A TWO-PART PROGRAM EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION OF MUSIC AND DESIGN

Join Cooper Hewitt for a two-part program inspired by the exhibition Art of Noise. Explore how music intersects with product and graphic design through the perspectives of leading audio designers, music writers, and cultural documenters.

In Part 1, dive into the world of contemporary speaker design with fast-paced presentations by New York’s rising audio innovators—Deborah Garcia, Mo Yasin, and Zoë Mowat and Dave Shaw of Waves and Frequencies. Learn about their strategies for spatial activation, home audio enhancement, and live event sound system set ups.

Then, for Part 2, enjoy a dynamic conversation where writer and curator Vince Aletti speaks with DJ partners and publishers Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele of Love Injection. Together with moderator Matthew Higgs, they’ll unpack the visual language of album covers, posters and flyers. Discover how music’s graphic design including typography, color, and production techniques help shape memories and history. Expect a lively show-and-tell as Aletti and Love Injection share stories and rare examples from their experiences documenting, collecting, and distributing this cultural ephemera.

SPEAKERS PART 1

Deborah Garcia is a spatial activator specializing in sonic and structural disruption. She currently teaches at the Yale School of Architecture and is Residency Director and Curator of the Institute for Public Architecture in New York.

Zoë Mowat and David Shaw are the founders of Waves and Frequencies (WAF Audio), a hi-fi project based in New York and Ontario, Canada. Their approach to sound was shaped by DIY dance culture over many years of friendship, seeing high-fidelity sound as conduit for connection through music. Both industrial designers and DJs, they design and manufacture loudspeakers that bridge acoustic engineering, furniture design, and the social experience of listening.

Mo Yasin is a Sudanese-American DJ, speaker designer, and event producer from Virginia. Shaped by years behind the counter at record shops and driven by a deep passion for the sound system traditions of New York, the UK, and Jamaica, Yasin embodies a true do-it-yourself ethos. A quiet, decade-long career as a DJ in New York has evolved into an audio practice that merges technical precision with a wide-ranging musical sensibility, utilizing his custom-built sound system as a tool to explore and continually refine the dance floor experience.

SPEAKERS PART 2

Vince Aletti is a writer and curator based in New York City. His writings on music and photography have been published widely. Between 1973 and 1978 Aletti wrote a highly prescient weekly column on the emerging disco scene for Record World magazine, and between 1987 and 2005 he was the art editor and photography critic for The Village Voice. His writings have also appeared in The New Yorker, Artforum, and Vogue Italia, among many other publications. His book Issues: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines was published by Phaidon in 2019. The Drawer was published by Self Publish, Be Happy in September 2022 and went on to win the 2023 Aperture/Paris Photo Photobook of the Year award. The 2008 White Columns publication of Aletti’s collected writings on disco, Disco Files, was subsequently republished in an expanded edition by DJ History/D.A.P. in 2018.

Love Injection is variously known as a publication, a radio show, a DJ partnership, production duo, and a record label. But at its core it’s something far simpler, an offering—by and for the music and nightlife communities of New York City and anyone in kinship with them. Co-founded by Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele in 2015 as a labor-of-love monthly print fanzine, Love Injection’s continued multi-faceted expansion and evolution reflects the ongoing process of celebrating people and culture. Labor and love remain symbiotic. As Love Injection’s endeavors have grown—with the invaluable help of an extended family of friends and collaborators—so too has its commitment.

Matthew Higgs is an artist and the director and chief curator of White Columns, New York. Over the past three decades Higgs has organized more than 250 exhibitions and projects with artists, including projects at White Columns with Vince Aletti and Paul Raffaele and Barbie Bertisch of Love Injection. In 2006, Higgs launched the vinyl-only record label ‘The Sound of White Columns’ releasing new and archival recordings by artist-musicians. Higgs’ writing has appeared in more than 50 publications, and he was a regular contributor to Artforum for almost 20 years. Higgs is currently a contributing editor at both The Paris Review and Arena Homme+.

AccessibiliTy & What to Expect

Format: The program will begin with a brief welcome, then the speakers will engage in a conversation. Each part will end with an optional Q&A with the audience. There will be a brief intermission between Part 1 and Part 2.  After the program, the audience will be invited to explore the exhibition.
About the space: This program will take place in Cooper Hewitt’s Lecture Room on the ground floor of the museum. It is fully wheelchair accessible. There is an accessible restroom on the ground floor. Read more about accessibility at Cooper Hewitt.
Accommodations: The program will have live CART captioning. We welcome questions and accommodation requests that support your participation. Email us at CHEducation@si.edu or let us know when you register. Please make your request as far in advance as possible—preferably at least ten days before the program date.

Support

This exhibition is made possible by the August Heckscher Exhibition Fund, the Ehrenkranz Fund, the Barbara and Morton Mandel Design Gallery Endowment Fund, the Fisher Arts Impact Fund, and Jonathan Schroeder and Janet Borgerson. In-kind support provided by Kvadrat Inc. and USM Modular Furniture.