ToyCyte: Toy Culture Collected

Long hours in front of the computer and the relative somnambulism of my cat make for the need to call in reinforcements. I just found out about the Tengu USB toy, which has a cult-like YouTube following (see one of my favorite videos below). Tengu is a USB-powered character that lights up and lip syncs to music, or your voice, or whatever noise happens to be around at the time. Tengu has different facial expressions that you can match to different music. When there’s no sound he’ll simply fall asleep. As soon as he detects some noise he’ll wake up again. Tengu is a stand-alone device that does not require any additional software on the host computer. It was created by London-based designer Crispin Jones for Solid Alliance (see great graphics here). The plastic chanteuses measure 2.75h x 1.5w x .5″d and can be purchased for either $35 from Uncommon Goods or $50 from MOMA (if you need to pay more to prove it’s a piece of art). I’m gonna put one of these on my wishlist and see what it does with some Coil or my new T.W.E.R.P. Mad*L.