Self-made Instruments, Pt. 2

Our correspondent and colleague, the impressario Kazue Kobata presented this live concert at Tokyo's Plan B in August, 2004 featuring musicians playing instruments of their own invention. This one highlights visual and sound artist Atsuhiro Ito, with his optron as well as an instrument that resembles a can but is so far ahead of its time that no name has yet caught up with it.

Atsuhiro Ito is a visual as well as a sound artist. He has also produced CDs by other musicians for the Off Site label in Japan. His instrument is partly a fluorescent light fixture whose on-off flickers contribute to the sound. His other instrument is a motorized and amplified, metallic device made from the parts of an electric fan. Toward the end of the concert, he joins two other self-made instrument specialists, Junji Hirose and Tomomi Adachi.

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