World Ambient Sound Map by yuri suzuki at google office
Yuri Suzuki creates a large-scale installation of a world map with speakers that play ambient sounds for Google Arts and Culture’s main office in Paris. Named the World Ambient Sound Map, the wall-style, sound artwork greets employees and visitors in the lobby. There are 100 speakers arranged in the shape of the world. Each of them plays recordings from Google’s extensive sound library. Then, these audio clips blend with shifting ambient sounds.
All of these are arranged and processed in real time. Yuri Suzuki forges the base of the world map for Google’s office from a steel-like material. He carves holes at the front to let the speakers in and uses screws to hold them into place. Behind the world map installation, the sound artist creates grilles to act as vents and avoid the speakers hiding inside from heating up. The speakers are connected by wires to the computing system below. This mechanism then makes the World Ambient Sound Map play and function at Google’s office in Paris.
all images courtesy of Yuri Suzuki | photos by Roc H Biel
visitors can also contribute their voices to the installation
There are also cameras and sensors hiding between the speakers on Yuri Suzuki’s World Ambient Sound Map at Google’s office in Paris. When users get close by and wave at the camera, the world map rings out a ‘laughing’ sound, to name one of many, as a result. The sound artist says that visitors can also contribute their own voices to the installation. They can record their voices. Then, the world sound map spatially maps them across the speakers.
With this in mind, the artwork is also interactive. Yuri Suzuki describes this work for Google’s office as transforming archival field recordings into a living, evolving soundscape. For him, this is his way of showing how diverse the world can be through sounds. ‘The World Ambient Sound Map encourages audiences to listen, explore, and engage with the vast sonic landscape of our planet, deepening their understanding of the world through sound,’ the artist adds.
Yuri Suzuki creates a world map with speakers for Google Arts and Culture’s office in Paris
named the World Ambient Sound Map, the sound artwork greets employees and visitors in the lobby
there are 100 speakers arranged in the shape of the world
behind the world map installation, the sound artist creates grilles to act as vents
the speakers are connected by wires to the computing system below
Yuri Suzuki forges the base of the world map for Google’s office from a steel-like material
