In hopes of providing Milan design week visitors with a moment of peace, Yuri Suzuki has designed an immersive installation in the form of 30 swinging pendulums playing calming noises.
Set against the backdrop of an old Milanese seminary, Suzuki's Sonic Pendulum installation is made up of three structures supporting 30 pendulums.
Each pendulum is equipped with a speaker playing a calming ambient bassline, while artificial intelligence modulates sounds that are being made in the space – creating an "ever-evolving, meditative calming atmosphere".
"Whilst continuously generating a calming ambient sound and bassline atmosphere, the algorithm processes disturbances around the space, generated by the crowd themselves," said the designer, who worked alongside car brand Audi to realise the installation.
"While gently modulating the sound coming from speakers through doppler effect, it is also a visual representation of a dream: a systematised mess, with moments of order emerging from the chaos," he added.
Through its soft, fluid movements and immersive soundscape, Suzuki hoped the Sonic Pendulum installation would create a relaxing environment for visitors caught up in the Milan design week hubbub.
"These refined human modulations will create a relaxing environment so that visitors stay for longer, temporarily escaping the hubbub of the Salone in a meditative environment," he said.
"The generated frequencies and sounds will allow the audience to enter into a meditative state, an experience the scholars in this space have been cultivating for hundreds of years."
Sound is a recurring theme throughout Suzuki's work, with his previous projects ranging from a radio made from a circuit board that looks like the London tube map to a vinyl globe that plays folk music and national anthems as a needle passes over it.
His Sonic Pendulum installation will be on show in Milan from 4 to 9 April at Corso Venezia 11.
Other installations taking place across the city include a bubble-blowing tree and a modernist merry-go-round.