Reveal and participate are two principles of ‘Slow Design’ which Yuri Suzuki incorporates in his project “Colour Chaser”. Suzuki is a sound artist, designer and electronic musician who produces work that explores the realms of of sound through exquisetly designed pieces. Most of Suzuki’s projects combine both visual and sound concepts to create an interesting display.  In “Colour Chaser” Suzuki set up a miniature vehicle that detects and follows a black line while it reads crossing colored lines and translates the date into sound. The user will draw a circuit with a black marker then add different layers of color across the black line at intervals the vehicle detects the color data and translates that into sound. 

This project represents the ‘reveal’ principle because a basic sheet of paper, black marker pen, and different colored markers are everyday materials that are easily over looked. The ‘particpate’ principal fits in with this work because users could draw a randomly shaped circuit using a black marker pen on a piece of paper and the Colour Chaser will follow the line the user would draw. The purpose of this project is so that the audience can interact with the moving vehicle by drawing lines themselves controlling the vehicle to make different noises. This piece really caught my attention because it’s so simple yet it’s really interesting how by just adding colors to a sheet of paper can change the whole concept of just a tiny vehicle moving across a black line. It’s really clever how these materials can be found in anyone’s house and you don’t know how many different things you can do with them, just like this project. 

Tyranny of the Plug- Dick van Hoff

The second artist I chose to research about is Dick van Hoff. Very different from Suzuki, Hoff’s project includes the Slow Design principles ‘reflect’ and ‘participate’. Dick Hoff’s Tyranny of the Plug series of kitchen machines serve all the functions of different kitchen items like chopping, churning and blending, except without the need of electricity. They are all powered not by electricity, but by human energy. By pulling, turning or moving them from left to right or back and forth, they function.

The principle of reflection fits in with this project because Hoff is calling into question the fact that members of contemporary society easily accept new objects that are powered by electricity, yet rarely contemplate where the power is coming from. Instead, his products make people invest their human energy into powering them. Van Hoff’s projects challenge us to consider, and hopefully later, our energy consumption habits. Tyranny of the Plug also includes the principle of participate. If kitchen machines can run so smoothly and efficiently only using human energy, Hoff considers transferring the body’s store of energy directly to the task at hand. People can actually participate in making their own food and determine the speed of process and enjoy the ingredients you have in your hands all by chopping and stirring everything yourself. Returning the body to the task of chopping, churning and blending, they function as tools that keep us connected to the task through our bodies. 

I found this project very interesting because Hoff makes us reflect on what exactly we waste electricity on, when instead we could do all these things by ourselves. He also helps us value what our bodies are able to control when we do these types of activities.