Yoshiyuki makes sound from colour

A Picture as Music av Yoshiyuki Akai. The plastic spades different colours and the movements in front of the camera generates sound and music in the form of piano sounds.

The artist Yoshiyuki Akai has completed his work as a guest student at the Interactive Institute. A Picture as Music is about sound and colour and how they can be associated.
– I have made a system and now have a tool for making art.

A Picture as Music is a Master thesis at the Art & Technology-programme at the IT-University at Chalmers i Göteborg.
Yoshiyuki Akai got the idea to make a piece of art with sound and colour in Japan five or six years ago. He had previously worked artistically either with sound or light.
– I was not sure how to do it so I presented the idea for the company in Japan where I worked part-time as a designer, says Yoshiyuki Akai.
The company, who produces products for disabled, liked his idea. He started a project, made research and got to design a new planned product – a sound music instrument for blind people.
In 2004 Yoshiyuki Akai moved to Stockholm for a year as a guest student at the Royal University College of Fine Arts, where he stayed for another additional year as a project student.
It was through the Art & Technology programme at the Art & Technology-programme at the IT-University at Chalmers in Göteborg, he got the chance to further develop the idea of a piece of art with sound and colour.
During spring he has been a guest student at the Interactive Institute in Stockholm.
What have you done at the Interactive Institute?
– I have created a basic software that transforms sound into colour. That in itself is technology and not art. I have completed the technical work. Now I have a tool for creating art.
A Picture as Music consists of a camera that reads the colours and movements of people and objects in front of the lens.
The software translates the colours and mpvements to sounds. The sound is played back in a computer that is connected to the camera, on the computer screen one can see ones movements. The more colourful the clothes, the more varied is the sound – it becomes music.
– The computer now plays piano sounds, but I can change the sounds and play more DJ sounds with the system. I just need to change the code.
What is your next step in this project?
– I see that it can be used by a dance company, as performance art or as public art. The system makes sounds and the dancers´movements then become music.
– It would be interesting to work with William Forsythe and the Forsythe Company in Frankfurt.

Visit Yoshiyuki Akai´s web site >>

Yoshiyuki Akai