POSTED BY COOPER HEWITT:
Art of Noise shows how design shapes the way we experience music—how and where we listen to it, how it’s communicated visually, and what we choose to hear. For many people, these design choices feel like a part of the music itself; they become a key part of how we remember and understand sound in a multisensory way—through our ears, our eyes, and our sense of touch.
Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and adapted to the history of the New York music scene for its East Coast presentation, Art of Noise presents hundreds of works that have shaped our relationship to music over the past century. From concert posters to record albums, phonographs to digital music players, handheld radios to sound systems, the exhibition demonstrates how our experiences are built by both the sounds we hear and the objects that help illustrate or activate them, whether through color and composition or through form, material, and mechanics.
AMPLIFYING MUSIC THROUGH GROUNDBREAKING GRAPHIC DESIGN
Unforgettable album covers, flamboyant posters, and eye-catching flyers demonstrate graphic design’s ability to provide a visual accompaniment to auditory experiences. These visual outputs are so correlated with the sound that genres of music are often associated with specific typographic styles, color palettes, and even production techniques—from hand-drawn to photocopied to digitally manipulated.
MUSIC TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATIVE PRODUCT DESIGN
The look and feel of music players—including radios, stereos, boomboxes, turntables, and portable devices—has developed alongside advancements in technology and evolving cultural aesthetics. Art of Noise maps these expressive styles and iconic product designs, from the mechanical and analog playback devices of a hundred years ago to the modern tools that deliver nearly infinite access to digital streaming.
LISTENING ROOM BY DEVON TURNBULL
Central to the exhibition’s experience and located on the first floor of Cooper Hewitt is HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 3, a large-scale, handmade, audio system by multi-disciplinary artist Devon Turnbull. The listening room is programmed daily and activated throughout the run of the exhibition with either special live operator appearances or genre specific playlists.
EXHIBITION DESIGN BY TEENAGE ENGINEERING
The exhibition environment is designed in collaboration with Stockholm-based teenage engineering, whose groundbreaking speakers and synthesizers have garnered an international following. Museum visitors will encounter a new interactive seating environment designed by teenage engineering with a custom-designed device for audio playback that allows visitors to interact and discover new music. The device contains curated playlists that span genres and eras, with songs focused on the incredible range of music created or augmented in New York.
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