Unprolific, I usually make only one piece of art at most every year, but for some reason, I had finished two big projects last year: "Silent Electric Baidarka Tonkori" and "オシラサマ馬頭琴". The former is a chimerical musical instrument-- a mixture of the Aleuts' baidarka kayak and the Ainu's tonkori. And the latter is a hybrid of the Mongolian horse-headed fiddle and Oshirasama, a worship object of folk religion in Tohoku region. ---

Sample video clips of "Silent Electric Baidarka Tonkori" can be watched on my past post: (watch out for the loud heavy-metal-like sound out of the light metal tubing structure of the instrument!)
http://okamoo.com/blog/2014/09/08/%E3%83%90%E3%82%A4%E3%83%80%E3%83%AB%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%88%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AA/ ---

Besides "オシラサマ馬頭琴", I have made some electric instruments parodically after Mongolian horse-headed fiddle, or the morin khuur. I also have made another parody instrument: the Evenki people's "Silent Electric Shaman Drum of Evenki". Both of them were finished years ago. ---

http://okamoo.com/blog/2013/10/23/silet-electric-shaman-drum-of-evenki-%E3%82%A8%E3%83%B4%E3%82%A7%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AD%E3%81%AE%E3%82%B5%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AC%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A8%E3%83%AC%E3%82%AD%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B7/ ---

With a couple of stringed instruments (bowed and plucked) and one percussive instrument in hand, I am thinking of adding a wind instrument to my work repertoire-- "Throat Singing Machine" that is. --

The instrument will equipped with artificial voice chords that generate a kind of noise which contains a wide spectrum of sound wavelength; a particular wavelength of the noise is amplified in the resonant cavity modeled after human's nasal and oral cavity, expecting over tones like Mongolian khoomii; the volume of the cavity varies with the artificial toungue's positions along with the movements of mechanical lips and jaw so that the over tone's pitch varies in accordance with the size and shape of the resonant cavity. ---

This "Throat Singing Machine" project will definitely be challenging, Though it is so difficult even for a human to perform the throat singing, how can a toy-like gadget mimic the subtle lingual and labial controls to effectively resonate the overtones?. It is going to take some time to complete the instrument (rather device or apparatus) and that will be my only piece I make this year...

盛岡から来ていた息子が置いていった南部煎餅（っても、クッキーだけどね）。岩手を旅した去年の秋、あっちこっちで南部煎餅を食べた。懐かしい。

たった２枚しかない。。。

で、食べる前にオシラサマ馬頭琴を呼んできて写真撮影。

この夏の終わりに岩手に行くのでまた食べれるな。あ、その時は遠野で明がらすも。

This is one of my favorite videos.

The artist’s fun-loving disposition shares something with mine, I suppose, though I only know her through this YouTube clip.

When making fake Tibetan prayer wheels at grad school in the ’80s, I’d come up with an idea to install a small record disk with a stylus or a looped strip of magnetic tape with a pickup head, either of which was supposed to be driven by the rotation of the mani cylinder. With the built-in gimmick that could utter the recorded voice of chanting mantra in place of a sacred script, the fake mani wheel would have become the real MacCoy.

For some reason, however, I didn’t acturally realized the idea. But today, after a couple of decades, I have become pretty much inspired by this hilarious piece of art and getting renewed my motivation to do my long-forgotten work.

A work from c.1989 when I was contracting “wanna-go-to-Tibet” disease. An almost-nonsense “Fake Tool” I made at UW-Madison.
１９８９年前後、チベット行きたい病に罹患していたころの作品。UW-Madisonで作ったほとんど意味ない「偽道具」。

Electric Prayer Wheel
電動マニ車

A work from c.1989, one of my earliest Tibet-related “Fake Tools”. Unfortunately, the rechargeable battery cells have gone dead and must be replaced. The next uploaded movie will hopefully be of the rotating mani wheel in action.
１９８９年ころの、僕のチベット関連「偽道具」でも最初期のもの。残念ながら充電池が­死んでるので、取り替えないと。。。願わくば次回は実際に回転しているマニ車を投稿で­きたらなあ、と思う。