CosTune (costume + tune) by Yukio Tada, Kenji Masi, Ryohei Nakatsu and Tadao Maekawa of ATR Media Integration & Communications Research Laboratory and Kazushi Nishimoto of the Japan Institute of Science and Technology, is not only a wearable instrument, it is also equipped with wireless communications functions that can communicate with other CosTunes. CosTune users can make collaborative compositions and perform ad hoc sessions with others who share similar musical tastes. Thus, it’s creaters hope, it may foster a novel musical culture as well as support the formation of communities mediated by music.

Music plays an essential role as a communications medium. For example, members of a jazz band communicate with each other by performing music, and the band conveys a certain impression to their audience by their music… But music’s characteristic as a communications medium has been neglected in the design of musical instruments. Two of the problems are portability — many instruments are too large and too heavy to carry around — and the difficulty of communicating complex information by sound alone.

Several wearable musical instruments have been developed: YAMAHA BIBURI and BODYCODER, although their use is still restricted to the stage. MIT’s Musical Jacket has achieved true portability, but is a simple extension of ordinary musical instruments and it is not designed for communication.

The artist/engineers of CosTune designed it to be a communications tool. To read about it, download their pdf, “Toward Forming Communities Using Wearable Musical Instruments”here