Sonic Playground

Sonic Playground by Yuri Suzuki is “an outdoor sound installation that features ingenious, colourful sculptures that modify and transmit sound in unusual, engaging and playful ways.” The colors used in the installation are so vibrant and really catch the eyes of those passing by.

The software behind this installation was designed by Luca Dellatorre using Grasshopper, as a parametric design plug-in in Rhinoceros. “The plug in he wrote is a 3D raytracing tool that allows the user to select a sound source and send sound in a certain direction or towards a certain geometry, in this case the shape of the acoustic mirrors or the bells at the start and end of the pipes to see how the sound is reflected and what is the interaction with the object.” It’s cool to see how such a seemingly simple installation can have such a complex architecture on the back-end.