Two big screens tower in front of industrial-sized treadmills like divine guardians. As you climb atop the treadmills like a timid mouse and start running, an urban scene pops up onto the screen and the image moves forward to the pace of your feet. A street, an alleyway, a train platform, a harbor, a track, a mountain road... In these scenes, not a single soul - just you, running intensely through the night.

The interaction of the installation occurs as you run forward on the belt. The further forward you go, the faster the belt moves. In the middle of the screen there is a small hole in which a camera has been placed that judges the distance between the runner and screen.

The visual imagery is Rotterdam at night. The artist, Marnix de Nijs, chose Rotterdam because that is where he lives, but the imagery is beautiful. What I heard from Marnix is that he blocked the roads and filmed it with a high definition camcorder. On top of that, the cameraman for the project worked on a film from British director Peter Greenway.

There were as many as thirty different scenes filmed. It had been processed, but the creation of the film took two passionate years. A masterpiece. This dedication is the driving force behind this installation.

Out of all the pieces that I saw at Ars, I liked RMR the best. The charm of the installation was great, and so was Marnix himself. At Ars the year before he was just a passing acquaintance, but we got to know each other at DEAF04 in Rotterdam. At a glance, he looks like a guy you’d be ready to ignore if you ran into him in a Bronx alleyway, but once you talk to him, this irresistible smile appears on his face.

And all of his physical, dynamic artwork have a certain intensity to them. When I tried the machine though, I sprinted off the belt and broke my collarbone. It was sore. You definitely need to check out his other works too!
...Marnix de Nijs’s Site

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This year, the Interactive Art category drew 507 entries from around the world, and the MILK project stood out from the crowd to receive the Golden Nica (the grand prix).

The project tracked milk produced at a Latvian ranch as it journeyed to Dutch consumers. In the exhibit, a map, a projected image and a GPS monitor revealed the video documentation of the ranch owner, the workers carrying the milk, the machine that processes the milk into cheese, the transporters who ship it all the way to Holland, the vendors at a Dutch market selling the cheese, and the consumers themselves. Showing photos, text, and voice as well, the film progresses lightly.

What the project organizer did was give each person a GPS tracker, and as the wagons they moved around in were projected onto a stylish wooden-framed monitor. In the exhibit space, little enhancements like a cool lampshade and the bench used to squeeze milk helped to create the mood.

The exhibit displayed lives of all these people connected by milk, but I thought if it was told by video instead of photography, you would get a sense of their everyday lives.

Also, the nationalities of the 3 people interviewed are Latvian with person in the center being Dutch. You can also experience this exhibit on the web. Take a look at the beautiful photos and all the warmhearted people connected by milk.
...MILKproject’s Site

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When I heard the name, it kinda smelled like a special attack from Street Fighter 2, but it was actually a lot more stylish so I was a personally a little disappointed.

Using a Wacom display, as you draw on a blank white screen the installation creates a sound. But the screen isn’t an ordinary flat surface. It’s actually rotating from right to left along a vertical axis creating a 3D canvas. In other words, the sketcher becomes a sculptor digitally creating a 3D sculpture.

You can see a thin horizontal line on the screen. Actually, depending on the place that you write, the scale of the sound changes. In other words, this white canvas is actually murmuring music. Draw a line near the top and a high pitch sound comes out, but draw near the bottom and you get a low pitch. The sound’s length follows the length of the line.
So this 3-dimensional canvas also has a time axis. And, you can also save your sketch (sculpture) on the machine.

The creator, Amit Pitaru, is of course a pro at his creation, and all of the sketches that I thought were beautiful were his. The instrument requires quite a lot of skill, and I bet if there was a "Sonic Wire Sculptor Championships", it would create quite a stir.

Also, the sketch that appears at the end of the video clip is supposed to be a Japanese comic character called the "Kamen Rider". It was drawn by Mrs.Nomura who always coordinates trips for us.
...Amit Pitaru’s Site

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Ars began on 9/1 and ended on 9/6. Each night after finishing our shoot, we relaxed over beer and wine at the pub/club Stadtwerkstatt near the Ars Center. Compared to Tokyo, Linz is a tiny dot with not many places for the young to fuck around. In other words, the pub was pretty much the only place we could go. Kinda like a dumping ground for all the youthful energy being packed into this town. And two dance floors that are crammed up against the bar like parasites.

Maybe because of the small town feeling though, once you got to acquainted with the female bartender, she would make sure to take you order over all the other orders being thrown at her in the crowded place. With that kind of attention, you get a kind of feel-good superiority complex that wraps your entire body. I couldn’t help wanting to come back the next day. If you ever get the chance, try the place out.

Stadtwerkstatt isn’t just a place where people go to get drunk though. They’re also filled with club events, performances, concerts night after night. Every evening there is an official Ars performance, but in the middle of night they also have funk/punk concerts that have nothing to do with the Festival itself.

Well, time to say goodbye to Anna. She helped us with the film shoot, explained the exhibits, drank beer with us, and after the Festival, she and her friends invited Kenji and I for dinner in Vienna too. We owe her so much!

This year when we visited Ars, focusing on Anna and the other staff really helped us to get a good taste of the Festival. We hope you get to you too will feel how charming Linz is, how fun Ars is and of course, how interesting the staff and artists are.

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This was the start of Ars' box event. In a place that seemed like a warehouse for repairing Austrian National Railway trains, someone put lighting and speakers turning the place into a club. Abstract and techno music pumped out of the sound boxes while cool images were projected. The visual images apparently used data to make it interactive, but I couldn't find out exactly how it was interactive.

What was more fun was the atmosphere of the venue. Drinking beer and wine with all kinds of amazing people was absolutely great. It wasn't the kind of music that I personally like, but other than that, the mood of the trains sitting silently in the dark was soothing. A great warm up event to Ars.

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Klangwolke. Translated, it means "the cloud of sound". As an explosion echoes along the banks of the Danube River, what we see is a stage created on a boat, and one enormous opera being held.

Along with the establishment of Ars in 1979 was Klangwolke. Because it's known among Linz's citizens as a fireworks display, it is actually more famous than Ars Electronica. And like the great mass of people bathing in the Ganges in Varanasi, India, old men and women, children, everyone faces the riverbank in unison. From evening onward, the crowd was unbelievable. Perhaps a hundred thousand people, 150,000 according to one estimate. You could certainly feel the air getting thick. Like Japan's ultra popular high school baseball tournament, the Koshien, from the end of one summer to the glory of the next, preparations take an entire year. That is how big this event is.

This year war was the theme. I think the story was about if Austria had remained occupied by Germany, but I'm not exactly sure. Sorry. My impression? The show itself was honestly not that good. But the explosive sound of the jet ski was pretty awesome. It was so awesome I thought my back was going to break. Probably considered noise pollution though.

26 years ago, the first Klangwolke was really amazing apparently. All the citizens of Linz placed their radios by their windows and tuned in all at once to a station playing digital music. The entire city reverberated with the music. It rocked. In contrast, recently all that's being required is money. You watch and the moment it's over, you start thinking about dinner. It doesn't stick to your bones...

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Of all the events that take place night after night, the O.K Night at the bar on the top floor of the O.K Center beats them all.The event title itself has nothing interesting about it, but the event itself is quite an interesting performance.

This year, they used a hard disk to make noise. Someone holding a guitar was beside the hard disk guy, but he wasn't playing it. Rather, he was using the effecter to make a howling-like sound. Even more interesting was the fact that the guy manipulating the hard disk was actually a staff member in charge of the carpentry for all the exhibits. And the guy and girl bartenders were also infotrainers who I saw during the day in the exhibit space. The family atmosphere that you get at Linz is one of the event's most charming points, and even if you don't know anyone there, someone will come and have a drink with you.

The night before O.K Night was the annual Klangwolke. It has become easy-to-understand like a Universal Studios show and a Hollywood-like pop style that leaves you feeling cheated. But participating in this local event afterwards, allowed me to really feel just how much Ars rocks. This is it!

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- Digital Music with a History -
The Prix Ars competition at Ars Electronica was create nearly 20 years ago in 1987. For artists, the computer became an important tool, and Prix Ars was born with the mission of showing all the computer art created at once. The first categories in the competition included computer animation, computer graphics, and computer music. The first winner of the computer music's Golden Nica will always be remembered as Peter Gabriel.
... Kiyoshi's eye AAL003

- Cultural Giga Mix -
Last time AAL's introduction of Ho Ho Do ended with them laughing. Our guests this time range from Ho Ho Do to Okuno-san, Abo-san, and Sudou-san from the group Cultural Giga Mix Party "Drill".
This trio when you first meet them seem a bit sketchy - they'd be Xylitol if they were a chewing gum, a concealed Frisk if they were a mint, they'd be giving lip service only to the latest warnings; but their work! You can see that they are dead serious. In reality, they really know their music - conceptual, technical, music that creates mood - and they love it all. Just listening them explain about music and I come away learning something. Although, it's supposed to be the other way around...

A naked, vibrating light bulb coil creates a sound. This installation is as simple as that.
The exhibit space was divided into two. One was the Day Room into which daylight poured, the other pitch black. I didn't really understand the Day Room, but the dark one was had beautiful electric coils set up, and they gave off a frizzling sound. Light bulbs placed in high positions had a high pitch, the ones on the ground had a low one.

Once you step into the dark room and look into the soft light, you are hit by an exotic feeling, like you have just traveled back in time to the ancient Tigris-Euphrates Civilization. Then, sitting in a slightly hard sofa, the bulbs don't just make noise, they begin to play music. This is quite Arabian. By just hanging naked light bulbs in a dark room, the space turns from shabby to cosmic. And sometimes a certain melancholy, like an old street lamp, hangs in the air. The experience is of the light bulb's multifaceted expressiveness.

The team that created this installation, artificial, has been displaying their light bulb works for a while now. Of the 100 or so light bulbs that they found and purchased in a market, perhaps 80 have been used already. With only a few left, after seeing these images, you may want to become French! Check out their website and hurry to an exhibition!

artificiel's Site
http://www.artificiel.org/

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On a silver platform sits an unremarkable mass-produced looking piece of equipment. What looks like an amplifier or maybe a CD player at first glance is actually a G-Player. It's function is no different from an ordinary record or CD player in that it is used to listen to sounds. Put what is played back on the G-Player is not a record or CD, it is the Earth. It's slogan: "The Earth is a disk. The Earth is a record."

A geographical database made up of data from cities, the undulation of mountain ranges and the orbit of an artificial satellite as it circles the Earth are all calculated to produce the Sound of the Earth. What you really hear though is the noise of an enormous amount of data being loaded. But it sounded so much like what the Earth should sound like that it gave me the chills.

Like tuning a radio, if you turn the knob on the player, you can "tune" in to some 1000 satellites - geographical satellites, military satellites... the player has a number of genres to choose from. The satellite's name, present longitude and latitude, and its distance from the earth are displayed. Looking at the longitude and latitude, you can see that the satellites are continually moving, and as it moves the subtle changes that you hear really does sound like the scratches of the earth. The noise produced by cities and mountain ranges are very loud, while the oceans are silent having no data to produce. In the event space, a map was also hung so that you can have fun locating the satellites you listen to.

The artist, Jens Bland, is active in Cologne, Germany. In his white shirt, slacks and glasses, he looks like your stereotypical salesman. The exhibit space also looks like a showroom with flyers and a flat-panel monitor, even a decorative plant! One reason for the setup is that his own name is Bland, but in all seriousness, the G-Player allows you to hear a sound that can't be heard, the sound of the Earth as if it were an ordinary thing, and the room reflects this making it sound even more like the real thing. I love geography, so this sound is just absolutely amazing.

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Four bird cages were placed in the stairwell on the 2nd floor of the OK Center. Inside is a sparrow, but before long the sparrow is replaced by a flame, and if you listen carefully a voice emerges. As I wondered who was speaking, what I heard next from the flame was the excited voice of Hitler. Finally I understood, the owners of these voices were Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mussolini, Stalin... Their radio speeches from World War II were emerging from the flame.

What Paul Demarinis, the artist, was interested in was the history of radio. Although it became the first form of broadcast media, it seems the radio was first developed as a scientific way of communicating with the spirits of the dead, and later became a way for people to communicate over distances.

In the 1920s, the radio as transmitted media became a powerful tool for politics. Political voices were heard in homes for the first time and people accepted the ideas and criticism presented to them. In 1935, the public gathered in front of the radio instead of the fireplace and Roosevelt called his radio broadcasts "Fireside Chats".

A Fireside Chat transmitted in 1935 about reconsidering the savings system was the speech featured in this installation. Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini all used the radio effectively.

Okay, what about the flame? According to Demarinis, the fire is a metaphor for the political speeches, what lit the world on fire. The other mystery of this installation is that the fire becomes the speaker. It is not well known, but when you apply voltage to fire, it is sucked inward acquiring the property of electrical conductivity. Sound is transmitted by vibrations in the air, and since the air vibrates due to the heat of the flame, it becomes a producer of sound.

Graham Bell's little brother Mervil was the first to discover that fire conducts electricity. It seems that the audio device he created consisted of two wires and fire according to the patent.

There's a lot of history packed into this small installation. Demarinis spend a long time researching radios and fire, and that time spent on this subject is trapped in the bird cage. Light bulbs and the sound of the Earth were definitely interesting, but this exhibit certainly surpasses all in its experimentation and new expressiveness.

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- India, Indians, and my trip to India -
What comes to mind when you think about India: Curry? Tandoori chicken? Saibaba? Not that it matters, really. This year, the Indians came to Linz in droves. There were probably around 50 or so. Those who have never been, and never will go to India probably saw more Indians than you're likely to see in 3 lifetimes.
... Kiyoshi's eye AAL004

- "Scratching" with a Tohoku accent -
Those in the know will have heard of Atsuko Miyazaki, the owner of coqdo Records. She's next in line after our feature with Drill. The beautiful but very tough Astuko has been maintaining a busy teaching schedule shuttling between polytechnic schools in Sendai and Fukushima, and then jumping on the bullet train back to Udagawa-cho in Shibuya for half a week before starting all over again, for almost 4 years.
I speak in Miyazaki dialect (well, strictly speaking it's closer to Satsuma dialect because I'm from Miyakonojyo), while Atsuko speaks in Fukushima dialect. I had never spoken to anyone with a Tohoku (north-eastern) accent before but hearing her speak in her drawl of hers was so pleasurable. I wonder what Atsuko, a fan of house music, thought of the Indian music she heard? Check it out!

An Indian Music Festival was held in Hauptpatz. Nothing much was happening at first and I was beginning to wondering what exactly was going on, when a couple of Indian youth holding black radio-cassette players appeared. Some stood still, while others walked around. After a while, I heard someone singing. Following the voice, I saw a woman singing from the window of the University of Arts building. You could also hear her voice through the radio-cassette players, which resonated throughout the plaza.

Although I was skeptical about the cheap-looking gadgets at first, I was pleasantly surprised by the rich sound that they were emanating. To think that this performance may be an homage to the first ever Klangwolke (when the citizens of Linz placed radios and stereos on their windowsills and played electronic music throughout the city) made it all the more poignant.

After marching around the plaza, the band of Indians moved to a carpet and played 6 songs using traditional instruments. There were some television sets showing another Indian band playing music, and the band in front of us played along with the band on screen. Of course, the band on screen weren't playing live. The performance was steeped in nostalgia, what with the radio-cassette players and old TV sets.

Anyway, there was something special about listening to Indian music in a European town. A man and a woman sang songs infused with Kabirian philosophy as if it were an anthem of this town. I especially remember how the plaza gradually filled up with people being drawn to the sounds of the tablas and sitars, and everybody sitting around and cooling off, savoring the summer's end.
Come to think of it, the ARS festival is always held during the perfect season...

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- Rustle TV -
Arathi Parthasarthy, Ishan Ghosh, Nupur Mathur, Siddharth Muthyala, Pratima Kalmadi, Navin Kumar, Arshiya Naina, Pallavi Agarwala, Nomita Khatri, Khusrav Writer

With India being one of the world's biggest film industries, their video-art is, as expected, very interesting. This work consists of cameraman infiltrating the 100 year old Rustle Market in Bangalore for 3 weeks, and relaying the footage to Linz. This footage shot by these cameramen was shown on 3 screens, mixed with documentary-type footage of the cameramen shooting in the market.

I remembered that when I went to an Indian market for the first time, I was blown away by its fervor and the distinct feeling of the market having a long history closely attached to the natives in the town. As well, I felt that it had a closed-off atmosphere that outsiders cannot penetrate. It's a universe all on its own. The rough camerawork on the three screens simultaneously bombarded your senses, making it an emotional rather than cerebral experience. Although I didn't understand one word of what was being uttered, I definitely felt that some intangible desire of mine to see this sort of art was being satisfied.

- Where is Ulat Bansi? - Amaranta Nehru
An interactive piece using the philosopher Kabir as a motif.
The interactive element of this piece was disappointing. Works like this suffer when the interactivity doesn't work. Shame.

- Body in Balance - Smriti Chanchani
Another interactive installation featuring Kabir.
As you hover your hand above the white fog on the screen, the fog disappears just underneath your hand and you can see sculptures and other artworks. An infra-red camera senses your presence and controls the screen using MAX/MASP, and a projector projects the images.

It definitely has an air of indigenous mystery about it, especially not knowing what the artworks projected on the screen mean, but unfortunately the mysteriousness turns to annoyance very quickly as, not being Indian, it's very difficult to empathize with the Indian perspective of "kabir" and his legend.

- Spitituarl Index - Smriti Chanchani
A "spiritual index" created by the same artist. Actually, the only thing she made here is the pieces of paper with Kabir's poetry written on it. The machine that churns out these bits of paper is apparently very popular in India as a fortune-telling machine (I've never seen them before, although I guess the last time I was there was 8 years ago), and the artist "modified" this machine for this work.It seems like she made this for fun, seeing as she hasn't even named the machine yet.

However, the exotic-looking machine attracted much attention in the exhibition space, and many who tried it for 20 cents were left scratching their heads in wonder. I guess it's difficult to appreciate if you can't understand what Kabir's talking about in his poetry.One qualm might be that the bit of paper slips out as soon as you insert the coin. I think it might be better to raise the audience's expectation by stalling a bit here.

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Lastly, a bit of footage for fun. It's very "rock". I was in awe of the Indians aggressively thrashing their arms and throwing themselves into the moshpit. Such passion. Oh man, I really want to go to India again.

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- HYBRID - Living in Paradox -
Let me introduce the themed exhibit of ARS, which is another great feature of the festival along with the actual competition. I explained before that ARS initially began as an electronic music festival, but since 1987's "FREE SOUND", the festival runs with a particular theme each year.

The themes were introduced as a way of unifying the events and exhibitions that take place every year.
... Kiyoshi's eye AAL005

- The Boundaries of Photography and Painting -
We're heading into the second half of the 5th ARS. Following Atsuko are film director Toshi Ota, and painter Kiida Oikawa. Since meeting in 2000, the two have been creating very strange works that combine photography and paintings. The two talked non-stop while digital artworks blared at them in the exhibition space of Gallery Ef in Asakusa, a godown-like warehouse built in the late Edo era. The interview was very exciting, as the two seemed enthusiastic about ARS. It would be great if you could watch the clip 3 or 4 times and really get into their conversation.

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An overgrown garden appeared in Brookner House, a.k.a. the temple of music. I followed some bird-like sounds into the garden to find weird machines with their circuit boards in full view. This, it seems, was the artwork.

It's called Elf, and lives in this electronically engineered forest. In this world of hybridization, boundaries are crossed everyday, and new, unexplainable chemical reactions abound. This work implies that a world where technology and nature harmoniously coexist is not so far away. Elf lives off sunlight; it's operated by solar energy, meaning that these machines can essentially sing and fidget forever. Plus, they sleep at night. What a wholesome little hybrid.

Seeing the man-made gadgets among real trees as if it's the most natural thing in the world, I began to lose grip of what's fiction, and what's not. They really got me there. Elf was obviously the main attraction and it was exhibited accordingly, and in seeing it, I was again impressed by the high quality of ARS, and the talent of the artist. The way in which it shivered and fidgeted with regular intervals accentuated the calculated exactness of technology, and yet there was an unmistakable other-worldly creature-esque feel to it.

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A cockroach controls a mobile robot. Yes, indeed, a hybrid. The two are not linked directly, but mediated by a ping pong ball. Basically, a cockroach with masking tape on its back is placed on the ping pong ball, and the robot moves in the same direction that the ball rolls. As you know, cockroaches tend to move towards the dark. Thus, an LED light is placed in front of the cockroach, and controls its movements by switching on whenever it tries to move to a darker spot.

That's all good, but the interpretation of "hybrid" seems a little too straightforward here, almost archaic. It's very simple and easy to understand. It's funny because without the "hybrid" thing, I kept thinking about how melancholic the roach looked and tried to imagine the situation from its perspective. By the way, the roach was a Madagascar. 5 Euros. You can buy them in Japan for 700 yen a pop. I don't have a problem with roaches, and I thought this one looked really cool with its huge armor.

The artist Garnet Hertz specializes in this sort of art. Frogs, worms, etc ... Those who are interested should check out his website. The first page is totally covered in text, I got a headache from just looking at it ... Garnet Hertz's Site http://www.conceptlab.com/

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When the audience blows air into a neat row of 12 paddle wheels, 12 electrical fans placed in front of them start turning. There is a sensor that detects wind in the middle of the paddle wheels. The strength of the wind doesn't matter. And even if you stop blowing, the sensor memorizes the wind pattern and refers to this repeatedly until someone new blows into the wheel.

This is a hybrid of technology and the environment. In our world, tiny things become really big, then really really big, without us even noticing. Simple text messages and emails, for example, race around the world through a tightly woven network.

We spend most of our waking day in the hybrid environment created by Mr. Communication and Miss. Technology. There was once a time when we were constantly reminded to sit at least 3 meters away from the TV screen, yet now, we're no further than 50cm from the interfaces of our computers. This leads to bad eyesight. Soon, glasses or contact lenses are needed. And voila, we become hybrids... Don't worry, I didn't actually mull over such deep thoughts when I saw this artwork, it just came to me later.

I recommend seeing this work with a girl you fancy. I was lucky enough to attend with the coordinator Mrs. Nomura's Czech friend Misha, who was absolutely stunning... I asked her to pose for our camera, and blew with all my might into the 12 wheels. The Czech lady's hair gently swayed with the breeze. And oh, her smile... I felt as if I was witnessing the birth of Venus! Thus, my ulterior motive created beauty... great installation, isn't it?

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This was exhibited in Linz's Central Station. I pushed my way through a crowd of people to find a kid sleeping under a blanket. The thing is, the blanket was wiggling and squiggling furiously. Apparently, the blanket tries to wrap around the sleeping person when they move, and this helps them sleep better... Wow, huh?

What was interesting is that they used a station as the exhibition space. The exhibit made you feel like you were at a stall which sold these bizarre "moving blankets", rather than an "exhibition space" as such. You could test the blanket out in the testing space, and if you liked it you could buy it on the spot.

Exhibitions that feature "fake" media artworks such as this are interesting, and they work. ARS took this particular work into the public realm because they saw its potential to attract people and engage with its environment. Very impressive.

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My first recommendation. This is the thing I wanted to show you all the most. It was a giant dinosaur-skeleton-like thing that appeared in Haupt Square, which is in the center of town and features a huge statue of the Holy Trinity. Just when you think it's standing still, it suddenly starts moving with this whooshing noise! When you look at it closely you can see that it's made of countless yellow plastic tubes connected together. There isn't a single nail in the whole thing, and the joints are fastened together using wooden poles and stuff. What powers it isn't electricity, but air... When it moves its wings, an air compressor made out of plastic bottles draws in air, and when that air is released, the joints move. Basically, the wings are its gills and the plastic bottles are its lungs. It was seriously well made. And the size of it was astounding.

The artist who made it was a cool-looking older guy. Theo Jansen was born and raised on the coast of Holland, and spent fourteen years making Strandbeest. This is definitely what you'd call a "life work." With this and Marnix's "Run Motherfucker Run," it seems like I tend to be drawn to things made by Dutch artists. Same goes for soccer and architecture...

Strandbeest's Site
http://www.strandbeest.com/

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My final recommendation. The last work of ARS was Toshio Iwai's TENORI-ON performance. TENORI-ON is the next-generation instrument Iwai is collaborating with Yamaha to develop, and can be played by anyone, regardless of whether they're a novice or a pro.

The first thing to catch your eye is the 16x16 matrix of LED switches. If you push the switches or slide your finger over them, they emit these beautiful sounds and lights. And another Iwai-like feature is that there aren't only LEDs on the control pad, but on the back of the instrument, as well. The TENORI-ON isn't just enjoyed by the performer, but entertains the people watching it, too. And what's more, even if you don't have the techniques you'd need for other instruments, you can create the most unexpected LED miracles with it. I found it to be a truly happy musical interface.

It has a weight to it when you hold it, and feels well-made. When I held it in both hands, my spine naturally snapped into an upright posture, which made me imagine what I must look like holding it and think, "Hey, I might be looking pretty cool right now."

You can make music with it even if you don't know how to use it, but I think that you'd need more time with the TENORI-ON to make music the way you want it to sound.

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