This giant boombox, wrapped in jagged pink acoustic foam, looks like the walls of an anechoic chamber, a room made to soak up sound. Even so, music still fills the space around it. Co-commissioned by The Vinyl Factory, the sculpture holds a tension between amplification and silence, spectacle and control.
In 12-Inch Voices, artist, architect and designer Virgil Abloh draws on his time as a DJ in Chicago. In house and techno music, rhythm helps shape the music, and repeated sounds become part of its form. His influences ranged from techno pioneer Juan Atkins to the clean lines of architect Mies van der Rohe. Jamaican diasporic sound system culture also influenced his thinking, where custom-built speaker stacks and street dances turn music into a public experience. The track playing here is jazz drummer Yussef Dayes’ “Love Is the Message”.
Recasting the sound system as sculpture, Abloh brings club culture into the gallery and shows how sound shapes the spaces where people come together.
Please do not touch the artwork
Video via RUPTUR VISION's YouTube Channel
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xos-125529