‘Art of Noise’ Exhibition Features Audio Design At San Francisco’s MOMA

I was recently in Berkeley for a wedding, and as soon as I got to town I drove down Telegraph Avenue to Bakesale Betty for a fried-chicken sandwich and a slice of pie. Walking around Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood, I spotted a sign that made my audiophile heart skip a beat. From now until August 18th, 2024, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is presenting an exhibition called “Art of Noise,” celebrating the pioneering designs that have shaped our music experiences. 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 the Stockholm-based studio Teenage Engineering, whose speakers and synthesizers have an international following.

Picture the last time music moved you. Imagine how the sound was amplified. Think about what initially drew you to that album cover or concert poster. How did design shape your experience? Explore this question with us in Art of Noise. This exhibition is a multi-sensory ode to how design has changed the way we’ve experienced music over the past 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 folks may never have considered that the industrial design of turntables, digital music players, handheld radios, and even surround-sound gear can be worth appreciating for the way it has shaped our relationship to music over the last century. Drawn largely from SFMOMA’s own vast collection, Art of Noise covers multiple galleries with an impressive 800 pieces of art, including 550 posters, 150 album covers, 100 design objects, and four large-scale installations that “merge inventive design and audio.” A floor-to-ceiling installation of rock posters and album covers greets visitors, but it’s the pioneering 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 the sound artist, designer, and electronic musician Yuri Suzuki. The largest space of the exhibition is a new interactive seating environment (designed by Teenage Engineering) with custom-designed devices for audio playback embedded in the furniture. Visitors will also see nine tables featuring audio hardware pieces 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 to be “activated” by musicians and audio archivists throughout the run of the exhibition — more on this in a moment.

Design has the ability to revolutionize and strengthen our relationship to sound. This unique exhibition shows how trailblazing graphics and design objects fuel our bonds to music and help us develop lasting memories of fleeting musical phenomena. Art of Noise also manifests our goal to create captivating exhibitions that connect contemporary culture with art and design from a wide range of makers and perspectives.

— Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA

This exhibition is a chance for visitors to reflect on our collective experience of music as visualized through expressive and often cutting-edge design. The San Francisco Bay Area has been an influential center for graphic and industrial design, including audio products that merge aesthetics and engineering, and era-defining posters and fliers. 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 relationships with our favorite tunes have “grown and deepened” both at home and on the go, thanks to innovative product design. The design of these products and their varying forms have “paralleled advancements in technology and evolving design aesthetics,” according to SFMOMA. Visitors will follow the evolution of music playback, from early phonographs and transistor radios to iconic hi-fi stereos by famous designers like Dieter Rams and Achille Castiglioni. 

These important figures in the world of design helped to “shape what our modern experience of listening to music looks and feels like.” Naturally, the exhibit also includes examples of engineering milestones that have radically transformed how, where, and when we can listen to music. Think Sony’s first Walkman and Apple’s first iPod. I’d be very interested to see the Haptic Suit by Not Impossible Labs, which allows deaf people to feel music in a new way. Other unique and experimental works “challenge or play with ideas 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 radio alarm clock with a cone-shaped speaker.

"Art of Sound" Listening Experiences

Two dedicated galleries feature unique listening experiences. Teenage Engineering’s “choir” is a set of sonic sculptures programmed to sing together as a choral group, each with a different vocal range. Visitors will also encounter the commissioned project Arborhythm, by Yuri Suzuki. Located on the publicly-accessible Floor 2 terrace near the museum’s Howard Street entrance, this experiential artwork is composed of tree-like sculptures of yellow, orange, and green metal tubes. Functioning as both a seating structure and a sonic landscape, the artwork remixes sounds of San Francisco’s natural and urban surroundings together into an ambient soundtrack.

The biggest draw for many audiophiles will be the immersive audio installation by Devon Turnbull, who also goes by the name OJAS. Designed specifically for the museum, Turnbull’s “HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 2” is a functional sculpture — or what you and I would call a bigass high-fidelity stereo system. The system will be “activated through a series of performances with renowned record collectors, musicians, and music labels,” as they take turns with Turnbull in curating music in this meditative 50-person space. The music selections reportedly draw heavily on the Bay Area’s robust music culture and history. Those familiar with Devon Turnbull will immediately recognize the exhibit’s custom-built speakers in his signature style — big high-sensitivity horn designs with a Brutalist aesthetic. Turnbull says that 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. The 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, but with a surprisingly mainstream appeal that most audio manufacturers could only dream of. Sure, you can find videos about him on audio YouTube channels, and there was an article about his new Manhattan showroom in the December 2023 issue of Stereophile. But that’s small potatoes. In the last few years, I’ve seen feature articles about him in both the New York Times and GQ. When was the last time you saw an article about an audio designer — even a famous one like Nelson Pass or Andrew Jones — in such a mainstream publication? Something about Turnbull’s designs captures people’s interest in an unusual way. In June of 2024, Denon announced the Denon x OJAS DL-103o  moving-coil phono cartridge ($549), a limited edition of the flagship DL-103R showcasing premium 6N copper coils and custom styling by Devon Turnbull. During the run of the Art of Noise exhibition, SFMOMA’s Museum Store will also host a Tunnel Records pop-up, where visitors can peruse a curated collection of records inspired by Art of Noise and Bay Area music in general.

Look for updates on Art of Noise programming and activations at 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 about your favorite thing you saw at this exhibition in the comments below.