Here’s a rather beautiful box called “The Ambient Machine”, designed by Yuri Suzuki in partnership with Pentagram Design. It was designed to create a partly controllable background ambience for users to enhance their environment.
It features a variety of sounds and music which can be manipulated via 32 switches on the yellow front control panel. On the rear is the speaker which makes this noise audible.
Sadly that’s about all we know of the item, except that when it was featured at a recent exhibition in Japan, its initial 20 units were quickly sold out.
Will it be recreated? If so how can we get one? Can we use these sounds as a basis for our own ambient compositions? What do all of those switches do, specifically? These questions, for now, remain unanswered.
