Music Insects (1992) are part of the Exploratorium's permanent collection. Iwai contributed to the construction of the Bouncing Totoro 3-dimensional zoetrope at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo. He helped conceive an LED strobe device to be used in place of conventional strobe lights, softening the lighting as a result. He also made a layout plan for the positioning of the figures using a computer. Digital musical instrument design A current project of Iwai's, in collaboration with Yamaha Corporation, is the creation of a new interactive digital musical instrument. Called Tenori-on, the instrument is a sixteen-by-sixteen array of illuminated LED switches which can be activated in a variety of ways to create a changing musical soundscape. Tenori-on was showcased throughout its development through stage and conference performances. It went on sale in the United Kingdom on 4 September 2007. Influences and connections Norman McLaren Thomas Wilfred's Lumia Visual music Color organ Mary Hallock-Greenewalt Oskar Fischinger Aleatoric music Generative music Brian Eno Interactive music Conway's game of life Pong Open-ended Gameplay Will Wright Quotes "I've been longing for the feeling of my childhood in the digital world and that is why I've been sticking to relations among media, machine(s), and people through interactive works." "All of his work is sincere, and all consists of equal doses of seriousness and play, pathos and humor, intricacy and simplicity." - Azby Brown Notable works Installations Time Stratum IV 1990 Another Time, Another Space NHK version 1994 Resonance of 4 1994 Piano - As Image Media 1995 Composition on the Table 1998/99 Shanghai World Financial Center, Observation Deck 2008 Permanent Exhibits Well of Lights Exploratorium, 1992 Music Insects Exploratorium, 1992 Another Time, Another Space, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (now the National Media Museum), Bradford, UK 1999 Videogames Otocky 1986 SimTunes 1996 Electroplankton 2005 Television Einstein TV 1990-91 Ugo Ugo Lhuga 1992-94 Performance Music Plays Images x Images Play Music 1996-97 Digital Musical Instrument Design Tenori-on Books, magazines and printed matters Artist, Designer and Director SCAN (Rikuyosha, 2000) 100 Floors House (Kaiseisha, 2008) Docchiga!? Books (Books KInokuniya, 2006) Others Docchi Ga Hen?' poster (Tokyu Railways, 2007–2008) References External links Yamaha Tenori-on Official Website Insects and pianos: Toshio Iwai's talk at Futuresonic (July 20, 2006) on samurai.fm Toshio Iwai Works Japanese video artists Japanese artists Japanese male composers Japanese composers Japanese male musicians Japanese video game designers Video game composers 1962 births Living people