Sonic Playground at the High Museum of Art

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, has installed a temporary, interactive exhibit by acclaimed designer Yuri Suzuki. Sonic Playground, a colorful series of sculptures, invites young and old to experience sound in a new and engaging way. The project is the first time the museum has explored ‘audible play’.

Working with Yuri Suzuki Design Studio, Charcoalblue provided acoustic consultancy and project management for the exhibit. We began by analysing the sculpture design to make sure they would perform as expected acoustically. The horns have been designed to capture sound from one end and to project the sound through the other end. The size of the pipes has been chosen to maximise sound transmission, in particular for speech frequencies. The mathematical pure forms, sometimes with a double curvature, that were initially proposed evolved so that the sculptures could be fabricated using flat sheets of metal. The optimisation of the faceted version was very important to be able to maintain the same acoustic performance.

Charcoalblue supervised the bid process for fabricators, and helped YSDS appoint Gizmo, a San Francisco based art fabricator, and managed the coordination of the build and installation between YSDS, Gizmo and the High Museum.