Androp: Music, Design, Vodka, and Robots
By Kira Grunenberg
Earlier this month, we brought you a story about the recently finished Sound Taxi musical experiment in London. That fascinating foray into extraneous noise made art, was brought to fruition, in part, by one Japanese Sound designer –Yuri Suzuki. Always working on something unique, in the past, Suzuki has also concentrated his creative energy and talents on the concept for one somewhat contradictory music video.
The band benefitting from Suzuki’s help is called Androp. Hailing from Japan as well, this four-person group wanted a music video that would visualize the mechanical beats and the themes of “lights” and “dance music” that stood out when Androp played to the track.
The resulting idea? Have “a robot band that was both minimalistic and cute,” as described by fastcodesign.com. This video was intended for the group’s single, “World.Words.Lights,” that was released back in February, though the song itself is slated to be on the band’s second full album release titled, “one and zero,” that isn’t due out until December 12.
Suzuki’s role as a sound designer was put together with that of a lighting and interaction designer and a roboticist –Tomoaki Yanagisawa and KIMURA respectively. The team of three worked to create what come across as very primitive, (in terms of mechanically functional range), geometric sculptural robots that were to move and ‘react’ to the song in the time of the beat. Combine the modest amount of movement with the lack of any explicitly humanoid characters and the idea of cute, commercial appeal does not exactly come to mind easily.
Where Suzuki is able to redirect the ‘plain and monotonous’ with that of ‘cute and engaging’ is in more of his past work and that of present day, industry colleagues. Sam Hecht, an industrial designer from the UK and Dieter Rams, an industrial designer from Germany, have both created pieces that served as points of inspiration for Androp’s robotic video cast.
Suzuki’s commissioned work with Teenage Engineering –a Swedish digital music company– involved the design of 22 singing robots of varying minimalistic designs for an artistic collaboration Teenage Engineering did with Absolut Vodka in 2007, called, “Absolut Machines.” That collaboration brought together multiple engineers and artists who incorporated artificial intelligence into their projects. The “Absolute Choir” Suzuki conceptualized for Teenage Engineering certainly shows design derivation for the pyramids and block-centric forms of Androp’s music video.
The video for “World.Words.Lights” might be limited in the scope of action on the part of Suzuki’s robots but the rhythmic synchronization and emphasis on flashing lights gives the video a very upbeat feel, reminiscent of a high tech dance party. The “cute” factor comes across well with figures much akin to “toys” as desired by Androp in their YouTube description. Despite the juvenile, one-dimensional nature of toys and dance parties, Androp’s emotional concepts behind the song and video allude to a more complex metaphor about the individuality of humanity.
[World.Words.Lights] sings about all the different words spoken around the world, and the hope and light they emit upon us. …We made a variety of toys with various actions, which reflects the diversity of the world.
Below is the video for World.Words.Lights.
Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1
