Yuri Suzuki’s new exhibition transforms industrial hums into “beautiful ambient sound”

Product designer and sound artist Yuri Suzuki is to open an exhibition exploring “a definition of sound design in our contemporary period”. Furniture Music will open on 22 February and is due to run until 21 April 2018 at Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University, London.

The exhibition’s title comes from French composer Eric Satie, who described his own music as “a sound that should not be actively listened to, but present at the periphery of our daily lives.” Yuri’s work, which came out of his fellowship at Stanley Picker, considers these sounds in the context of 10 years of experience in sound design and crafting soundscapes with software, art installations and product design.

Furniture Music points to sounds made in the heavily industrialised society of the west by construction, machines and computers, suggesting that the sounds affect us at a subconscious level. “When you do your laundry, why must you listen to a dreadful pounding noise that may distract you from your tasks or simply take you away from the present?”, Yuri Suzuki asks. “Could a washing machine make a beautiful ambient sound instead? Our lives may be made easier with technology taking care of most of our chores, but perhaps, with a little imagination, we could redefine how sound impacts on our mental wellbeing.”

Furniture Music ties together the installation Sound of the Waves, with appliances and furniture pieces specifically made for home kitchen and living areas such as a Musical Kettle and a Singing Washing Machine designed with composer Matthew Herbert.