Thursday Lecture - Yuri Suzuki

Having looked at Yuri's website while researching for the lecture poster, it was pretty obvious that his talk would be a bit different. He stated from the off that his work was all about 'sound and physicality', which roughly translates to 'making fucking mental mechanical instruments' in order to explore what he calls 'the physical value of sound'.

First up was the Sound Chaser - a tiny mechanical stylus/speaker on wheels that pootles round a track constructed from bits of old records.

This is quite clearly a bit mad and the sound produced is horrendous, but I really like the idea and can imagine it having an application in something like an advertising campaign. I think the idea of making something new out of old junk is a reccurring theme in Yuri's work. I nabbed the image from Yuri's blog - I hope he doesn't mind...

Sound Chaser from Yuri Suzuki on Vimeo.

Next he showed us a clip of his Colour Chaser, an amazing little vehicle that follows a line drawn on paper. When you scribble different coloured areas across the 'track', the thing actually interprets the RGB data as different tones. Very cool. It would perhaps have been even better if he demonstrated the kit by getting it to play a recognisable tune. It's not commercially available, which is a shame, as I am sure my son would adore it.

Colour Chaser 2010 from Yuri Suzuki on Vimeo.

Another interesting project is Analog-Digital, whereby he created a CD with grooves cut into the surface so it could aslo be played on a turntable. Again, there is no real practical application for this but then it is actually a kind of modern art. The thing with Yuri's work is that none of it can actually be described as graphic design, so it's not especially relevant to what I am doing, but most great designers advise students to 'look outside of design for inspiration', so I understand why he was invited to show us his work.

Yuri is very keen on getting people involved in his projects, so he often spends time creating sort of modular kits, then getting others in to help him explore their creative possibilities. One such kit is the Denki Puzzle which consists of stylised pieces of printed circuit board (PCB). The shapes themselves are indicative of the function of the specific piece, allowing people with little or no knowledge of electronics to create simple, functioning circuits. They also look really cool, which is probably why Lizzie Sharp reproduced them for her awesome lecture poster!

http://lizziesharp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/yuri-suzuki-giving-lecture-at-our-uni.html

My favourite piece of Yuri's work is definitely the amazing robots he made for Japanese band's music video. He said that he and his team spent three months making these, as if that were a long time - looks like a lot more than three months work to me!

Music video : androp World.Words.Lights from Yuri Suzuki on Vimeo.