Media artist Toshio Iwai continues to develop stunning, fanciful ways of making music. From SONAR, here is Toshio Iwai working live with his Tenori-On music controller, in case you haven’t seen this already:

More YouTube goodness after the jump, but let’s skip ahead to the even better news: Toshio Iwai has started a development blog for the Tenori-On. Nat, the graphics designer behind Create Digital Music, has all the details on his blog onetonnemusic.

Tenori-On Report by Toshio Iwai and Tenori-On Development Team

Aside from keeping tabs on the Tenori-On, you can watch other ideas develop, like a blue-lit sound installation on a music stand. (Clever way of making that portable!) Also, in case you weren’t jealous enough of the people who got to go to SONAR, we appear to have missed what looks like a bumper car rave. Okay, I’m officially saving up miles for next year.

Videos and additional links after the jump. (Thanks to Fabio and Señor Pantalones for the tips. Okay, there’s a silly sounding sentence.)

Toshio Iwai, creator of Electroplankton, is working on a new digital musical instrument with Yamaha. It’s called the Tenori-On and, at least from an industrial design point of view, it looks beautiful. And if you’re in Spain, you can check it out live in action.

I’ve had Electroplankton for a while now, and I feel the need to document my experience. Reviews of Electroplankton in general are redundant: people either get it or they don’t. If you’re a music nerd and enjoy experimental music, you’ll love it. Enough said.

Hence, this exposition, or perhaps exposé - you choose. For anyone who came in late, Electroplankton is a title for Nintendo DS that basically has a set of 10 “minigames” that revolve around music creation.

It’s not every day a major gaming company releases a game that’s also serious interactive art and a unique way of creating music. But that’s exactly what Nintendo of America is doing today, bringing the strange and beautiful music art game ElectroPlankton to the US. (See Nintendo’s game page, press release.)

Ars Electronica is one the premiere events of the interactive tech world, and this year was apparently no exception. Good luck deciphering the stream-of-consciousness blog entries on the festival, though; I sure can’t. I’ve tried to pull some of the best references here (via a wiki of weblog action:

Ars Electronica Review [pieceofplastic.com]

Ars Electronica photostream [Flickr]

Tangible interfaces [engadgeted.net], again featuring the ReacTable — see CDM’s musical table roundup

One of the highlights was the Tenori-On, an interactive LED music toy from the creator of Nintendo’s upcoming game ElectroPlankton, as covered here before. But the coolest event sounds like the opening performance “Suspended Engines” (pictured), with video and music live in an engine shop of the Austrian Railway. (Blog details are sketchy, but see Fashionable Technology.) Now, if only they had a train controller for the performance.

Tom Wilburn continues to document music-making using a Nintendo DS and Nintendo’s bizarre game, ElectroPlankton. Since we last checked in with him, he’s gotten further content up, plus an evolving table-of-contents.

Composing with ElectroPlankton: Table of Contents [Mile Zero]

There’s just one hitch: it’d be great to get audio into the Nintendo DS via a cable instead of the mic. Thomas tried hacking the built-in jack, but with less-than-desirable results. Any experienced benders out there wanna help out? Any word on headsets for the DS? Give him or me a holler and let us know.

Thomas also sends details of his experience after the jump, including how it’s going using a game that’s imported in Japanese.

Yet more Nintendo music-making — this time with the strange and fascinating ElectroPlankton music game for the Nintendo DS. Thomas at MileZero has started a tutorial on starting a “one-man band” using ElectroPlankton:

Part one: introduction and why he did it
Part two: Working with Luminaria (don’t ask; think you have to try it!)

If anyone is going to make music with game systems, this is really the way to do it. Like the music software homebrewers have created for the original Game Boy, ElectroPlankton is really tailored to the game hardware on which it runs. And it offers something different: not just a drum machine ported to a game system (like the games available for the PSP) or another look-alike synth we see every day on computers — it’s a truly unique experience.

Of course, I think soon you’ll see an increasing number of musicians building their own tools on computers, too. And if you want some inspiration for out-of-the-box design, pick up a game system. It’s a terrific tax deduction.

Introducing Downsampled: in conjunction with Computer Music Magazine (UK), CDM will look monthly at an overview of a hot topic on the site. First up: next-generation gaming and music. Here’s a roundup of just some of the relevant stories on CDM.

Nintendo markets music-making as game:
Start your own Wi-Fi Nintendo Band with the Nintendo DS and Band Brothers (+ geeky video of Nintendo execs and Miyamoto’s vision of gaming)
ElectroPlankton game interactive musical toy for the DS
Installation and duos with live violin using ElectroPlankton in Japan
PSP lovers . . . check out PSP Kick

Games as instruments:
Our friends at Harmonix develop music-themed PlayStation 2 games
Freezepop plays live with the PS2 (featuring members of the Harmonix team)

Serious game music:
Orchestras take on game music
Connection between game music and permutative scores
Past, present, and future of game music

Xbox 360 + music:
New game consoles’ music/audio compared (E3)
Visualizer app to be pre-loaded on Xbox 360 from legendary veteran developer (updated: interview link + more
Top game composers sound off on Xbox 360 features and in-game controversy (CDM interviews)

Welcome, Computer Music readers!

What, Nintendo, a video game company? Naw, CDM continues to gather more and more evidence that what Nintendo really wants to be is interactive performance artists. IGN reports last month Nintendo even staged a live interactive exhibit and music performance in Japan to launch the upcoming Nintendo DS

game ElectroPlankton. (Articles, photos, and videos at IGN, though some videos require a paid subscription.) Think cheery post-modern minimalism, with duets between the DS (video art and hypnotic patterns) and live violinist (more hypnotic patterns).

Meanwhile, Nanoloop 2.0 is running just swell on my DS, thanks to its new life as a GBA-style cartridge. (More on that soon.) Sure, it lacks ALL the credibility of real oldskool chip music . . . but how else will I switch from music to Nintendogs?

Of course, I won’t be performing with Electroplankton — this begs for a new generation of custom visual/audio interactive instruments. My tool of choice would be a computer or PDA and Flash (and, like the DS, the PDA has stylus input after all).

Convincing people to embrace new control methods is hard.
Just ask Nintendo. Sure, here at CDM we talk about making music with a
graphic tablet input, sock puppets — you love that. But the gaming
market is conservative; many still don't get the inclusion of a stylus
on the Nintendo DS.

And that, friends, has made Nintendo go completely insane and turn into high-art interactive artists:

Exhibit A: touchingisgood.com
– Nintendo is making arty films about why hand input is a good idea,
and for a while was even giving away surplus disembodied mannequin
hands so you could completely freak out your friends. (Now you have to
settle for a PDF hand — damn.)

Exhibit B: ElectroPlankton
– Nintendo's even making experimental electronic music art. It's not
too surprising that the Japanese market would go for algorithmic
generative music involving surreal animated plants that's not even
game; this is Japan, after all. But they're importing it to the US?

Quick! While Nintendo is in this experimental mood, can
someone get them to release their SDK to the digital music community?
And music developers, why haven't you figured out that stylus input
would be an insanely cool way of controlling envelopes and oscillators
(witness today's NoteGraphica)? Come on, what was the last gear to use this — the Fairlight CMI?