Yuri Suzuki’s Onomatopia turns theme-park rides into sound instruments

By Priya Raman

Onomatopia, Yuri Suzuki’s five-diorama exhibition in the Osh Gallery at Pentagram’s London headquarters, is on display through January 7, 2027. It assembles miniature amusement rides, world-fair imagery and exposition structures into a prototype theme park organized around hearing rather than visual spectacle.

The sound artist, designer and electronic musician uses ambient noise and miniature rides to probe the links among play, sound and architecture. Each attraction makes its own specific noises.

That gives the park a simple identification system: a visitor can recognize an experience through what it sounds like, while the stated goal reaches further, toward a greater appreciation of sound’s role in life.

What does Onomatopia contain?

Yuri Suzuki is a former Pentagram partner. He designed the visual and sonic logo for the MIDI musical standard, created the Ambient Machine for customizable white noise, and has produced public multisensory work, including an installation for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Sonic Playground for Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.

“Harmony in Motion,” a mini roller coaster, places red, yellow, blue and green horns of varying heights around its tracks. Suzuki says the ensemble sounds like an organ playing in harmony. Color, horn height and position bind the ride’s appearance to its acoustic character.

The red, yellow and blue Ferris wheel “Mechanical Music Wheel” produces bright rising and falling chimes. A bumper-car attraction makes irregular plucking sounds. A sonic carousel and a helter-skelter, both assembled from multicolored horns, complete the five-diorama set.

How does color make complexity legible?

Suzuki says he tends to use primary colors because they are accessible. “Even color blind people can see the difference in the color,” he says. The palette also lets primary and secondary colors divide complicated assemblies into readable groups.

He describes installations that “look very complicated . . . like lots of pipes coming together,” then resolves them by color into what he calls “a clear division.” Saturated hues separate dense networks of twisting shapes and pipes. The account supplies no color specification, contrast ratio or test with color-blind visitors, however, so accessibility remains his stated rationale rather than a documented standard.

What role does sound play?

Suzuki calls the work bright and interactive. The installation resembles a jungle gym of horns and invites the public to listen and play. His visual references include Disney’s worldbuilding and theme parks. He has long been fascinated by parks and expositions that express an ideal city or utopia, especially Walt Disney and Epcot, the “experimental prototype community of tomorrow.”

“Sound is invisible,” Suzuki says, which makes its effects on life easy to overlook. He contrasts a sonic weapon with “a theme park for your ears.” Sound design receives less priority than visual and product design, he argues, yet its effect is “very impactful.”

Here, however, the exhibition account describes a premise, not a study: it reports no acoustic targets, dwell time, comprehension measure or visitor-behavior result.

What is this prototype trying to become?

The dioramas share the gallery with reference material from Suzuki’s own collection, including a 2001 Disney World map made for its 40th anniversary. Co-curated with Vicky Richardson, Onomatopia extends his previous work, including last year’s Coaster of Sounds at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Onomatopia is the miniature version of a park he hopes to build at full scale, with sound wellness designed into the experience. He imagines his own Epcot or World Expo, an exposition intended to direct attention toward sound’s power in human communication. The exhibition also aims to create a setting for escape: it asks visitors to look back at reality and consider how they want the world to be.

Onomatopia offers a concrete design proposition: horns, chimes and vehicle movement can make each miniature attraction audibly distinct. The unanswered question is whether that distinction changes visitor attention and behavior at full scale. The exhibition supplies a compelling premise, not performance data. A future park would need to show that sound wellness can do more than make an unusual attraction memorable.