I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Tuesday September 16th — —

“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Tuesday September 16th — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Tuesday September 16th — —

Square Wind Bell

We love elegant design which is boiled down to its core and the Square Wind Bell by the very talented Kouichi Okamoto of Kyouei Design inhabits everything of those elements. The designer, who first gained attention in the world of music at the end of last century and since stretched his spectrum of output significantly, created the minimum wind chime from metal and glass, utilizing the properties inherent in each of the resources used to produce sound. The Square Wind Bell is created out of two iron lower-outs covered in trivalent chrome plating, which are united to every single other by a basic slit in each and every corner, forming a mixed geometry that teeters on the edge of a consuming glass. As one plate catches the wind, the other acts as a excess weight, striking the transparent volume repeatedly and resounding with the action of the wind. Highly sophisticated and elegant.

Each noise is diverse, based on the form and minute compositional variations of the glass, which adapt a musical and harmonic tonality as the successive taps reverberate in place.

Kouichi Okamoto, working under the name bekkou at that time, started as a musician by releasing the sound source work ‘hi light’ on Dutch techno label X-trax in 1997 and has since worked for his music with Dutch and English music labels. From 2004 he became enamored with design, somewhat in line with the ‘Dutch school’ and established Kyouei Design in 2006. Kyouei Design products are now available in over 30 countries at design shops, stores and museums. He has participated in Israel’s Holon Museum opening exhibition ‘The State of Things’ in 2010 and his product ‘glass tank’ was included in the permanent collection at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2011. A designer whose work ranges from art, music and design, he was also selected as one of 100 artists for Contemporary Culture ‘NOVA’ in São Paulo in 2010, and again in Rio de Janeiro in 2011.

The Square Wind Bell will be presented at the Victoria and Albert Museum London, as part of the Digital Design Weekend on the 20th and 21st September 2014.

For more information and to order online see here.