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Toshio Iwai Toshio Iwai is the Japanese media artist that builds interfaces to electronic musical instruments. He’s designed physical ones, like in the Tenori-On project with Yamaha, a handheld device that plays sound and light patterns, and software ones, like Electroplankton, the Nintendo DS game cum musical toy. In Electroplankton, players manipulate little ‘electroplankton’ on the DS’ touch screen to create showers of sounds. In fact, he’s designed several other games, for the PC and consoles like the NES. What with the impending release of Electroplankton in the UK, we had the opportunity to put him some questions about his work.
PIXELSURGEON: So, why the interest in making instruments?
I would like to design instruments especially for this digital age. Present electronic instruments and digital instruments are mostly made imitating traditional instruments like the piano or guitar. However, what I would like to create is totally a new instrument for modern times.
What attracted you to work with making musical devices in the first place? Are you a musician yourself?
I am not a music specialist. I have been interested in music and video pictures since I started to create footage when I was a university student. I started to compose music with a computer because I wanted to attach music that I created to my footage work. There was not a composing tool that was useful for me at that time, so I programmed one. That is how I started to work on this.
I met with some people from Yamaha recently and they talked with me about the challenge of designing new instruments because the standard piano, the violin and so on are so established.
Yes, traditional instruments such as piano and violin have been improved and made sophisticated by many people for a long time. I think it is very difficult to create a brand new instrument in this modern age, but I believe it is worthwhile to challenge this. Even ones like the piano and violin used to be completely new instruments. I am impressed by the fact that these new instruments fascinated many musicians and audiences, and new music and culture saw the light.
So do you think that the usual ways we make music with computers, like with sequencers and synthesisers, can be improved upon?
Computers and digital devices are still developing. I think these tools cannot catch people’s detailed expression yet, like an unplugged instrument. They are expected to improved further more. But at the same time, I believe we need to think differently.
Do you think that computer-produced music is as respected as traditional ways of making it?
All music should be respected because people created it. I feel that most of the music we hear today is created using electronic media. In that sense, I think musicians have already accepted electronic media. However, on the other hand, there are some opinions that analogue media is better than digital media, and I think I can understand this at this time. I feel in the future, analogue and digital will be mixed together more closely, and its border will be obscure naturally.
In projects like Tenori-On, how important is the physical interface - the thing you touch and hold? How does it affect the act of making music?
Any instruments are characterised by their physical interface, such as the key of a piano or the bow of a violin. And these physical interfaces give important direction to the way they are played and the sound itself. However, as long as electric instruments are concerned, this aspect is not emphasised very much. In the Tenori-On project, we started from thinking what is the reasonable interface for an electric instrument or digital instrument.
Do you think about the physical interface and the systems and software that generate the different noises as a single entity?
For the digital instrument, interface, exterior design, software, sound and so on are independent each other. I am examining the way all of them naturally unite, just like in the violin.
And what about the visual interface? Do you think about this in the same way as the physical interface?
The design of the visual interface is very important. The flow of time is not visible and very difficult to handle, but by expressing it visually it can be understood and handled by everybody. Moreover, music can give different impressions when it is expressed visually.
So what is the relationship between visual imagery and music?
I think that the visual world and sounds are in an inseparable relationship. Actually when a sound is generated in our living world, there is some kind of physical phenomenon – a motion or form which we can see. Since it became possible to make sound electrically or electronically, the synthesizing of sound has been separated from the visual world. However with the senses we are borne with, we think it is more natural to experience sound and vision at the same time.
Electroplankton is very visually appealing – why the water motif?
I used to love looking into a microscope when I was a boy. Then as I kept on thinking how I could express sound and light visually. I hit on the idea of combining the world of water and tiny microbes – plankton. I think the transparency and floating motion of water and plankton as free shapes are very compatible with the new world of sound and light.
Anyone can play with Electroplankton and make some kind of music. How important is it to you to make producing music accessible to anyone?
Previously, playing and composing music was only for people who had been specially educated or trained. But, everybody yearns to play or compose music comfortably. I myself am one of them. I thought this could be realised thanks to new technology like computers. By these means, I believe people can easily feel more close to music and more satisfied than times when they just listen to music that somebody else has composed.
You like to create projects that encourage play. How do you do this?
As everybody wants to touch instruments or toys which he or she hasn’t seen before, when I design something, I am trying to create it so that it is very attractive at first sight. And when players touch it, it can be instinctively understood and they can be pulled into it very strongly and start trying to create their own designs in many different ways.
Talking of play, Electroplankton is quite close to being a game, and you've worked with games consoles extensively in the past. Can you tell me about your relationship with games?
Videogames are very different from previous electronic media since they are interactive. In the 80s I was very much interested in this new feature, though I never thought of creating games by myself because although the games are interactive, the players had become passive. I wondered how I could make something in which players can become more creative. Then I came to an idea to create something like an instrument that can manipulate images and music simultaneously by using the functions of a videogame machine. I have produced four pieces of software so far, and all of them are based on the same concept.
So why is it important to inspire people to play with your work?
I want people to feel the same kind of surprise and fresh sensation that I felt when I was creating the title. I wish that people can become aware of the joy of creating something with their own hands.
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