Ever Heard of Harry Partch?
Harry Partch was a very innovative artist who came up with a tuning system consisting of 43 notes, and incorporated it into every art form under the sun. He said, "No work of music should be deprived of being also a work of theater, also a work of dance, also a work of literature, . . . a work of sculpture . . . and a work of architecture." For a number of years, he lived as a hobo before his musical career sort of took off (again, sort of).
He made an array of visually interesting instruments to practice his musical form and theatrical pieces. It strikes me as basically unworkable and impossible for most people, yet he did it and decades after his death, performances of his music still take place. Beck even composed a song with Harry Partch's tuning system (I'll bet Harry Partch would have hated it):
More information. It seems that this song may have been composed as a response to a rant against him by The Fiery Furnaces' Matt Friedberger, who mistook a song about WWI war veteran Harry Patch to be about musical composer Harry Partch:
http://www.nme.com/news/beck/48455
http://whiskeyclone.net/ghost/songinfo.php?songID=991
He made an array of visually interesting instruments to practice his musical form and theatrical pieces. It strikes me as basically unworkable and impossible for most people, yet he did it and decades after his death, performances of his music still take place. Beck even composed a song with Harry Partch's tuning system (I'll bet Harry Partch would have hated it):
More information. It seems that this song may have been composed as a response to a rant against him by The Fiery Furnaces' Matt Friedberger, who mistook a song about WWI war veteran Harry Patch to be about musical composer Harry Partch:
http://www.nme.com/news/beck/48455
http://whiskeyclone.net/ghost/songinfo.php?songID=991