Miya Masaoka: Music Experiments with Laser Koto

11 Jan 2007 Category: Features, Japan, Music, Technology, Worldwide

Miya Masaoka: Music Experiments with Laser Koto

Every time Miya Masaoka touches the laser, a prerecorded koto sound sample gets triggered through her Apple. Photo by Lori Eanes

Experimental technicians-slash-musicians have always tried to push the boundaries of sound. That’s why there is a nice collection of undoubtedly strange instruments on this planet! Just think of electronic inventions such as the Theremin and its ghostly whining. Today we picked a recent-queer one for you: The Laser Koto! American Miya Masaoka updated the koto, a giant traditional Japanese instrument resembling a zither, to modern digital music making and enhanced it with laser beams. Eventually she replaced the whole analogue corpus with lasers and connects that to an Apple computer. For real, this Laser Koto is definitely something strange along the way of the intertwined relationship between music and technology. Or maybe this is Miya’s way of keeping up the tradition as a third generation Japanese, currently residing in New York with her little daughter!? PingMag talked to Miya Masaoka about her enhanced instruments – and her sound experiments with insects such as cockroaches and bees.

Written by Verena


Miya Masaoka in New York

Miya, where did the story of your Laser Koto actually begin?

I developed the Koto Monster during a residency at STEIM studio for electro-instrumental music in Amsterdam. It was a way of creating a new “interface” for the koto using electronics (being able to pick a sound and process it digitally in real time). I also had an ultra sonic beam above the instrument, so by using gestures with my hand I could also produce extra sounds.

And that was already in the early 90ies?

Yes. Before Steim I used to work with Tom Zimmerman, the co-inventor of the Data Glove. We were interested in finding out how one koto string would respond with an oscillator. Since then the technology has changed a lot, of course. But the same ideas and desires of expanding the sound universe are still there.

Watch Miya perform:

How do you connect the laser to the PC, what kind of interface do you use?


The Laser Koto

I worked with different MIDI interfaces over the years. Originally I used the SenorLab from STEIM institute. Now I’m using an interface called Arduino from Italy. It requires some programming but basically it takes the data from the sensors and brings it into the computer via the USB port. Now I have an immense library of more than a thousand different kinds of koto samples recorded over the years.

When you talk about playing your Laser Koto, you use the term Aural Gesturalism a lot. What is that?

My teacher in San Francisco was the Japanese Imperial Court Master Suenobu Togi that traces his blood lineage in Japanese imperial court music back from more than 1000 years to the Tang dynasty. Studying with Suenobu Togi I became very much aware of the things he taught regarding certain hand gestures, arm gestures, and body posture. These things - especially the hand and finger movements - don’t really have so much to do with the actual technique of playing, but they are a way of presenting yourself, expressing the music through your posture.

Also, these movements enhance the sound quality somehow and sustain a sound, keep it swinging longer where otherwise it would die out. Your hand basically keeps in the air to sustain the sound.

This may sound a little abstract, but when I started working with insects like bees walking across my instrument, it became very materialized for me: these aural gestures from Japanese gagaku now became gestural movements captured by technology, they became one with technology.


‘Aural Gesturalism’. Photo by Lori Eanes

The art of enhancing the sound quality through special hand movements. Photo by Kim Stringfellow

So Aural Gesturalism can actually change the sound or make a sound swing longer? Or is merely a ritualized performance?

The intent is to convey a kind elegance to the sound and to appreciate each sound as it is heard. Gagaku music is very slow and the rhythms go over a long period of time. So each movement acts as a certain kind of emphasis and a certain minimalist sound. Aural Gesturalism is basically trying to make use of the body and its gestures to enhance that particular sound.

You developed these light beams above the koto. What kind of Aural Gesturalism are you using there, then?

It becomes symbolic, develops to an elegant kind of music making. The multiple light beams above the instrument enable me to play the Laser Koto without the original instrument being there, really. Just with the laser. So the light beams act as a metaphor for the strings.

Miya featured in Wired magazine with one of her koto experiments.

Performance ‘What is the Sound of 10 Naked Asian Men?’: Live processing of sounds and signals from the human body. Miya used medical equipment like EKG, EEG, an heart monitors and projected video when ‘recording’ the noises of ten men.

An early pict on your website reminds me of the cyberpunk era when there was this popular movement of seeing the technical revolution in a positive light, thus enhancing the body with technical gadgets…

It really began to feel like an extension for my body with these different kinds of sensors on my fingers that would track my gestures with ultrasound. Now things are much more wireless. There’s a quality to it and everything becomes some kind of prosthetic, a bit of an artificial limb extension.

You were born and grew up in the States. How strong are your ties to Japanese culture and music then?

I’m third generation Japanese. My grand parents came over to the States. My culture is Japanese-American so we kind of have our own words for certain things. Actually some of the words we use are still from the Meiji period - the time when my grandparents come over. There are certain things that get passed down from the parents to the children that aren’t just one or the other, not Japanese or Western. So I grew up with different cultures I would say.

Insects make tiny noises, too for example when they crawl over your body… Miya with giant Madagascar coakroaches.

Tell me again about your other experimental music happening with cockroaches crawling all over you… completely naked!? How did you record the sound of the cockroaches at all?

For that I used infrared light: the movements of the cockroaches would trigger their own sound via infrared. They were the driving energy of the piece.

Urgh, that’s something: Miya in a perfomance involving insects crawling on her naked body - while the audience listenes.

The sound was recorded by infrared, the crawling cockroaches got projected to a screen, enhanced with the hissing sounds of the insects.

How did it feel having insects crawling all over your body?

Funny! I just thought of myself as a black blanket observing the cockroaches creating their own landscape. They were exploring and climbing up my passive naked body. In the meantime we could hear these very strange, loud sounds.

And your similar encounter with bees? There you used a glass-enclosed bee hive of 3,000 bees that sat on stage, and bee sounds were amplified and sent through a mixer, manipulated in real time according to the instructions in the score and added to the koto sounds…

Insects have social lives and hierarchies within their insect culture. There is a very strong Japanese tradition according to insects and insect sounds. Also many traditional Japanese songs have to do with insects. Besides people say that the instruments we encounter in gagaku music often sound like insects. In Haiku poetry there are so many references to small creatures… So many different places that deal with insects - I guess there must be a strong affinity!

Bees make some noise, too… I you’re not afraid of them.

Close up of bees while their audio actions got recorded. Photo by Lori Eanes

Thank you Miya for brining us closer to the world of sound with your electronic experiments!

36 Comments

  1. Weird coolness. Especially for the insects on the body. Very interesting though. Natural sounds in an unconventional way.

    Posted by: Cyberpukish on January 11th, 2007 at 10:33 pm

  2. Wow!!

    Posted by: Ian Harris on January 12th, 2007 at 1:56 am

  3. Cool~~~~~~

    Posted by: tunokuda on January 12th, 2007 at 2:04 am

  4. Sick and twisted!

    Posted by: EK on January 12th, 2007 at 3:45 am

  5. this is really awesome.

    Posted by: FTRC on January 12th, 2007 at 4:14 am

  6. So I wonder if she’s doing worms? Would be really surprised if the sounds emitted from worms aren’t actually “squishy” sounds.

    Posted by: Anon on January 12th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

  7. I’m pretty sure worms would be “shwurrgh shwurrgh” not “squish squash”… not that it matters though ;-)

    Posted by: Uleshka on January 12th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

  8. [...] PingMag » Miya Masaoka: Music Experiments with Laser Koto Exeperimentos musicais com laser e instrumentos clássicos japoneses (tags: music experiment japan weird laser) [...]

    Posted by: links for 2007-01-12 | blog.ftofani.com on January 12th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

  9. [...] PingMag » Miya Masaoka: Music Experiments with Laser Koto Exeperimentos musicais com laser e instrumentos clássicos japoneses (tags: music experiment japan weird laser) [...]

    Posted by: pristina.org | everything design » links for 2007-01-12 on January 12th, 2007 at 11:22 pm

  10. [...] PingMag has a cool feature about a laser koto player and insects crawling on naked people! [...]

    Posted by: » Japan News for January 15, 2006 - Japan Probe on January 15th, 2007 at 7:21 am

  11. Art people are so dumb. Especially “performance” artists.

    Posted by: Chris on January 15th, 2007 at 3:35 pm

  12. [...] Miya Masaoka: Music Experiments with Laser Koto 11 Jan 2007 [...]

    Posted by: H-ART Pink Maniacs » Essential Graphic Design Literature on January 25th, 2007 at 12:57 am

  13. [...] [...]

    Posted by: Lost in Anywhere » Comme un rêve II on January 29th, 2007 at 6:30 am

  14. [...] interview de Miya Masaoka [eng] [...]

    Posted by: Nishi Kara » Blog Archive » Aspect atemporel du Japon: le koto électronique on February 4th, 2007 at 8:16 am

  15. [...] Expérience musicale de Miya Masaoka chez Ping Mag. [...]

    Posted by: Meta brindilles II : Lost in Anywhere on September 4th, 2007 at 2:50 am

  16. haro, that photo in the http://www.pingmag.jp/2007/01/11/miya-masaoka/ page on your site is taken by IHKuniyuki, why dont you give credit to the photographer?

    Posted by: TheArtist known as IHK on September 24th, 2007 at 1:39 am

  17. Dear I.H. Kuniyuki,
    Please specify which one exactly would be yours - as you weren’t named in any of the photo credits on Miya Masaoka’s website.

    Posted by: Verena on September 24th, 2007 at 11:05 am

  18. can u post a direct email where i could email u directly. the photo with the frames of six. on your site with the photo credit than says ” Close up of bees while their audio actions got recorded. Photo by Lori Eanes” — is
    my photograph. i think u should cough up the correct name on the photo.

    Posted by: Witness to the Fact re: misIdentified Image. on December 7th, 2007 at 8:50 am

  19. Hi again - according to Miya’s credits, the photographer is named Lori Eanes:
    http://miyamasaoka.com/media_files/photos/
    Please e-mail me at verena at pingmag . jp

    Posted by: Verena on December 7th, 2007 at 10:15 am

  20. This reminds of Jean Michel Jarre’s laser harp.

    Posted by: Stone Bytes on May 11th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

  21. This reminds me of a video I watched on TED. It was an electrical instrument and the lady played it just by moving her body through the air.

    Posted by: Japanese words on February 28th, 2009 at 10:33 pm

  22. thank you nice blog :)
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  23. I think that he has a very naif perspective… censorhip it’s so far of being a game… I like to choose by my self and you have the right to think and see whatever you like..

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  24. I’m pretty sure worms would be “shwurrgh shwurrgh” not “squish squash”… not that it matters though

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