Mile-Long Wooden Xylophone Plays Bach in Japanese Forest | Hacker News Reader

Mile-Long Wooden Xylophone Plays Bach in Japanese Forest

dornob.com

299 pointsakeck55 comments

That this installation was conceived as an advertisement for the Sharp SH-08C, a 3G mobile phone that's long been obsoleted, discontinued and forgotten, and that the installation itself holds up nearly a decade later, kinda makes you think about the longevity of tech products (and also about the line between art and marketing)...

There is a Wong Kar-Wai short film that is still watched by film buffs, even though it was made as an advertisement for 1990s-era mobile phone technology in Hong Kong.

I have noticed that for some reason, simple melodies play a bigger part of Japanese daily interactive life, especially to do with transport and retail settings. Search for a story about how every JR station in Tokyo has its own special theme melody for when the train doors close?

Also, side story, I remember there was some road in Nevada or maybe near Sacramento (?) where GM (?) sponsored a melody road with the lines cut in the pavement. The song was the Lone Ranger (William Tell). However, maybe it was just me being a stickler, but I felt it was horribly out of tune when I heard the video. I think they got the spacing of the lines wrong.

You got it, here’s the road and why it sounds so rough: https://youtu.be/Ef93WmlEho0

Also, another front page story now has several commenters posting about Japanese rice cookers playing twinkle twinkle

The station jingles in Japan can have quite a deep meaning in Japan - for example the Shin Imamiya Station plays a part from Dvoraks 9th symphony - "From the New World". Coming from Czech Republic we recognized the melody immediately & knew what was going on - the station is very close to the famous Shin Sekai or "New World" district of Osaka. A really nice touch. :)

Wikipedia claims there are over 30 melody roads in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_road#Japan Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_xvfZUqAtg

Is this really a mile long? Looks like much less to me, perhaps some colloquialism was mistranslated somewhere along the way?

Regardless of its true length, it's still very cool.

The making-of video is here https://youtu.be/VD44QhKuG1U

Yep, it is 44 meters long.

That's almost a mile, isn't it.

A kilometer (1000m) is 0.62 miles, so this is 0.044km aka 0.027 miles.

I did say "almost".

I think to qualify as "almost" it would have to be at least, say, 0.1 miles.

How about "almost almost a mile"?

I'll allow it.

If more advertising was focused on stunts like this I’d be more favorable toward the industry.

Chevy did something similar with OK Go years ago. [1] It was pretty slick.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MejbOFk7H6c

Poor car! Poor pianos!!! The Bach installation compared to this is The embodiment of harmony.

Each piece comments on its specific culture.

Which is interesting because Morihiro Harano (who conceptualised and created the xylophone video) directed the OK Go music video for I won't let you go, partnered with Honda. Chevy was first though, if i'm not mistaken.

Honda’s Cog ad is something I enjoy watching for the sheer fun of it all.

This reminds me of the Melody Roads which can be found around japan:

Description: https://wow-j.com/en/Allguides/kanto/sightseeing/02256_en/

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvzAj_4yg8w

This is an amazing thing to watch, and listen to. I see it's been on HN for 3 hours with no comments, so I assume it will fade from the starting screen soon. I hope not, because I think other HNers might enjoy this as much as I did.

Lovely to see an ad company put together something so wonderful.

Now this is open to the public. You can purchase a small wooden ball and try it yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36njD4LSleA

Wouldn't you need more balls for the trills?

The Japanese blow my mind sometimes. Their attention to detail, their uncompromising attitude to everything they do.

Some people dislike romanticizing a nation like that, but I regularly see a kind of creativity among their general populace that I miss in other groups.

One of my favorite examples of that I was admiring just now are the people on Instagram who post as if they’re cute plushie characters:

https://instagram.com/momo_iro_kuma

https://instagram.com/roppi_mon

This is not unique of Japan and is true of most island nation cultures and even hill/mountain cultures as well.

Read: Wealth Power & Politics by Thomas Sowell.

Read: Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond.

The West just tends to fetishize Japan more than the others.

Other island nation cultures have plushies?

What are you referring to by "this"?

I didn't mean that it's unique to Japan, just that I frequently notice a refreshing -whimsy- among them that other more austere/cynical peoples might dismiss as childish etc. (e.g. the places I've usually lived in).

The Instagram links just happened to be something I was browsing at the time.

Also: Jiro Dreams of Sushi

as well as rescuing the post-Atari video game industry crash with Nintendo Entertainment System + Super Mario (a creative breath of fresh air after the likes of E.T. on the 2600)

You're comparing one of the best, most-influential games on the NES with a rush-produced cash grab on the Atari 2600. There were many better games on the 2600. Also, the NES came out six years later than the 2600, so it's way easier to make more detailed and more interesting games for it.

Yet they revived the industry because of strict licensing and the ‘Nintendo seal of quality’ label that assured you that if you bought a game it wasn’t a rushed stinker.

Well yeah, it sounds like you are still agreeing to my original point that Japanese ingenuity, at a later time, successfully rescued the industry from a crash caused by said cash-grabs. That is exactly what happened! I still remember the panicked industry reactions here in the US when Nintendo showed up and raised the bar tremendously. What were your favorite 2600 games?

There used to be a fence in the seaside town of Shanklin, Isle of Wight, UK which played "I do like to be beside the seaside". Sadly a storm tore it down and it's no longer there. Video from 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9R2UCsBpTE

Beautiful! Makes me wonder how audio was recorded - ambient mics, spaced array along the path, piezo/contact transducers?

Would love to see a making of for this. Would be fascinating seeing the experimentation involved

https://youtu.be/VD44QhKuG1U

I’d really like to see something similar, but with a second voicing added. Although I have no idea if syncing two balls is possible, so they’d have to build the second voice into the boards themselves.

Or you could play a canon.

Title should be changed to "44 meters long" or maybe "~40 meters long". It's not even slightly close to a mile long. :/

At first I assumed they were talking about a xylophone with mile-long bars.

I almost nerd-sniped myself trying to work out the acoustic implications in my head :)

If you travel by road to Mt. Haruna / Lake Haruna in Gunma, Japan, there are safety posts along the side of the road at the summit that IIRC basically "play" "Itsy Bitsy Spider" as you drive by. I left my window open even though it was snowing so I could catch it. Pretty fun stuff.

Imagine walking/hiking through a forest and hearing this off in the distance.

I'm not sure what I would do... Walk towards the sound or run away haha.

Pretty cool, I loved the how they handled the whole notes/half notes and rolls.

That's beautiful, a true work of art.

I kinda feel this could have easily be made much better without much additional effort.

Correcting the geometry of the wooden pieces could ensure the ball moves at a steady pace.

Ah, another "theoretical expert" - you're of course free to try to improve upon their design, but I think what they ultimately built is the end result of a lot of effort (and probably trial and error) already. If you look closely at the video, you will notice that the pieces are slightly V-shaped to recenter the ball if if deviates from a straight line, and as long as the ball is in the center, the tempo is correct. When it goes off to the side, it will be pushed back to the middle, but will inevitably be slowed down slightly.

Actually, I do some control theory on a daily basis.

It should be possible to choose particular shapes of the channel that will reduce oscillations.

If you think about it, a channel that would not let the ball stray left or right would achieve just that.

Also, since when you are only allowed to comment on HN if you have actual experience?

Changing the shape of the bars could be difficult without ruining the sound. Perhaps some sort of guard rail would help.

The guide pieces are not the same as the xylophone bars.

I think there are many possible shapes and the difference is basically tuning. There are makers of wooden musical instruments a'la xylophone and they just cut it in fantastic shapes, different each time, and then tune individual parts by removing some of the material.

This is an absolutely beautiful thing to see

Simply phenomenal....

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