, it could be a new dawn in product development for them?
Yes, the reality for Yamaha is the business - they are a corporation after all. For me, it’s my art. So we’re finding a middle-ground, it’s really kind of a miracle. We Japanese have been making so much fantastic technology, Canon, Sony and Nikon cameras for example; the root of those inventions though, came from outside of Japan and most of the classical instruments came from Europe. As a Japanese artist, I want the opportunity to realise interesting, sophisticated and original ideas as Japanese technology. I’m aware it’s a very ambitious idea.
This is the modern age, we’ve got so many interesting materials and possibilities enabled by technology. I started my work in Media Art because there was really no opportunity to show my inventions in other fields, only museums and galleries would display my work.
In my mind though, I was not influenced by art but by the technology around when I was a kid - this is why I use new media and new technologies in my art-works. I realised though that I’ve never given anything back to the field which influenced me, the Tenori-On is a chance for me to give the gift I received in my child-hood to the next generation.
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Podcast Credits
The Podcast was recorded live at Manchester’s Mint Lounge on September 5th, 2007. Defunktion would like to thank FutureSonic and Sequence for supporting and facilitating this audio recording. The content on this Podcast is (c) and (p) Defunktion.net 2007, unless otherwise stated. The incidental music on this podcast was created by Kid Mingus.
How to access the Podcast
You can listen to this episode of the Defunktion Podcast Series right now by clicking on the streamer play button (above), or click the appropriate link below to load the podcast in your favourite media-player:
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