Swedish industrial designer Victor Johansson offers up a modern dose of simplicity and elegance with his latest home creation, The Ceramic Speaker, a smartphone audio controller that activates Play, Pause and Radio, depending on where the phone is placed.Born and raised in Sweden, where he graduated with a BSc in product design, before moving on to London, where he did his final year at Central St Martins MA-Industrial design, Victor Johansson is a young aspiring industrial designer, ready to make quite some buzz with his Ceramic Speaker. Why? Because this concept is attempting to make wireless connectivity and communication more graspable by mapping intangible actions, functions and settings to real-world tangible actions. Its interface is intelligently intuitive, as one would connect his/her mobile device to the circular speaker through Bluetooth, then proceed to play audio by placing said device on its wooden center and moving it towards the direction of a specified command labeled on the speaker itself.
It is said that Johansson constructed this piece during his final year at London’s prestigious Central St. Martins University, to illustrate a cohesive way of human interaction with digital design. The designer said of his project, “The interaction-design paradigm of the moment is being centered around swiping our fingertips on glass. May it be phones, tablets, computers, in-car systems, or even refrigerators.” As a result Johansson wanted to build on the intangible interaction, like voice or hand commands, between humans and the digital world. No word on whether it will release in large numbers, but The Ceramic Stereo is a wonderful look into the future of wireless speakers.
By combining the physical with the intangible this project tries to tame the technology beast. Making technology, connectivity, functions, and actions more graspable and relatable without losing out of the function-rich screen-interfaces. Seamlessly integrating interactions with the digital world into mundane scenarios and making sure that technology becomes in tune with people and our environments, not the other way around.
