Nao Tokui

Neutone — founded to build new, AI-powered instruments so that artists can bring unheard-of forms of musical expression and new genres into the world — has just turned three! 🎂

To mark the occasion, we’ve moved our domain from neutone.ai to neutone.jp.
https://neutone.jp/

It’s a small act of resistance against the current state of things, in which “AI” has become a synonym for optimization, labor-saving, efficiency — and reproduction technology. (I write about this at length in my new book, “The Act of Making in the Age of AI Reproduction.”)

Researchers and engineers who share Neutone’s stance have been gathering here from all over the world. Earlier this year, Philippe Esling — a leading researcher in the field — joined us from IRCAM in Paris. With three PhDs on the team (and a fourth arriving soon), we’re building a research group, with talented UI/UX designers, that we can hold up against any in the world. (I’m so proud of the whole team!!!)

As I argue in the book, Neutone is a company that could only exist in Tokyo, in Japan, as it is right now: living costs are relatively low, and the technical and cultural groundwork is solid.
An international team, based in Japan, sending out new instruments into the world — instruments that carry on the lineage of all the extraordinary electronic instruments this country has made over the decades. That’s our dream, and the thinking, we’ve put into “.jp”. Thank you, as always — we hope you’ll keep following along.