Not sure it does with 100 people milling about, and about 10 chairs.
I guess in a gallery youâre not there to compare kit, youâre there to experience whateverâs in front of you, and that shift alone sharpens the senses. Gallery spaces are calm, stripped back, the lightingâs deliberate (Unlike a listening bar), all those quiet signals tell the brain to slow down and actually look. No clutter, no pressure, and no bloke in pointy shoes offering you a toilet mint & trying to flog a cable, you end up experiencing the thing properly instead of skimming past it.
Duchampâs âFountainâ is maybe a good example: Weâve all been pissing in urinals since we could reach them as kids, but put one on a plinth and suddenly youâre noticing the form and âwonderingâ what the fuck is being said here? Itâs like youâd never seen one before.
In addition if you place audio equipment alongside paintings or sculpture it picks up the same associative weight. It stops being âkitâ and starts reading as something crafted & intentional (Art). Strip away the comparison mindset of a hi-fi show and perhaps itâs much easier to fall into a more reflective state â more open, more attentive⌠more reverent. The gear hasnât changed; the context has, perhaps thatâs when some people experience the âthingâ as âArtâ.
I remember going to Devonâs show with @murrayjohnson and being struck by exactly that â the setting lifted everything. Iâm not sure crowd size really killâs off all of the above. Ever been to the Louvre?
Yes, and I would go back.
Not liking Doig is cool, but it misses the point. No hi-fi show or listening bar is getting anything close to the exposure his exhibition is enjoying, and that kind of cultural visibility is exactly what audio has been missing. Put hi-fi in a gallery and it stops looking like a hobby for ageing nerds and starts looking like design, sculpture, something people actually want to be seen with.
Giant horns in a gallery arenât eccentric; theyâre a spectacle, theyâre cool. If high-end audio â or the passion behind it wants a future beyond a rapidly dwindling middle-aged echo chamber, it needs an audience with taste, curiosity and money, people who arenât weighed down by the usual audiofool baggage.
Treating audio as art isnât pretentious; itâs smart positioning. Context changes everything, the same way a guitar looks like junk in a pawn shop but iconic in a glass case at the V&A. A gallery gives audio a cultural frame it never gets in hotel rooms or listening bars. If the passion and the industry are going to survive, this is the direction: stop talking to the same shrinking crowd and start putting the stuff where culture actually lives.
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I never said I didnât like Doig, I am glad I went.
Going to an event enables you to have âthe experienceâ and work out how it sits with you.
I am sorry my experience doesnât live up to your expectations
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My point was simply that the scale and visibility of something like that show does things for audio that no traditional hi-fi setting can. It puts the equipment in a completely different frame.
Iâm genuinely glad you went and had your own take on it â the individual experience is always subjective, Itâs certainly not designed or optimised for audiophiles. What I was talking about is the wider impact: how this kind of context shifts how audio is seen by people outside the usual circle. .I guess my expectation would be people see it as cool, I would find it hard to fathom otherwise but again itâs subjective.
Possibly pushing hi-fi into yet another pastime that can only be enjoyed by the wealthy.
Serious Hifi for the last 20 or more years has been that becasue the market is so small, the larger the market the more things become available (ecconomies of scale etc) It starts at the top of the pyramid not the middle. (cool comes first)
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I think that probably, most of us here have less of a vested interest in how audio is perceived. We mostly want to sit and listen to it.
Iâm not going to the Doig thing, coz reasons, but for what itâs worth, friends of mine who are in the art world were disappointed, both by the art and by the sound of the audio. " It sounded shit." They didnât get it.
For sure â I donât think Doig is doing any of this to elevate the audio market. Nothingâs for sale, and the point of the installation is that sound is part of the art, which fits with what he does. Iâve heard some of the music choices have been pretty challenging, and the reasoning behind that is apparently its own strange story, nothing to do with Lawrence or Doig.
Iâm probably coming in a bit hot because Iâm passionate about audio, especially vintage gear, and itâs how I feed my kids. So when a new door opens â even indirectly â Iâm going to notice. Anything that broadens the space weâre working in is welcome as far as Iâm concerned.
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Iâm going because I have pretty much always enjoyed music and hifi reproduction when its been part of a wider experience than just the sound itself. Also Iâve got the nephew hooked to the idea of big effortless horns and the scale of reproduction possible, so he canât wait.
One of the things that puts me off the audiophile scene, and still does is an imbalance between the quality of sound and the environment in which its being enjoyed - those âmy systemâ photos with piles of visually disjointed junk littering lounge floors has always triggered my dislike of this. The lack of visual integration just screams obsessive weirdo to me even though I share the obsession.
Iâm sad to say I donât share Matts optimism for how this particular event ties into the health and scale of the wider hifi enthusiast market. The cost of modern hifi is absolutely obscene and very prohibitive, no matter how cool it is dressed up (it really isnât most peopleâs idea of cool anyway).
However I look forward to going to share and enjoy the experience.
Iâve been quite surprised by the volume Ojas are moving and the places they are moving it to. Hello Hotels / interior designers etc etc
His is a very clever branding exercise. He has managed to connect to all sorts of influential people. Itâs amazing how he has done that. Once you have proved you are ineffably cool, then anything is possible.
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Thing is, in the 60s and 70s audio was cool. It was desirable, it was what people wanted (Probably why the age group from that period persists with sound today?) I do hear people say they donât care what something looks like, only the sound, but I donât buy that. People in general want pleasure. They want something that looks good in a room, feels crafted, has a story, holds interest. There are hundreds of turntables that can hit 33â without spraying noise everywhere; what puts one at the top and another at the bottom is often the design, the story, the way it lodges in peopleâs heads. Yes, the engineering matters, but itâs only part of the picture.
High-end audio is struggling because the market has shrunk. There are a thousand other things people can spend their money on now, far more than in the 60s and 70s (Certainly in terms of entertainment). The old model of âif it measures well, people will comeâ just doesnât cut it anymore. If the audience is ageing and the interest is fading, then the only sane move is a shift in public perception. I am greatful to a new audio breed for having a go at that.
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I went today, I liked some of the paintings and enjoyed the music I sat and listened to. Nothing more profound to say than that.
I also went to Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s - Design Museum
and The Photographersâ Gallery off Oxford Street which was excellent