FRAGILE NOISE (2026)

I never quite mastered a musical instrument, yet music has always filled my home. My interest in audio goes back to childhood, when I was constantly drawn to new technology, speakers, and headphones.

I became obsessed with bass and treble, especially the physicality of sound: turning the bass up enough to make a car shake or hearing how a small adjustment could completely change the experience. Even as a kid, I was experimenting with sound in simple ways, like placing a paper towel roll over a phone speaker just to see how much louder it could get.

With this project, I wanted to explore a few new ideas. First, how speakers and sound could be incorporated directly into a piece of furniture. Second, how I could bring together the influence of three artists and designers who currently inspire my work: Donald Judd, Tom Sachs, and Devon Turnbull.

This chair was built from plywood and speaker components, beginning with a form loosely inspired by Donald Judd’s iconic furniture and then reworked around the practical demands of a speaker enclosure. The goal was not simply to make a chair that played music, but to make sound feel physical. It needed enough volume to compete with a busy New York City block, while giving the person sitting in it the chance to actually feel the bass move through the structure.

Visually, the piece pulls from the construction sites that seem to endlessly reshape the city. The orange paint, rough typography, and hand-made stencils borrow from the temporary language of barriers, warnings, markings, and graffiti. I was drawn to that tension between something industrial and impersonal, and something obviously made by a person.

That same instinct is what draws me to Tom Sachs. His work made me want to push the chair beyond being a static object and rethink how the speaker itself could function. I rewired the components to run from a Ryobi battery, making the entire chair portable and allowing the sound to move with the piece rather than stay tied to an outlet. That utility, improvisation, and visible problem-solving became as important to the design as the chair itself.

The audio side of the piece was heavily influenced by Devon Turnbull and the culture of listening that surrounds his work. The exposed wiring, the speaker itself, and the decision to embed a sound system into a functional object all come from the idea that audio equipment can be more than technology. It can become sculpture, furniture, and a reason to stop and listen.

Written by Jack Hazzard on October 7, 2026