The Welcome Chorus is an interactive installation comprised of 12 interactive horns, inviting visitors into the gallery space. As a collaborative work, it utilizes Artificial Intelligence to create a sonic experience for the visitors. There are two ways to engage with the Welcoming Choir. First, with local musicians’ help, lyrics and melodies were created at workshops to generate the sound library. These were then fed into the AI for output at the Turner Contemporary. The second method is to encourage visitors to speak into the sculptures, which will generate musical feedback from the AI. The AI will recognize tonal changes in the voice, tempo and specific words, then produce a short melody based on the visitor’s entry. Every few minutes, the Welcoming Choir performs a short piece based on the previous hours’ input. This continual engagement creates unexpected moments as visitors enter and exit the gallery. Every moment is unique.
Credit: tom mesic
Credit: Kate Radiomargate
Credit: vog.photo
Credit: Kate Radiomargate
Credit: tom mesic
Credit: Kate Radiomargate
Project Credits / Acknowledgements
Turner Contemporary, Arts Council England, Pentagram Design LTD, Fish Fabrications, Counterpoint. Special thanks to: Gabriel Vergar II, Alice Lazarus, Adam Cheong-MacLeod of Pentagram Design LTD, Eire Szadurski, Sam Fish of Fish Fabrications, and Samuel Diggins and Tero Parviainen of Counterpoint Studios.
Biography
Yuri Suzuki is a sound artist, designer and electronic musician. His practice explores the realms of sound through designed pieces that examine the relationship between people and their environments – questioning how both music and sound evolve to create personal experiences.
Suzuki was born in Tokyo in 1980. After studying Industrial Design, he worked with Maywa Denki, the Japanese electronic art unit. During this period, Yuri began exploring the relationship between music and technology. In 2005, he moved to London to study product design at the Royal College of Art, where he further developed his interest in the crossover between art, design and music, using both analogue and digital technologies.
Central to Suzuki’s practice is collaboration – he has worked with various musicians including will.i.am and Jeff Mills, as well as commercial clients such as Google, with whom he developed a unique AR Music Kit.
His work can be seen in several international museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has had both solo and group exhibitions at the Tate Britain London, Mudam Luxembourg, MoMA and the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo. In 2016, he received the Designer of the Future award at Design Miami.
In 2018, Suzuki was appointed a partner at Pentagram, the world’s largest independently owned design studio, where he began working as an artist in the London studio, Here, Suzuki and his team work internationally, pushing the boundaries between art, design, technology and sound, crossing the fields of both low and high technology.
