The Yaybahar – An Acoustic Instrument That Thinks It's A Synthesiser

This impressive/alien looking bit of kit is called a Yaybahar.
Medieval and bizarre looking the Yaybahar was designed by an Instanbul-based musician called Görkem Şen. As you can see from the video below Gorkem has nabbed himself a pretty pleasant place to jam on his sitar-esque/cello-esque instrument from the future. The question is – why did he decide to design it? Were the instruments of today simply not enough?
It can be played in a number of different ways using a number of different tools to achieve new sounds including mallets and bows – it utilises two membranes connected to a tall neck to create music.
I can totally see a number of ambient bands using this soon enough.