This computer control system using drums, called DoraVideo, was made by programmer Takayuki Ito and drummer Yoshimitsu Ichiraku. These artists, working together, use a drum kit as a huge videocassette player to control images. Ichiraku selects and edits the images and Ito programs the contents.

The point of the work is not so much the content of the images but changing perspectives of how to show images. The primary program of the system is made by Max/MSP/Jitter. The bass drum pedal is the “play button”, the snare is reverse play, the small tam is double speed play, the large tam is double speed reverse play, the floor tam is slow play and the cymbals are stop. What is projected is a dizzying array of clips which flash across the screen, sometimes too fast to assimilate, sometimes viciously slow and looped; singing Japanese girls, war footage, political speeches, even heavy metal bands are rocked back and forth by Ichiraku’s live beats as though a DJ were manipulating a record.

The collection of the first DoraVideo deliberately breaks many international laws concerning DVDs, such as laws on literary piracy, defamation, obscenity, and others. The DVD, which could probably go down in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most violations of mediarelated laws, is (because of these violations) planned to be deleted just before it goes on sale.

Yoshimitsu Ichiraku (JP), born 1959. He developed his own musical style over the years, and had no connection with or influence from the musical scene in the rest of Japan until the mid-nineties. Ichiraku has played both acoustic and electronically-modulated drums and percussion. In 1998, he formed I.S.O. with Sachiko M (sampler with sine waves) and Otomo Yoshihide (turntable, guitar, electronics). In 1998, he released his ambitious electronic solo album The Music of Surround Panner on the Japanese label Zero Gravity. Since then there have been many collaborations and live performances that led up to the present day DoraVideo unit.