Sound artist, designer, and electronic musician Yuri Suzuki uses ambient noise and miniature rides inspired by theme park attractions to explore the connections between play, sound, and architecture in his new exhibition Onomatopia.
On display through January 7, 2027, in the Osh Gallery at Pentagram’s London headquarters, the exhibition includes five dioramas based on amusement park attractions, world fairs, and expos. It’s a prototype of a theme park built around one’s sense of hearing, as each ride makes its own specific noises. The park in total is designed to evoke a greater appreciation for the role of sound.
Suzuki is a former Pentagram partner who designed a logo for the musical standard MIDI that’s both visual and sonic, and his Ambient Machine lets you customize your own white noise. He’s also designed public multisensory artwork, including for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and a Sonic Playground for Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.
Suzuki’s latest work continues to explore those ideas. There’s a mini roller coaster called “Harmony in Motion” with horns in red, yellow, blue, and green in varying heights sprouting around the tracks, which sound like an organ playing in harmony. A red, yellow, and blue Ferris wheel display named “Mechanical Music Wheel” makes the sound of bright rising and falling chimes.
A bumper cars attraction makes irregular plucking sounds. And there’s a sonic carousel and helter-skelter, each made from multicolored horns. Suzuki tells Fast Company he tends to use primary colors because they are accessible.
“Even color blind people can see the difference in the color,” he says. At the same time, the primary and secondary colors visually simplify what otherwise looks complicated in his work of twisting shapes and horns.
“Sometimes my installation looks very complicated . . . like lots of pipes coming together. But if you divide it by color, it’s a clear division,” he says.
His work is bright and interactive; a jungle gym of horns inviting the public to listen and play, and it’s inspired by the worldbuilding of Disney and theme parks. He says he’s long been fascinated by the idea of theme parks or expos that express the ideal city, or utopia, especially Walt Disney and Epcot (Disney’s “experimental prototype community of tomorrow”).
“Sound is invisible,” Suzuki tells Fast Company, which makes it hard to notice how it affects your life. It can be used toward negative ends, like a sonic weapon, or for positive ends, like, say, a theme park for your ears. He says sound design is often a low priority compared to other disciplines like visual and product design, but it’s actually “very impactful.”
The Onomatopia dioramas are on display along with reference materials from Suzuki’s own collection, like a 2001 Disney World map for its 40th anniversary. The exhibition, co-curated with Vicky Richardson, builds on Suzuki’s past work, including last year’s Coaster of Sounds at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It’s a miniature version of what he hopes is one day a full-scale park with sound wellness designed into its experience—his own Epcot or World Expo to draw attention to the power of sound in human communication.
Suzuki says Onomatopia is meant to provide visitors a landscape of escape that ultimately allows them to look back at reality and consider how they want the world to be.
