Lingfan Jiang – Looking Outwards 11

This week, I am interested in the project called “looks like music” done by a Japanese creator Yuri Suzuki in 2013. It consists of a miniature robot which detects and follows a circuit – a black line traced in marker pen – interspersed with colored reference points that the device translates in sound. The main reason I admire it is that it is an easy but super fun project that everyone can be involved in. For the general public, people normally are not able to be part of the artwork, so sometimes they do not understand them. Also, the algorithms behind it should be pretty easy too. The robot has a sensor inside which is able to differentiate between black and white and use “0” and “1” to represent them. As for the color, every color would have a specific sound. Similar to the “pixel.get” command in p5js, the robot is able to get different colors from the paper.

As for the creator’s sensibilities, being a sound artist, designer and electronic musician himself, Yuri Suzuki really incorporated his professions into the project. It is a simple graphic artwork that combined with sound and electrics. His intention is “to raise public awareness of the way in which sound and music are produced”, and I think he did it really well in this project.