the phonograph plays plastic waste like a record
Music generated from long-forgotten plastic waste emanates from Korean artist duo ujoo+limheeyoung’s new mechanical device,‘Song From Plastic’. Drawing on Thomas Edison’s innovative tin foil phonographic approach, here, a discarded old clock, a cordless telephone, and an egg carton are given new life. Inscribed with grooves on their surfaces, the objects take on the role of a record — capturing and playing back sounds of children’s voices, joyful songs, and everyday noises. Equipped with a sensor, the device is triggered and activated, beginning to play its melodies as a visitor steps within a 1.5 meter radius. The musical installation was presented recently in Seoul’s Amorepacific Museum.
the machine plays back sounds captured on the plastic like a record | image courtesy K2 Studio
‘song from plastic’by ujoo+limheeyoung
Reflecting on nuances of meaning held by human values,‘Song From Plastic’captures a record of various sounds that are at once exceedingly ordinary, yet ones that encapsulate the beauty of human experience, in pieces of plastic garbage. The project questions: ‘What sort of traces should humans be leaving behind? If we are going to leave a record of our‘humanity,’shouldn’t it be something other than plastic garbage?’
ujoo+limheeyoung draws their concept on a futuristic idea envisioned in a documentary on the Anthropocene. ‘The sounds of now-extinct beings emanate from a plastic fossil discovered by an intelligent lifeform from a future tens of thousands of years from now,’ comments the design duo.
installation view at Amorepacific Museum | image courtesy K2 Studio
image courtesy ujoo+limheeyoung
generating music from a discarded wall clock | image courtesy ujoo+limheeyoung
‘Song From Plastic’applies the principle of a phonograph | image courtesy ujoo+limheeyoung
grooves embossed on a cordless telephone | image courtesy K2 Studio
project info:
name: Song From Plastic
designer: ujoo+limheeyoung
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edited by: ravail khan | designboom
