Antony Hall's projects explore the way we interface with technology, and how our interactions with it influence us creatively and socially. Often collaborating with scientists and technologists, Hall is currently focusing his talent on the investigation of biological and physical phenomenon. Some of his recent experiments involve communication with an electric fish, the creation of life through growing crystals electrically on volcanic stone, hunting for Moss bears and training Planarian worms.

He gained fame in the media and media art festivals with his electro-acoustic sound art devices and performances. Together with Simon Blackmore and more recently Steve Symons, Hall is a founding member of the Owl Project, a group which combines woodwork with electronics to create performances, musical instruments (iLog , and Log1k) and other physical computing projects.

Let's start with one of your most popular projects: the iLog. How did you get the idea of making it?

The iLog was created as collaborative project with Simon Blackmore and Steve Symons, we are the Owl Project. We developed the Log1K in 2001 as a performance tool to attempt rival the laptop in electronic music, shortly after this apple started pushing the iPod and we had to make a response, something which related more to the trend for portable, mobile hand held technologies. We wanted our devices to be a synthesis of craft and technology, as well as functional instruments. The Log1ks were getting increasingly heavy, among other things they used nearly 30 AA batteries, short circuits and fires, and blown-out speakers were becoming common place. iLog 01 came out in 2003. After we started collaborating with Steve Symons, we reinvented the electronics inside the iLog and started pushing the whole project to a new level; the M-Log is out later this year.

There's now a series of iLog models. Why do you think people buy the iLog? Mainly as a beautiful and quirky piece of art which they would not use too much fearing that it might be damaged (although you provide technical support.)? Or have you found that people use it extensively as any other kind of musical device? Were you expecting your project to have so much success?

I suppose people want the iLog for its quirkiness, something as an alternative to the mass produced items. We had no idea that it would become so popular - people blogged it like mad at the start and like a Chinese whisper it suddenly became what people wanted it to be; typically some kind of alternative to the ipod - But in reality its something quite different. It is intended to be an instrument for performance.

iLog signal

Our problem is that although there is demand; making them is still very difficult, and time consuming, so our focus is making them better rather than faster. At the moment we are looking at lending these to artists and working in collaboration to develop the iLog further. When we launched them for sale in London at DWB it was a real learning curve. Simple things like which way up it should be held, were completely un-obvious! We had to create extensive instructions regarding use, as well as repair and maintenance. The 24 hour support is most necessary! Its important that its more hands on than your average mass produced plastic device.

The iLog is something people can use, rather than living all its life in the art gallery. The new series, *M-Log, launching this year, looks like an iLog, and is a USB connective interface. So there is scope for programming your own sensor based instrument, which you can use with your own customized patch. The iLog is more of a stand alone sound generator. We are planning an event in Manchester during Futuresonic where other performers (including Leafcutter John) will be using the iLogs & M-Logs. *The M in M-Log stands for 'muio' as in "muio interface", the chip based interface inside which Steve's invention in his words "The muio interface is a modular system for sensing and controlling the Real World".

The wood is quite resilient and very repairable if damaged.

I love The Sound Lathe, a performance which explores the sonic properties of wood. Do you have any video of it?

There is some video here:

It does look like a very physical performance. Did you have to master new skills in order to be able to do these performances? How does each performance go? Are they all different from each other? Does working with wood creates situations and results you wouldn't have expected?

Yes its been really interesting - my self and Simon ended up sleeping in a kind of bivouac deep in the forrest as part or the "R&D" for the project, learning the skills of traditional "green woodwork", (electricity free) with Mike Abbott, master crafts-person. Mike invented a competition for Bodgers (the name for people who use the 'pole Lathe') called 'Log to Leg' (as in chair leg) so this is the new format for our performance - I think the record is 9 mins; transforming a bit of tree stump, into two perfect chair legs! It takes us a couple hours, but then our lathe is connected to copious amounts of sensor interface technologies. Quite a distraction, if like for our last performance at Lovebytes, it rained torrentially for the whole thing. In the documentation you will see a tarpaulin underneath that are 3 laptops and Simon.

Image Lovebytes

I think for all of us it's a welcome change from sitting behind a screen the whole time - these physical processes are a great compliment to programming and electronics; and they still require a similar kind of focus and discipline. It is quite exhausting, you need a lot a focus to keep the beat in time as well as make a good carving, in this way it becomes quite mediative. Sharpening the chisels and preparing the timber are all equally demanding skills to learn.

Can you tell us something about the wooden objects produced during the performances? Which kind of objects are there? And what do you do with them once the performance is over?

We have a box full of various objects; ranging in description from 'chair leg' to 'fire wood', or specialist 'rolling pin'. Occasionally we have a look inside & discuss what we should do with them. We did make a chair with Mike about the only truly useful thing we ever made. The latest idea is to make some kind of flat pack, or player. Watch this space. You can see what we decide to do with them at The Piemonte Share Festival, 11 - 16 March 2008.

Documentation of first ENKI event at the Museum of Science and Industry Manchester, 7th October 2006

You are also interested in bio-digital medicine. That sounds very different from a project like iLog. Can you explain us what it is and how you started to be interested in this field?

Well this is my own personal project, although I have always working with biology or technological experimentation in some way; with ENKi I decide to humanize what I do. This was a decision to move into medicine and treatment technologies. Really its the same things that we work with in the owl project; looking at how technology is consumed and sold. The notion of bio-digital medicine is just one example in hundreds, of how science, or even the suggestion of science is used, and misused to sell ideas. Faceless corporations feed on our anxieties, our basic need to feel contentment or feel complete. I find it interesting that, just as some people turn to religion, others will look to technology or science to provide answers and solutions.

ENKI uses the bioelectric information from an Electric Fish to trigger human Brain-wave Entrainment. It generates sound and light pulses to induce a state of relaxation similar to the way traditional relaxation systems work, but the electric communication signal comes from an electric fish rather than a chip.

Did you test the system on other people? How do they react?

So far we have tested it on about 40 volunteers,most of them members of the public who had no prior knowledge of the project. We did this in the context of the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry; people enjoy the experience generally. I was surprised at the range of people who were up for it!

By this point I had started working with Greg Byatt as a collaborator. He has experience of using this kind of technology and administering similar treatments professionally. Greg has equipment which can monitor your physiological state and a brain-wave visualiser (EEG); we were trying to measure results this way. We only really came to one solid conclusion. We had to do more tests.

Isn't the idea of putting one's "brain-wave entertainment" into the fins of an animal scary? Do you feel that people would trust any other electronic device more than a fish or any other type of animal?

That is a good question. It's an exciting notion this whole idea of "wet-wear" interfacing - but not something that should be taken lightly. I don't like to be on my own if i am doing a test run, and yes I find it very unnerving. I never quite got used to the idea of connecting strangers up to electrodes and the fish. I also worry about the fish. The fish needs to be content and 'happy' for this to work.

In my opinion that most of these commercial devices are made by various humans all of whom have different intentions and issues, namely cost efficiency; and so effectively using quite crude means; cheap microchips. The Black Ghost knife fish is the result of millions of years of evolutionary refinement; but you could still say the same of micro chips.

A Down poker

Is that project completely developed or is it still a work in progress?

It's in progress. I started working with "electrogenic" fish in 2005; ENKI technology was the title I gave it in 2006 when I was in residence at ENSAD in Paris. This was the point I realized I could create a treatment technology that might actually be functional. I had a bit of pressure to actually finish something and so launched the basic concept of ENKI technology. The funny thing was that reflecting on it now - that just marked a new beginning. (It took a year just to convince the director of Pepiniere that it was in fact a real project and not some conjecture in science fiction!). Coming to think of it I have never really finished anything, I am much more excited by the notion of continued experimentation. I don't want to finish discovering. The more I work on ENKI - the more things there are to do and try, it keeps opening up. There are always more questions.

What is there left to achieve? And how much have you learned about cross-species communication?

There is still a lot to achieve. The 'treatment' side is just one layer of the onion. I started the project with the aim of communicating with the fish, generating an electrical signal and transmitting this in the fish in the tank, to the fish. Then I watch the the fish, looking for behavioral 'interactions' with the electrodes - generally if there is an electrical (connective) change to the electrodes, the fish is aware of this and investigates the electrode by swimming near it and around it (motor-probing responses). I also listening for a 'chirp' response. The 'chirp' response is a subtle modulation of the Electric signal, a specific fluctuation in the wave. The 'chirp' is used during like species interaction and communication. This is closer to the idea of language we have.

Experimentally there are factors which make this difficult to measure - The fish learns to associate the vibrations created by me entering the studio & opening the tank with a food reward. So any approach to the tank needs to be made silently, and the fish needs to be 'conditioned' to learn this over a long time. As the project progressed I became more interested in communication as something closer to an idea of commune. For the fish I see the communication signal they make more as a deep expression of self; a projected physical extension of the fish body, rather than 'language' in an anthropological sense. This communication is happening at a more primal level. In terms of the ENKi project I am thinking about this as a biological, or physiological connection between living organisms.

I recently discovered that I might be having a problem with what is known as 'superstitious' behavior in the fish; if I was a scientist in the academic sense, this would be a serous flaw in the project; something to fix, but for me it was a fantastic turn, giving the project a new angle all together. Its now becoming an experiment into animal Psychology, not just electro physiology. I don't want to say too much about this next phase but next year the project will look quite different.

You recently developed the Opto-acoustic modulator and used it for an interactive work at FACT and Liverpool John Moores University for the National Science and Engineering Week. Can you give us more details about this interactive piece? How does it work? What were you trying to achieve with this project?

The commission was to create and interactive art work that used something other than keyborad or mouse. I was determined not to use a video camera either. The the Opto-acoustic modulator basically turns sound-waves into light-waves. It can take 10 audio channels and convert these into "AM" transmissions through 10 Light Emitting Diode arrays. I am fascinated by the notion of 'Amplitude Modulation' sending data using light waves. The idea was to use 'Hyalite' salt crystals, to broadcast sound through their 'ionizing' ambient glow. You interact with the light and can detect the data as sound using wearable sensors. Additionally, using Steve's 'muio' interface again, 8 light sensors detect movement around the crystals using a lens and light sensor (based on the idea a simple biological 'camera eye') these feed into MAX MSP controlling a soundscape.

I read on your statement page that you are currently "working on new experiments relating to the creation of life through growing crystals electrically on volcanic stone, hunting for Moss bears (Tardigrades; Fresh water extremophiles) and training Planarian worms. " Could you already tell us a few words about these experiments?

Tardigrade

I have been researching the work of William Cross for quite a while, and finally decided that I needed to recreate his experiments (with a few modifications) It's quite interesting trying to work out what he did - the only way to know is to recreate it. In 1837, he found these creatures "Acari electors" as he called them infesting an experiment, he believed that these things "spontaneously generated" within his experiment, several eminent scientists of the time recreated the experiment with the same results! My experiment is basically a recreation of this experiment, augmented with a little more technology - with the aim of capturing this phenomena of electrochemical abiogenesis. The only problem is the experiment has to run for many months.

I am interested in all sorts fresh water microscopic life; its a great 19h century tradition. With a decent microscope, you can take any roadside moss cluster and explore the interstitial oceans of liquids trapped between damp moss filaments. Here you might be lucky enough to find a Moss Bear ( "Tardigrade" ) an obscure form of extremophile that lives in moss. Believe it or not, it really does look like a bear! This in its self was a reason for laboring days over a microscope just to see if it was real! They don't fit into the zoological classification system, and have been given a phylum of their own. It is believed it is able to survive space travel, and at this moment a small space capsule orbits the earth containing some "Tardinauts" (its hard to compete with that) I simply enjoy looking for them. I like to go looking for moss growing in all kinds of areas, from urban waste lands, to the Peak District. "Tardigrades" are able to survive about 120 years in a dehydrated state; I was sifting through very old moss samples from Manchester Museum to see if I could reanimate 100 year old dehydrated Moss Bears. apparently it is possible. I had a lot more luck looking for the living ones. Unfortunately my one Planarian worm recently went missing in the tank. It is 8mm long, and I dont have the heart to keep it in a petri dish. I am not sure where it is.

Is there any artist or researcher whose work has been particularly inspiring for you?

I don't know where to start! Louis Bec for sure. I am really into what SymbioticA have been doing over the past few years, and what they are doing for the "Bio-art" movement. Otherwise, at the moment I am looking at the work of William Bebe. To be honest - I have been trying to read a lot more science fiction lately, particularly 19th century science fiction, and science writing. Often the science fiction tells you a lot about the popular understanding of science at the time. More importantly, its a good antidote ploughing through contemporary research papers.

Thanks Antony!

Related: El Niuton has a slideshow dedicated to the work of Simon Blackmore.

If you've never found any reason to go to Lancaster, the upcoming Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders might be a good one. The event will present new types of objects, buildings, and products stemming from the increasing use of digital technologies by artists, architects, designers, and others.

The programme is rather yummy. Among the projects exhibited is Light Sensitive Disk Drive, a custom-built LSD Drive able to read lost data on apparently useless CDs. It was designed by Simon Blackmore whom you might remember as one of the developers, together with Antony Hall, of the iLog,

"A CD drive taken from an old PC has been taken apart. The complex motors have been made to function again using hand coded microcontrollers. The laser that reads the data of the CD has been replaced by a light sensor that detects changes in light levels through the disk. By detecting the amount of light that falls through the disk, the drive is able to read the areas of lost data on a disk. This information is sent to a computer as midi data and then processed by a custom program written in the OS software application SuperCollider. The result is a fully functioning piece of computer hardware with accompanying software that allows users to make music with the hands-on process of scratching the disk."

The work was shown at Futuresonic in July, here are the pictures i took at the time. See it at Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders, CityLab, Lancaster (UK), from 29 September – 21 October, 2006. Organised by Fast-uk and folly.

If i were to go to ISEA this year (but i won't have to as Sascha is going to cover the event for the blog!), the one installation i'd rush to see would be Shawn Bailey and Jennifer Willet's Bioteknica Laboratory Remix with Teratological Prototypes, in collaboration with Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr of with Tissue Culture & Art Project.

Bioteknica is a fictitious biotech corporation that projects its viewers into the future, where within a virtual laboratory designer organisms are generated on demand. The mock organisms produced are irrational and quite frightening. They are modelled on the Teratoma (comes from a Greek term meaning roughly "monster tumor"), a cancerous growth containing multiple tissues like hair, skin, teeth, and vascular systems. Monstrous as this may seem, teratomas are genetically identical to humans, making them key in cloning research. Several biotech companies have been working with teratomas for years, although public awareness of this is slight – for now.

Until 2003, Bioteknica was a purely multimedia production. During the summer of 2004, the artists further enhanced the slippage between fiction and reality by working with tissue culture protocols in the production of artwork as was pioneered by Tissue Culture & Art Project. With their assistance, Bailey and Willet practiced utilizing existing tissue culture technologies towards developing a series of "soft" sculptures. The organic sculptures were both fabricated from store-bought meats, and cultivated in the laboratory utilizing tissue-engineering technologies.

The Bioteknica Laboratory Remix is a complex functional laboratory installation – built to sustain cellular life within the gallery environment. Utilizing tissue culture and tissue engineering technologies, the artists have developed a series of small sculptures (Teratological Prototypes) that will be grown live in the gallery environment with an accompanying installation, laboratory protocol performances, and video. To prepare the installation living cells have been extracted from the body of Shawn Bailey. The biopsy of dermis contains fibroblasts, viable keratinocytes, etc. They are used as primary cell source to be grown and proliferate in-vitro. Cells are placed in bioreactors and given fresh nutrient serum to allow them to develop. The complete prototype will be exhibited from August 7 in San Diego.

Bioteknica Laboratory Remix both embraces and critiques evolving biotechnologies, considering the contradictions and deep underlying complexities that these technologies offer the present and future of humanity.

The 4 last pictures are video stills of Willet and Bailey preparing the Teratological Prototypes at SymbioticA. All images courtesy of Jennifer Willet.

I've always admired Bioteknica's attempts to break down the barriers between scientific research and the public and their effort to raise awareness about the research done by biotechnology companies and about how fragile life is. Their work is deeply grounded in scientific research and although Bioteknica is a parody of a corporation of the future, the work is not such a far cry from what is going on in research labs today.

At Futuresonic, a couple of weeks ago, Anthony Dunne explained how the new department of Interaction Design he's now heading at the RCA in London could play a similar role by shifting away from their usual task of solving problems and making products ready to market. His "Design For Debate" talk was about imagining fictional spaces that would be relevant to our everyday life. The scenarios created shouldn't be shocking but slightly disturbing. He focuses on the role of designers to get the debate on biotechnology, and explained how designers can make tangible a technology that doesn't really exist (yet) in our daily life. He illustrated the concept with projects such as Victimless Meat, by James King, Jon Ardern's project (can't remember the name of it) that would explore the untapped market potential of in-vitro culture adult toys, the Evidence Dolls he created together with Fiona Raby for an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and a last project which have kind of hauted me ever since i heard about it: Michael Burton's Memento Mori In Vitro is inspired by the Victorian fashion to keep hair of someone you love in a locket. Except that this time the hair of a deceased person would be kept alive. They would be fed at breakfast, washed regularly, you'd stroke them while watching TV, etc. Some might find it is spooky, others would say it's quite romantic. So what if the idea of romance was transformed by technology?

Related: Future Worlds: Better by design?, Bioart - Taxonomy of an Etymological Monster, Extra Ear 1/4 Scale, Victimless leather jacket.

My notes from Zach's Making the invisible visible, a talk that he also dubbed "How i came to loose all of my hair in the last 5 years."

"I travel a lot and never know what i should write or say when i'm asked about my occupation. "Artist" sounds too egotistical, so i'd prefer to define myself as a "researcher" as i feel that my artistic practice is a kind of research. I use technology to augment the body, the intellet and extend ourselves. Unlike other instruments, like guitars, computers are a relatively new tool, we've just started to explore their creative potential."

Together with Golan Levin, he has created TMEMA. A fisrt series of their projects revolves around the voice.

The Hidden Worlds of Noise and Voice (2002) was influenced by one of Czech animator Michaela Pavlatova's works Reci Reci Reci (means "Words, words, words"). The drawings make visible the words that goes out of the characters' mouth.

The augmented-reality speech-visualization system reveals the relationship of speech to the ethereal medium which conveys it. Each of the six persons around a table wears special see-through data glasses (equipped with microphone and position sensor), which register and superimpose 3D graphics into the real world. When one of the users speaks or sings, colorful noodles appear to emerge from his or her mouth. The graphics are tightly coupled to the unique qualities of the vocalist's volume, pitch and timbre.

That same Summer they made a second project called RE:MARK. This time their enquiry is shifted towards a more symbolic representation of the spoken and written word. Sounds spoken into a pair of microphones are analyzed and classified by a phoneme recognition system. When a phoneme is recognized, the written name of the phoneme (for example, oh, ee, ah, etc.) is projected on the installation's display. If the user's sound is not recognized by the system's classifier, then an abstract shape is generated instead, based on the timbral characteristics of the vocalization.

As the visitor speaks, the phonemes and forms appear to emerge from the shadow of the speaker's head. A computer-vision system permits the visitors to interact with the sound fourms by using the shadow of their own body.

After that Levin and Lieberman were wondering what the next step could be. The works were quite successfull in a museum context but what would a professional vocalist do with such instruments? They worked with Jaap Blonk and Joan La Barbara on a 40-minute long performance called Messa de Voce. Not a single word is uttered but the whole performance was about language and communication. A software transforms every vocal nuance into correspondingly complex and highly expressive graphics. While the voice-generated graphics become an instrument which the singers can perform, body-based manipulations of these graphics additionally replay the sounds of the singers' voices — thus creating a cycle of interaction that fully integrates the performers into an ambience consisting of sound, virtual objects and real-time processing.

Liberman then briefly talked about Drawn, a performance/installation in which ink forms appear to rise off the page and interact with the very hands that drew them. The work explores the musicality of drawing by turning brushstrokes of ink into complex and energetic life forms. Video.

Zach is currently looking into ways to use these technologies for in the classroom for children with profound multiple learning disabilites as part of a NESTA education grant. He's working on a low cost version of the installations, designing a software that uses motions as an input to interact with the children. The software is adjustable to have a relationship with the children. So far the kids like it, it's an empowering experience for them: they are unable to make big motions but they can see that they are able to control the whole installation.

Related: Golan Levin keynote at Cybersonica in 2005.

Interview of Zachary Lieberman: pintar la voz. Scroll down for english version.

Here's my notes of the talk that Atau Tanaka gave about Mobile Music: Creating New Musical Forms For New Infrastrucutres at Futuresonic. I was particularly thrilled to hear him talk as one of his works, Bondage, was my favourite piece at last year's edition of Ars Electronica.

Part of his current research draws on Mobile Music workshops held over three years and revolves around the concept of re-creating the experience of mobile music, making it more creative that its current market manifestations (mainly ringtones.)

Tanaka hopes to blend his expertise as an IA researcher and artist and come up with new applications for wireless infrastructures. Clearly the addition of iPod with mobile phone wasn't such a success. Motorola iTunes wasn't a commercial success, no mobile operator wanted to play, there was a lack of "vision" in the Motorola iTune product. In the 1970s, the walkman was used by many users to create a private sonic universe, it allowed them to live in their own sphere, isolated from their surrounding. Now, in the 2000s, we have the mobile phone. The device is inherently a networking tool, it facilitate communication and connection with others.

So on the one hand we have the personal sphere and on the other the networking device. What stands between the two? How can we use Human Computer Interaction, Mixed Reality technology and social software to conciate the two?

So far new mediums have led to new musics:
- the format of the 45 rmp have helped rock'n'roll bloom (Elvis);
- the 33rpm had a similar effect on the "concept album" (The Beatles);
- MTV (images) boosted music videos;
- CDs (75') allowed for longer albums with more songs (Michael Jackson, Madonna);
- MD: user editing (karaoke);
- MP3: Peer to Peer. Like MD has led to a dematerialization of music.

The iPod hasn't changed music, it has just added a convenience factor.
What characterizes the mobile element is the fact that it's on the move and is dynamically following users; it also allows to make, share, locate and listen to music. Tanaka's goal is to create a new form of music that allows the new mediums to find their "artistic voice." To give mobile music what is called in music terms "idiomatic composition" (music written for a particular instrument: composing muci for piano rather than violin, for example.)

Muci mobility calls for interaction and connectivity. These two characteristics are absent from the iPod experience, although music inherently exhibits them because we play in groups, go to concerts together, share our favourite music with friends. Music is a living form of cultural expression, not a commodity to be sold and copied in a file system.

Tanaka wants to bring "musicking" to mobility. Musicking, a term coined by Christopher Small, is the activity of living out of music, of enjoying it in an active way.

Tanaka then gave an overview of his work to illustrate how he has so far explored the concepts of interaction and connectivity.

Sensorband

He first showed the BioMuse (1990-), a bioelectrical musical instrument that allows the performer to create music with muscular and neural activity. Tanaka was the first musician to be commissioned to work with the biomusical interface created at Stanford University. He used it during the performances of the Sensorband he formed in 1993 together with Zbigniew Karkowski and Edwin van der Heide. In this sensor instrument ensemble, there's no drummer, no singer, no guitar player. Each member uses his body as an instrument to play music. Tanaka plays the BioMuse. Karkowski plays an invisible cage of infrared beams that, when broken, trigger a sample of sounds. Van der Heide plays a MIDI conductor using joystick-like controls.

S.S.S

Ten years later, Cecile Babiole, Laurent Dailleau, and Tanaka created a dynamic sound/image environment called Sensors_Sonics_Sights. Using sensors and gestures, the trio create a work of sound and sight, a laptop performance that goes beyond with the intensity of bodies in movement. Cécile Babiole generates images ans uses ultrasound sensors, Tanaka plays BioMuse again and Laurent Dailleau plays the theremin.

Along with performances, Tanaka also worked on installations, one of them is Constellations that connects the physical space of a gallery to the imaginary space of the internet through sound and image. "Visitors in the gallery navigate an onscreen universe of planets, invoking audio to stream into the gallery. The planetary system is the interface to a library of soundfiles existing on servers throughout the internet. Each planet represents a contribution from a different composer. The sounds coming from the network space resonate in the acoustical space of the gallery, connecting these two universes."

Global String and Constellations

In 2002, he worked with Kasper Toeplitz on the Global String, a musical instrument wherein the network is the resonating body of the instrument, through the use of a real-time sound-synthesis server.

The musical string spanned the world. Its resonance circles the globe, allowing musical communication and collaboration among the people at each connected site. A physical string is connected to a virtual string on the network, it stretches from the floor to the ceiling of the space. On the floor is one end-the earth. Up above is the connection to the network, to one of the other ends somewhere else in the world. Vibration sensors translate the analog pulses to digital data.

Now Tanaka wants to come up with an artistic take on mobile music experience that would be simple enough to be enjoyed by a child (a child that has never played a piano can still get a lot of fun with it) and complex enough to be appreciated by a professional musician. Unlike video games, you wouldn't be able to set its user level.

The projecy will use IA: using technology of sensors, accelerometer and gyroscope to allow for body imput. The system would use this live gesture and add it to the mobile device. All this would of course be enjoyed in a social context. Each member of a community of users would have such device and freely move (they can even be far away from each other). Three elements that form the chore of locative media will be integrated in the musical work: mobility, location awareness and social networking.

The final piece has already a name: Net_Derive and will be launched in Paris this Autumn (on October 6 and 7 at Maison Rouge, Paris). Net_Derive will be a piece of "Musicking mobility" that will extend IA music beyond stage and concert hall.

Last image from this PDF document.

I don't like it but i can't help it: this blog is turning into Toshio Iwai's fanclub website.

He started his keynote presentation at Futuresonic right from the start: his childhood. He was born in 1962, in the Aichi Prefecture. He then showed us his first drawings (fish and lips!), then listed the presents his parents got him over the years: a book about insects that fascinated him, another one about light, heat and sound. One day his mother told him she'd stop buying him toys, instead she provided him with materials, tools and books about making things. So he built stuff and made more drawings for weird inventions he never really realised (like an umbrella you wouldn't have to hold because it would just sit on your shoulder.

He made little flipbooks on the pages corners of his school notebooks. Time passed, he learnt computer programming and made more elaborate flipbooks using video frames printed on paper.

In the early '80s, he discovered the prehistory of cinema. I've always been fascinated by it as well, but aren't we all?

He started to add contemporary technologies (copying machine, video device, computer) to the old devices. For the Copy Phenakisti-scopes to the good old Phenakistiscope. Iwai used a copy machine to create images (his hand, peanuts, scisors, etc.) that he then glued onto the slotted disc. The nicest experiment he did with these retro toys, was his take on the Zoetrope: he put physicall clay models, rather than drawings, into the Zoetrope canister.

Time Stratum

He then tried to evolve these small experiements into bigger installations. He showed us an amazing video (doubly amazing because these works were done in the '80s!) Time Stratum. He placed 120 paper human figures on a spinning disk, set up a video monitor above them, while strobing the light down, the paper figures seemed to live and move.

He got interested in music because he needed soundtrack for his works. He started using CDs or asked friends to compose some music for him, but he wanted to do everything himself.

So once again he turned to a retro toy: the hand-cranked antique music box that uses paper punched cards. Iwai found this device interesting, it made the music "visual" and thus better understandable to him.

In 1990, inspired by this technology, he created a computer game called Music Insects. In the game, the player can make marks with a mouse, which are akin to the punches on the music roll. Little insects walk along the screen. They have their own sound. They are kind of walking musical instruments that emit noises each time they meet a mark. You can choose up to four bugz at a time and each one plays the role of a different instrument.

Still, Iwai was unsatisfied with his "drawing software", he wanted to explore sound in a more tangible way. So he came up with Piano as Image Media. The user operates a trackball to draw lighted dots on a grid. The flashing dots move, and as soon as they come close to the piano they accelerate and strike a key. With the sound of the piano, a three-dimensional figure pops out of the keyboard. The audience-drawn shapes play the actual piano. The sound then generates moving colors and figures.

He later collaborated wiht pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto for the "Music Plays Images x Images Play Music", a concert that uses the system of Iwai's piano piece and visualizes a musical performance by Sakamoto in real time.

As Sakamoto plays a small keyboard, the piano starts to play. A faint light gradually emanates from the piano. At a certain point, Sakamoto stops playing. However, the last musical phrase repeats itself automatically, slowly fading out.

When Sakamoto plays the piano directly. The light-images that visually represent each note of the musical piece begin to rise from within the piano. The images capture not only the timing of the notes, but every aspect of the music, including the length of the notes and their loudness.
Later on the dots of light fall on a second piano, the piano begins to play. The dots of light then rebound to their original position, striking the keyboard at fixed intervals. Depending on where the dots of light are placed, the pitch of the notes and the patterns of repetition change.

During his talk Iwai presented most of his works, i just wrote down the one that amazed me most. Chris has uploaded a video of the talk on you tube.

More of his projects: Composition on the table, Morphovision - Hacking Photon, Oto Kinoko (Sound Mushroom), Ugo Ugo Lhuga: Japanese Kids TV Show, Toshio Iwai performance at Sonar, Bloomberg ICE space in Tokyo.