Neil Feather's Strange Inventions

I'm not generally familiar with the subculture of inventors of musical instruments. The tuba is weird enough for me, so I stay focused on that for the most part. But about ten years ago, I played at the High Zero Improvisation Festival in Baltimore, and I met Neil Feather. Nice guy. He has invented and built whole new families of musical instruments and devices that use electic pickups and strings and bicycle wheels and things. They are really quite lovely to look at, and they sound great. It's pretty easy to get lost in his website, http://neilfeather.org . In three clips below, you can see him playing the melocipede (a strange electric instrument that's a cross between an exercise bike, a music box and passing traffic), the nondo (sheet metal, piano wire, and some sticks to beat on it with), and one of his suspended string instruments (which show the influence of Keith Rowe). Fun stuff.