24 Oct 2017
Vegetables given a voice inside Tokyo's interactive greenhouse
BY Alice Davis
A brightly lit, rainbow-coloured greenhouse has popped up in downtown Tokyo, Japan, inviting guests to step inside and interact with the sights and sounds created by its vegetable inhabitants.
Japanese creative studio Party, which is headed up by Naoko Ito, created the Digital Vegetables installation to run over a three-week period until 5 November.
Inside the greenhouse, which is covered in LED lights, visitors are invited to “Touch Design. Bathe in Design”. What this means is that touching certain vegetables will trigger a particular lighting sequence or a specific series of sounds.
Sound designer Rei Kunimoto created the sounds, rubbing or eating different vegetables and recording the outcome to create a basic vegetable medley. He then mixed those effects with musical instruments to create his own vegetable soundscape.
“Tomatoes are the violin, carrots are the trumpets, cabbages are the oboe, mini radishes are the flute, sweet potatoes are the piano, eggplants are the harp, and pumpkins are the clarinet,” he said.
Ito, who recently created a running track-inspired wayfinding system for Terminal 3 at Narita Airport, wanted to draw attention to the inherent design attributes of the vegetables themselves.
"They sunbathe inside a plastic greenhouse, and are living through photosynthesis and absorbing water. Leaves, roots, flowers, fruits. Their shapes and colours are their survival strategy," he said. "They are design."
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