Taking inspiration from the way sounds behave within a domestic setting, an exhibition explored the nature of noise in our homes and reimagined them with a series of audio-equipped furniture pieces that functioned as bizarre musical instruments.
Making its debut in Ventura Lambrate at Milan Design Week, INSTRUMENTS completed a trio of exhibitions and was a collaborative project between international designers in the Master Interior Architecture & Retail Design program at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
There were five objects in total. Obsessive Cleaners saw a quintet of friction idiophones customised into cleaning devices, amplifying the sound of a domestic spring-clean, working together to create a minimal symphony while simultaneously scrubbing surfaces. The creators compared cleaning to the act of playing an instrument, a process that highlights the nuanced neuroses of individuals who obsessively strive for perfection.
For Domestichordophone, a wooden cabinet became a stringed instrument, with the artists intending to reflect tensions between two people within a domestic environment. Paperscape visualised the air that fills a room, and was inspired by domestic clothes hangers and the sound of air moving between paper sheets. Auscultable, meanwhile, represented the hidden sounds within a domestic space, embedding a membrane which can produce sound into a table and performed through a stethoscope. It aimed to remove the clinical elements and scientific connotations of medical instruments, repurposing them within the domestic arena.
Lastly, sonic f.lux consisted of hanging pendant lights incorporating a speaker and a body of water, with a view to extending the sense of sound into a physical object.
Together the project was held within a space designed to mirror a black-box theatre, and each project exhibited along with an accompanying video. Most striking is the tangibility of the exhibition, combining abstractions and granting them a new physicality that coincides with the intended new, creative meanings.