If you are interested in interactive art and digital music, you’ve probably watched this video on youtube about 1,200 times already, or have seen other works by Toshio Iwai. Now, if you had decided to set aside $1 each time you watched that video, you’d have enough to actually purchase one.
Last Tuesday, there was a UK launch of Iwai’s Tenori-On, which is now being made by Yamaha. It’s pretty amazing to see a piece of digital interactive art being manufactured as a high-end product. But then again, for Iwai, that concept is not completely foreign, as one can see by the success of other endeavors like ElectroPlankton for Nintendo DS. Still, for me it is interesting to consider the strange space between commercial product and art object that Tenori-On occupies: Even though the price is outrageous by ordinary commercial standards, it does tend to foster a sense of art-object “preciousness”. Plus, the “launch party” photos look more like an art gallery opening. How much could it seriously cost to manufacture one of these? It reminds me of Jacob Ciocci from PaperRad talking about the fishiness between selling a DVD in an art gallery for hundreds of dollars vs. burning one free for his friends.
Check out this website for a more detailed account of the launch party
