By EB

Imagine a musically inclined Lego kit that could make different sounds by simply adding, detracting and modifying its different pieces. Zoybar is Ziv Bar-Ilan’s loosely interpreted answer to this surreal hypothesis.
As a result of this interpretation, the music world is on the brink of recognizing Bar Ilan’s singular invention as a breakthrough platform for creating sound. The thirty-two-year-old designer designed a modular hardware kit that allows the user to create his own music instruments. Korg, a world leader in musical instruments provides the Kaoss Pad, one of the many sound effect controllers that allows musicians to alter sound, pitch and speed while playing live. For example, in distortion mode, one can manipulate sound while playing a verse as easily as grazing the mouse on a laptop; there are almost another one hundred possible effects available at a flick of the wrist.
The aluminum-based, bad-ass looking instrument uses the barest of composite materials for efficient design and sustainability. The results are interchangeable mashup instruments that enable the musicians to play and manipulate the sound simultaneously and directly from the instrument.
Its potential to transform the music hardware industry is exponential, and its framework has already ignited a huge Internet following. It landed on the cover of I.D. magazine’s September/October 2009 issue and was covered by Fast Company and Innovation Journal among other leading magazines and technology blogs. But Bar Ilan is unaffected by Zoybar`s inevitable rock star status. “My accomplishment is not having created a modular guitar. So what? Sprinklers are also modular,” he remarks, deadpan. “It’s the means of facilitating realization tools and the creation of ideas.”
In 2005, the Bezalel graduate acknowledged the need for a streamlined piece of hardware like Zoybar because of the torrent of posted YouTube videos featuring virtual unknowns experimenting on guitars with bashed-in holes and odd devices protruding, producing a never-heard-before sound. Intrigued by these “hardware hackers,” (hobbyists who take apart sophisticated gadgets, old machines and instruments then rebuild them, incorporating new features.) Bar Ilan, an industrial designer and lecturer by day, whittled away at his developing blueprints for Zoybar, by night.
Inspired by the range of these numerous YouTube videos, Zoybar announced earlier this year a self-made instrument competition. Promoting it through numerous blogs, forums and of course, You-tube itself, it invited the creators to upload their videos to Zoybar’s website. Numerous original music instruments videos entered the two-month long competition, and the number of viewers during that period escalated to about 30,000 hits and generated a healthy amount of buzz. The three most viewed videos won their creators Zoybar kits.
During the development process Bar Ilan met with several musicians. Among them was Avi Belleli, the lead singer of Israeli rock band Tractor’s Revenge and soundtrack composer for the HBO show In Treatment. Belleli is well known for his experimental sound and open approach. Bar Ilan explains," 'Sound artists’ development process involves a substantial amount of waste regarding energy, time and materials as they search and develop new sounds and instruments for themselves." Zoybar`s modular design offers a new development process that incorporates attributes from the digital domain - cut & paste, copy & paste and the most important 'undo' - the ability to move back and forth in the assembly without losing materials or information.
From the start, Zoybar`s innovation model was created on the basis of vast user generated content, rather than that of restricted and limited R&D labs. It functions as a collaborative social network for innovation where the end goal is to create musical instruments. “This is at the core of what I want to do,” Bar Ilan explains. “Hopefully it will raise the user awareness, prompt them to trade, exchange and share parts, [in turn,] investing in social and sustainable practices. I consider our community as a sustainable and decentralized R & D lab.”
The beauty of Zoybar is that Bar-Ilan considers it a process and not just a product. “Zoybar is meant to be hacked and mashed up as a research tool. It is a "playable prototype platform".
With its commercial website launch in February 2009, Zoybar has been making steady sales, with most orders being placed in the States, Canada and the U.K. A kit costs a mere $670, (including its custom travel case and global shipment fees. The Korg controller is extra) but it is only available online.
"We distribute our kits globally with on-demand production and minimum waste. Overall we've cut most of the middle man expenses with direct sales and viral web marketing". The design had to accommodate flexible manufacturing scales for different parts and features in a low cost transition time. We also didn’t want to be obligated by a specific manufacturer or distributor."
During the formulation of Zoybar, Bar Ilan went through a realization process that he would need to relinquish a bit of control over his creation. “My challenge is to enable more creations,” he explains whole-heartedly. “I understood I had to let go of some of my ego; some of my control over my invention and how it would be used. The sheer greatness of this approach is the realization of a new form of expression. Users can dismount it and incorporate some of their own—and I have no control over the end result.”
What’s really most amazing about Zoybar, is that Bar-Ilan can’t even play the guitar.
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