Yuri Suzuki is a sound artist, designer and electronic musician dedicated to sound exploration through elegant design creations. His work explores the relationship between sound and people, studying how music and sound effects influence our minds in everyday life. His sound, art and installations have been exhibited in numerous countries.
Yuri Suzuki, Designer
Yuri Suzuki was born in Tokyo in 1980. After studying Industrial Design at Nihon University, he moved to London to study Product Design at the Royal College of Artunder the supervision of Ron Arad. During this period he also worked for Yamaha on the production of musical experiences.
He has been teaching at the Royal College of Art since 2013 and works as a researcher and consultant for the Disney, New Radiophonic Workshop e Teenage Engineering.
Yuri Suzuki Design Studio
In 2013, the artist founded the Yuri Suzuki Design Studiofocusing on research and development, sound design consultancy work and collaborations with clients such as Google, Moog, Will I Am e Panasonicjust to list the most famous ones.
We asked the artist to tell us about his work and describe his idea of the relationship between space and sound:
"I attach great importance to sound, within the space in which we live and move every day, because it is invisible, but at the same time can be incredibly evocative. For this reason I like to talk about soundscapewhen I think about the relationship between space and sound. Similar to the elements in a physical landscape, sound defines where we are: we are constantly immersed in a tangle of sounds and noises, even when we do not realise it, but if we were in complete silence we would lose an important anchor, we would suddenly feel lost in a boundless desolate and frightening (acoustic) landscape'.
The tool Ototocreated for Teenage Engineering
During his collaboration with the Swedish company Teenage Engineering the artist also created, in collaboration with Mark McKeague and Joseph Pleass, a musical instrument called Ototowhich combines the functions of a synthesiser and a sound sampler, achieving great public success.
This is how Yuri Suzuki describes the interesting choice of name for this product:
"In Japanese Ototo means younger brotherThe name derives from the fact that Teenage Engineering had already launched a similar product on the market, the Oplab musical switchboard. Compared to this product, the Ototo is, in fact, a kind of younger brother, as it is easier to use and has a more intuitive interface. At the same time, the name contains the word otowhich means soundwhat the whole project revolves around'.
In 2014 the MOMA of New York acquired theOtoto and another work not yet on the market, Colour Chasersas part of its permanent collection.
Colour Chaser
About to be put on the market, Colour Chaser is a miniature robot that detects and follows a circuit - a black line drawn with a felt-tip pen - interspersed with coloured dots that are translated into sound by the device.
The public administration of the city of Mudam - Luxembourg - invited the artist to set up the exhibition Looks Like Music (which you can watch in the video below), an audiovisual installation based on the Colour Chaser.
Find out more about Yuri Suzuki's work by visiting the artist's website >>
