Sound is not just for your ears, but something your hands can touch if you bring them to the right spot. An ingenious device, “Tube Amp” (2014), built by Daniel Neumann and Juan Betancurth, enables your fingers to feel the vibrations linked to the sound you’re hearing. It’s smashing.
“Tube Amp” is part of a sound field created by several speaker-sculptures on display for the next few weeks at the Fridman Gallery. In this show, One Cycle Ahead, each modified speaker ruptures expectation on several levels. Not only do they reveal sound as something you can occasionally see, feel, and touch, the aural clamor itself has an addictive low bass quality. It’s worth a trip — you’ll leave the exhibition realizing just how reductively you once thought of sound before you walked in.