The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s (SFMOMA) “Art of Noise” exhibition, open May 4 to August 18, presents over 840 objects spanning graphic design, product design, music technology, and sound design. Curated by Associate Curator of Architecture and Design Joseph Becker with curatorial assistant Divya Saraf, the exhibition involves a journey through five spaces dedicated to each component of the music experience.
“This exhibition is a chance for visitors to reflect on our collective experience of music as visualized through expressive and often cutting-edge design,” Becker said. “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.”
Psychedelic Rock Posters
In a display of the graphic design of music posters of the 1960s and 1970s, floor-to-ceiling walls of psychedelic posters fill the first gallery space. Arranged chronologically, down to the day, the posters demonstrate the iconic color, typography, and layouts that defined the era of music they present. The exhibit also includes 1950s and 1960s modernist record sleeves and album covers by artists like Laini Abernathy, Emmett McBain, and Reid Miles, as well as music advertisements, flyers, and handbills announcing significant moments from hip-hop, punk, and rave scenes.
Art of Noise, installation view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 4–August 18, 2024; photo: Don Ross, courtesy SFMOMA.
media station: An Interactive Seating Landscape
Swedish consumer electronics company teenage engineering designed media station, an interactive seating landscape, specifically for Art of Noise. Two custom-built devices for media playback are embedded into couches of the same striking blue as the walls of the gallery. The first device, an audio player, contains curated playlists, and the other, a three-channel video display, shows important music players as seen in popular culture. Visitors are invited to put on headphones and manipulate the controls of the devices.
Listening and Playback Devices
The Product Design section of the exhibition takes visitors through the progression of groundbreaking audio playback products over the past century. The devices are grouped into: radios, portable devices, phonographs, centerpiece stereos, cassettes, speakers, headphones, turntablism, Dieter Rams devices, and experimental products. The exhibit features everything from Rock-Ola’s 1426 jukebox (1947), to Sony’s CFM-2300 My First Sony cassette player and radio (1987) and RCA Victor’s Special Model K phonograph (ca. 1935), to name a few.
Art of Noise, installation view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 4–August 18, 2024; photo: Don Ross, courtesy SFMOMA.
Choir: An AI-Generated Counterpoint Octet
teenage engineering also designed eight sonic sculptures for the choir installation. The electronic sculptures, each just short of a foot tall, are programmed to “sing” together as a group, performing tunes from baroque to barbershop and even improvising on the fly in the tradition of eighteenth-century counterpoint. Mezzo sopranos Gisela and Hatshepsut, bass Bogdan, alto Ivana, tenor Miki, contralto Olga, and soprano Leila are spaced out in a row on a wide podium in a dark room. Individual spotlights illuminate each sculpture as it awakens to join the choir in synthesizer-like harmonies.
teenage engineering, choir, 2022; © teenage engineering
HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 2
Devon Turnbull (OJAS) created the sonic environment HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 2 for Art of Noise. With a formal education in audio engineering and electronics and over 20 years of experience hand-making unique audio playback equipment, this “shrine to music” is his third major presentation of a listening room. Turnbull designed a custom-built system —everything in the room is one-of-a-kind—with materials meticulously chosen and crafted for acoustic and sonic priorities. The drivers are all made by Technical Audio Devices Laboratories, Inc. (TAD) in Japan.
“Nowadays in the 21st century, you have immense levels of error correction possible in audio-video playback, which has allowed us to make things with much smaller and cheaper parts,” Turnbull said. “But with all of that error correction, you lose some purity. In my amplifier, there is no error correction at all.”
Art of Noise, installation view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 4–August 18, 2024; photo: Don Ross, courtesy SFMOMA.
Free Admission Days
To celebrate the opening of Art of Noise, SFMOMA is hosting two admission-free events: Free Community Day and Free Family Day. On Saturday, May 4, Free Community Day offers free admission to the entire museum. Six artists from San Francisco Public Library’s Bay Beats will compete in a battle of the bands on the Floor 5 sculpture garden: Jill Rogers and Crying Time, Bululú, Al Harper, Afterthought, The Seagulls, and Cardboard People. On Sunday, June 9, Free Family Day invites families accompanied by children free admission to explore hands-on art making, a sound-based scavenger hunt, performances, and story time with the San Francisco Public Library.
