Awesome Stuff: Speakers As Art
from the see-and-hear dept
This week, we’ve got three unique crowdfunded speakers that deliver sound with a hefty dose of creative design flare.
As our sound equipment gets smaller, sleeker and more convenient, it’s hard not to take a moment to appreciate the aesthetics of old-school hi-fi — the hulking, elaborate boomboxes that weighed a ton, gobbled up batteries, and looked cool doing it. A Touch Of Bass is a project to memorialize that era of design in pieces of functional art: photographs of vintage boomboxes are printed and mounted on a shadowbox, and fitted with real speakers connected to a bluetooth sound system. The result is a detailed wall-hanging reproduction of a classic piece of technology that connects to modern devices and functions like a real boombox. There’s a huge selection of classic boombox designs in a range of sizes to choose from, and the speakers themselves are a high-quality pair of woofers and single tweeter for authentic, top-notch sound.
Hazang speakers are a unique sight: elegant spherical speakers that, at a glance, look like something built long before the age of recorded audio. Each speaker is hand-crafted in North Vietnam using traditional weaving techniques to create a speaker box that’s striking and unique, with a bamboo body and a hemp fabric faceplate. The high-end, high-tech guts ensure each speaker delivers superior sound, while the low-tech exterior not only looks good but is designed to serve as an excellent acoustic casing in its own right — all with a price tag which, while not cheap, is competitive for a piece of quality audio gear with such stunning design.
COSMOS isn’t just a speaker: it’s also a clock and an ambient lamp, and it’s all based on the night sky. The face of the COSMOS is a full map of the constellations in the northern hemisphere, backlit in all their glittering glory. But it also includes a pair of special stars to indicate the hands of a clock, and it conceals a bluetooth speaker at the base. It doesn’t strive to offer the high-end sound of the previous two entries, but serves more as an all-around art piece that would make an excellent bedside lamp, or just an eye-catching decoration.
Filed Under: art, audio, awesome stuff, speakers
