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Radio and Art
Discover Radios as Art and Through Art
Radio as Art
I think we all agree that radios can be beautiful objects in themselves. Sleek design plays a huge part in selling receivers, and some British firms have made this aspect of their products into a major selling point. Just think of the lines of the AOR AR7030 or an unusually coloured Lowe HF-125. Art and Radio also meet in public spaces, such as Cildo Meireles’s Babel 2001, at the Tate. A tower of radios that could reach the heavens. Border Tuner was another example of radio-art, as is the Longplayer Project, which I write about in my forthcoming Part Two of my musings about time-signal stations.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/meireles-babel-t14041
In my view, no area of the radio hobby illustrates this connection better than vintage radio. Just look at the amazing Art-Deco radios in Robert Hawes’s book Bakelite Radios or the quirky machines in his title Radio Art. I picked up both of those at one of the last Swap-meets of the British Vintage Wireless Society (BVWS). The current lock-down allows me to pause and just enjoy some of those beauties. I wish I could afford to collect them….