Who says the inventive spirit is dead!  Here's a new instrument on
display at the Edinburgh Arts Festival this month.  A sample video
can be found at  http://vimeo.com/5441128  Visit the artist's web
page at http://cybraphon.com/ 

From the Cybraphon web site:

  "Inspired by early 19th century mechanical bands such as the
  nickelodeon, Cybraphon is an interactive version of a mechanical
  band in a box.  Consisting of a series of robotic instruments
  housed in a large display case, Cybraphon behaves like a real band.
  Image conscious and emotional, the band's performance is affected
  by online community opinion as it searches the web for reviews and
  comments about itself 24 hours a day.

  "Cybraphon automates the now-familiar process of musical performance,
  followed by obsessive tracking of online opinion, and subsequent mood
  swings.  It is the 21st century equivalent of the player piano, but
  instead of your coins, it begs for your attention in the online world.
  Its music is purely acoustic, played robotically on antique and
  junk-shop instruments in a gallery in Edinburgh; but what it plays is
  driven by its mood, and this is shaped by its 24-hour monitoring of
  the whole of the web for comments, reviews, or simply traffic to this
  web page."

For a news article on how it gauges its popularity on the web see
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/03/robot.band/index.html?iref=werecommend 

Cheers,
Roger Wiegand
http://www.carouselorgan.com/