Today at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Show, I discovered my next workout machine: Michael Chladil's Rope and Pulley. Seriously, gone are the elliptical and the rowing machine—I'm going to install this and do the silly dance you see above every day, until I'm at least as fit as any Wii could make me.

Each of the four ropes you see controls a different looped sample: drums on my left hand, keys on my right, with electronic bass and some kind of FX thing rounding it out. As you see, when I rock it solo—my giddy look notwithstanding—it just sounds damn good, but when the inventor himself joins in, it's better still. Pedals on the floor restart each loop, so that you can tap it into place.

This is just one component of Michael's Lost/Found project—in the video you can see another pulley contraption he uses to draw circles, creating literal "feedback loops" of sound. Chladil's goal is not to make the next Soloflex, but to help non musicians access music making in a more natural, gestural way. For better or worse, that's also the goal of the inventors of the Beamz laser lute. Fortunately for Chladil, not all appendages can be used to tug ropes (last we checked). [Ropeandpulley.com]

Tags: clips | dj | drums | entertainment | loops | music | nyu | pulley | rope