“Art of Noise” exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
I was recently in Berkeley for a wedding, and as soon as I arrived in town, I headed down Telegraph Avenue to Bakesale Betty for a chicken sandwich and a slice of pie. As I walked through Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood, I spotted a sign that made my audiophile heart skip a beat. From now through August 18, 2024, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is presenting an exhibition called “Art of Noise,” celebrating the groundbreaking designs that have shaped our music experience. According to SFMOMA, the “Art of Noise” exhibition “presents a history of the visual aesthetics of music, from the graphic design of concert posters to the industrial design of nearly 100 years of radios, stereos, and speakers.” The large exhibition environment was designed in collaboration with Stockholm-based studio Teenage Engineering, whose speakers and synthesizers have an international following.
Imagine the last time you were touched by music. Imagine the sound being amplified. Think about what initially attracted you to that album cover or concert poster. How did the design shape your experience? Explore this question with us at Art of Noise. This exhibition is a multisensory ode to the ways in which design has changed our music experience over the last 100 years.
— SFMOMA
The premise of the exhibition is that design enhances and visualizes our musical experiences. Things like concert posters and album covers are obviously art, but many people may never have considered that the industrial design of turntables, digital music players, handheld radios, and even surround sound equipment can be appreciated because of the way it has shaped our relationship with music over the past century. Drawing largely from SFMOMA’s vast collection, Art of Noise includes several galleries with an impressive 800 pieces of art, including 550 posters, 150 album covers, 100 design objects, and four large-scale installations that “fuse imaginative design and audio.” A floor-to-ceiling installation of rock posters and album covers greets visitors, but it’s the groundbreaking products and high-tech audio engineering on display that appeal to me most. There are also communal listening spaces and unique sound environments designed by Teenage Engineering and sound artist, designer, and electronic musician Yuri Suzuki. The largest space in the exhibition is a new interactive seating area (designed by Teenage Engineering) with specially designed audio playback devices integrated into the furniture. Visitors will also see nine tables with audio hardware dating from the early 1900s to 2023. These include a jukebox, radios, hi-fi systems, speakers and headphones that “enhance our enjoyment of music through their design”. Perhaps the biggest draw for audiophiles will be Devon Turnbull’s “audio sculpture”, a custom-built high-performance audio system that can be “activated” by musicians and audio archivists throughout the exhibition – more on that in a moment.
Design has the ability to revolutionize and strengthen our relationship with sound. This unique exhibition shows how groundbreaking graphics and design objects strengthen our connection to music and help us develop lasting memories of fleeting musical phenomena. Art of Noise also manifests our aim to create engaging exhibitions that connect contemporary culture with art and design from a variety of makers and perspectives.
— Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab, Director of SFMOMA
This exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to reflect on our collective music experience, visualized through expressive and often cutting-edge design. The San Francisco Bay Area is an influential center for graphic and industrial design, including audio products that fuse aesthetics and engineering, as well as era-defining posters and flyers. SFMOMA’s design collection reflects these local strengths, as well as iconic designs from around the world, which can be seen in the hundreds of surprising and familiar works on view in Art of Noise.
— Joseph Becker, Associate Curator of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA
“Art of Sound” music technology
The Music Technology section of the exhibition focuses on everything from boomboxes and record players to stereos and portable audio devices, exploring how our relationship with our favorite music has “grown and deepened” thanks to innovative product design both at home and on the go. The design of these products and their different forms “runs parallel to technological advances and evolving design aesthetics,” according to SFMOMA. Visitors can trace the evolution of music reproduction, from early phonographs and transistor radios to iconic hi-fi stereos by famous designers such as Dieter Rams and Achille Castiglioni.
These important figures in the world of design helped “shape the look and feel of our modern music listening.” Of course, the exhibition also includes examples of engineering milestones that radically changed the way, how and how we listen to music. Think of Sony’s first Walkman and Apple’s first iPod. I’d love to see Not Impossible Labs’ Haptic Suit, which allows deaf people to experience music in a new way. Other unique and experimental works “challenge or play with notions of portability and functionality,” such as Ron Arad’s deconstructed Concrete Stereo, Mathieu Lehanneur’s golden, flame-shaped “Power of Love” music player, and Matali Crasset’s Soundstation, a clock radio with a cone-shaped speaker.
“Art of Sound” listening experiences
Two dedicated galleries offer unique listening experiences. Teenage Engineering’s “Choir” is a series of sound sculptures programmed to sing together as a choral group, each with a different vocal range. Visitors will also experience Yuri Suzuki’s commissioned project Arborhythm. Located on the second-floor, publicly accessible terrace near the museum’s Howard Street entrance, this experimental artwork consists of tree-like sculptures made of yellow, orange, and green metal tubes. The artwork functions as both a seating structure and a soundscape, blending sounds from San Francisco’s natural and urban environments into an ambient soundtrack.
The biggest draw for many audiophiles will be the immersive audio installation by Devon Turnbull, also known as OJAS. Custom-designed for the museum, Turnbull’s “HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 2” is a functional sculpture—or what you and I would call a giant hi-fi stereo system. The system will be “activated by a series of performances with renowned record collectors, musicians and music labels,” who will take turns with Turnbull in curating the music in this meditative 50-person space. The music selection is said to be heavily inspired by the Bay Area’s robust music culture and history. Those who know Devon Turnbull will immediately recognize the exhibit’s custom-built speakers in his signature style—large, highly sensitive horn designs with a brutalist aesthetic. Turnbull says the SFMOMA listening room is one of a handful of his “shrines to music.” His OJAS-branded speakers can be found in high-end stores in New York City and in the homes of celebrities. Grammy- and Oscar-winning songwriter and record producer Mark Ronson has an OJAS system in his living room. And Turnbull has become a rising star in the world of high-end audio, albeit with a surprising mainstream appeal that most audio manufacturers can only dream of. Sure, you can find videos about him on audio YouTube channels, and the December 2023 issue of Stereophile featured an article about his new Manhattan showroom. But that’s nothing special. Over the past few years, I’ve written articles about him in both the New York Times
And GQ. When was the last time you read an article about an audio designer – even a famous one like Nelson Pass or Andrew Jones – in such a well-known publication? Something about Turnbull’s designs piques people’s interest in an unusual way. In June 2024, Denon announced the Denon x OJAS DL-103o Moving coil cartridge ($549), a limited edition of the flagship DL-103R with high-quality 6N copper coils and custom design by Devon Turnbull. During the Art of Noise exhibition, SFMOMA’s Museum Store will also feature a Tunnel Records pop-up, where visitors can browse a curated collection of records inspired by Art of Noise and Bay Area music in general.
For current information on Art of Noise programs and activations, visit sfmoma.org/art-of-noise.
Devon Turnbull Listening Room schedule: sfmoma.org/devon-turnbull-listening-room-schedule
SFMOMA Tickets: tickets.sfmoma.org/tickets
>> Tell us what you liked most about this exhibition in the comments below.
