2014–2022
Lowther DX55 speakers, wood, canvas, DIY kit tube amplifier, record player, reel-to-reel player, field recording, retail display case
For DIY HIFI I set up an audiophile listening room comprising full-range horn speakers, a stereo console, record player, reel-to-reel player and tube amplifier along with a set of chairs. I built the speakers by modifying a design posted online by DIY audio guru Nelson Pass. The tube amplifier was made from a hobby kit and the chairs were built following plans from a 1980s DIY furniture manual. Viewers of DIY HIFI are invited to bring in their own vinyl records to hear how they sound on this special system; Lowther speaker drivers employ powerful rare earth magnets, allowing DIY HIFI to render mid and high frequencies exceptionally well. Proponents of single-driver full-range speaker systems, as used in DIY HIFI, insist that they give more accurate reproduction, as no information is lost in the electronic crossovers needed for multiple speaker designs. In my experience, I can somehow hear more detail on material that I play on DIY HIFI.
My idea was to make a presentation in a public environment of an experience that usually takes place in private—homes of audiophiles who fanatically build such listening rooms. The goal was to inhabit such an obsession, to build a space using plans and designs from the public realm and then present it as a sculpture, thus conflating private domestic space with the public space of the gallery and the production of ‘private’ artwork with public knowledge. It was interesting to me that the listening rooms of audiophiles coincidentally appeared similar to post-minimal sculpture by artists such as Robert Morris or Vito Acconci. I was very pleased when the installation of DIY HIFI at the Vancouver Art Gallery was reviewed by an online blog, Audiophile Style, thus returning my inspiration to its source.
At the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2018, DIY HIFI was installed surrounded by acoustic diffusion panels made from cast-off materials from a kitchen renovation. Two field recordings were added to the reel-to-reel machine for the Musée D’art Joliette installation in 2022: a thunderstorm I recorded alongside Louis Creek in BC, and a rehearsal space threatened with closure from being bought by a megachurch.