Art and HiFi Ramblings From Madrid

I’m writing this from Madrid, where Lin and I are visiting the Art and Sound Fest, an event that brings together two of our shared passions: HiFi and contemporary art. I’m a little bit drunk, but I wanted to get my thoughts out of my head and onto this virtual notepad. It’s a clever idea (the festival, not being a little bit drunk) and, I think, a timely one. According to the organisers, “The event brings together contemporary art and high-end music systems in a shared environment… designed to appeal to music enthusiasts, audiophiles, and contemporary art followers… Visitors will have the opportunity to listen to high-performance HiFi systems and view contemporary artworks presented throughout the venue.”

Standing there among the paintings, sculptures, installations, and world-class HiFi systems, it struck me that not only does this combination work, it also makes absolute sense. We often talk about music as being art (it is), but for the sake of this particular and rambling thought trail, I’d like to suggest that it is a class of art in its own right. Then consider the others: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, digital works, conceptual and contemporary pieces. There is a shared DNA running through them all, and the Art and Sound Fest makes that connection explicit rather than implied.

Plenty of musicians have dabbled in visual art. Bob Dylan has been painting and sketching for years. Joni Mitchell has been drawing and painting for most of her life. Charlie Watts from The Rolling Stones famously used to draw the bed in whatever hotel he found himself in on tour. And Ronnie Wood doesn’t exactly hide his art; he sells it. Quite successfully, by all accounts. It turns out rock musicians, the ones we expect to be all sweat and swagger, often have a quiet visual world too. I guess it’s just another way of expressing themselves.

So maybe the line between “music people” and “art people” is thinner than we think. The Art and Sound Fest seems to understand this. Walking between systems and sculptures, I noticed how naturally the two interacted. You find yourself listening differently when surrounded by visual art. And you look at art differently when something is playing in the background. It’s as if one tickles the senses for the other. In a way, both are trying to do the same thing: to pull you out of the everyday and show you a different angle on reality, even if only for a brief moment.

Some will argue that the two don’t mix. That sound is one thing, visual art another, and trying to combine them is like putting a dollop of ketchup on ice cream; unnecessary at best, minging at worst. There is a belief in some circles that serious HiFi should be experienced in monastic conditions: darkened rooms, no distractions, speakers pointed with military precision, and preferably no hint of colour outside a power indicator light. We experienced that in Madrid too, and it was a wonderful, but different experience.

Think about art cars. BMW famously commissioned artists (Warhol and Lichtenstein are the two that spring to mind) to paint entire cars as functioning sculptures. Were they practical? Not really. Did they make any sense in a conventional automotive way? No. But that wasn’t the point. The point was the collision of two forms of expression. The same thing happens when HiFi brands dare to step outside their usual palette of black, silver, and occasionally champagne. We’ve seen companies release speakers with hand-painted finishes, limited-edition artist collaborations, and bespoke cabinet work that’s more gallery piece than box. Some of these designs polarise opinion, and that’s precisely what art is supposed to do.

There was a pair of loudspeakers at the festival with cabinets painted by a contemporary artist known for bold, abstract strokes and colours. The speakers were certainly different, and not everyone liked them. But they made a statement. They were functional sculptures like the “art cars” I mentioned above.

HiFi has always flirted with aesthetics. It’s true. The whole “it only matters how it sounds” line is one of the biggest loads of codswollop in the hobby. Of course, appearance matters! That’s why we yadder on about finishes and knobs, and build quality. That’s why some turntables often resemble kinetic art. HiFi has its own design language and its own visual culture, even if we pretend it doesn’t.

The Art and Sound Fest acknowledges this. And it feels refreshing.

There’s also something about the atmosphere of art spaces that lends itself to listening more attentively. Galleries encourage contemplation. They demand you slow down. That slowing down is exactly what good HiFi demands. These two worlds aren’t competing for your attention. They’re cooperating. In Madrid, walking around the cavernous spaces of the gallery, you become aware that the curation is intentional. The visual work frames the listening experience, and the sound systems create a kind of emotional architecture for the art.

Some might still say the two don’t belong together; that art galleries should be silent, and HiFi rooms should be visually neutral. But that mindset seems (to me) to be planted in a particular kind of purism that misses something essential. Both art and music are sensorial, emotional, and deeply personal forms of connection. They are meant to create emotional moments. Sometimes those moments are solitary. Sometimes they are shared.

And perhaps that’s why this show works so well. It allows people who love art to discover that high-end sound isn’t just equipment, it’s expression. It allows audiophiles to realise that the visual arts aren’t a distraction, but a parallel kind of thing. It makes the point that aesthetics and acoustics aren’t rivals. They can be natural allies.

This leads to another thought that I had while wandering around the venue: maybe the walls we build between artistic disciplines are artificial. Maybe they only exist because it’s convenient to keep things organised; music here, art there, design somewhere else. But when you bring them together, as this festival does, you realise that they feed the same human desire: the desire to be emotionally moved.

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that events like this aren’t just enjoyable; they’re necessary. HiFi shows have always been about more than gear. People don’t attend because they need a marginally better DAC. They attend because they want an experience. They want to feel something, to feel the thrill of listening deeply. Art does something similar. It challenges, provokes, delights, confuses, and comforts. When combined, their impact is amplified (pun intended).

Of course, as with anything that crosses boundaries, some will still resist, and others will moan loudly. They’ll say the two worlds don’t mix, that it’s gimmickry, that they want their audio straight up and unadorned. That’s all well and good,  but walking through the Art and Sound Fest, taking in paintings and sculptures alongside beautifully put together systems, it was hard not to feel that this is a space where something new and exhilarating is happening. Something encouraging. Something connective. Something different. I even said to the folk who put the show together that it was the best show I’d been to, and I genuinely do believe that. 

We spend so much time worrying about how to bring younger people into the hobby, how to make HiFi relevant, how to show that it’s not a dusty museum of boxes and cables enjoyed by old blokes wearing slippers and smoking a pipe. Maybe the answer isn’t just in the sound. Maybe part of the answer is in recontextualising HiFi;  placing it not as its own solitary thing, but within the broader culture of creativity. Put HiFi next to art, and it suddenly feels alive in a different way.

And that’s the real value of the Art and Sound Fest. It acknowledges what I think many of us feel already: music systems aren’t just machines, they are instruments of experience, machines for joy. And art (visual, sculptural, conceptual) helps make that experience somehow better and more emotionally connected.

So yes, I think art and music belong together. Not because it’s trendy. Not because it creates a good photo opportunity, though it does, as you will see when we publish our report. But because both disciplines attempt to answer the same question: what does it feel like to be alive? 

Both can be provocative. Both can be inspiring. And both can be challenging. We don’t all like the same art, just as we all don’t like the same music.

Perhaps that’s why, in a cavernous space in Madrid, surrounded by speakers, amps, turntables, photographs, paintings and sculptures, I found myself thinking that the festival isn’t just a clever mash-up…it’s a blueprint. A reminder that art, in all its forms, works best when we allow it to mingle, cross over, and cross-pollinate.

And maybe that’s what we need more of in HiFi. A little less isolation. A little more imagination. A willingness to see our systems not just as tools for listening but as part of a larger, more vibrant creative culture.

Music is art, obviously! But perhaps it’s time we stopped pretending it’s the only art HiFi belongs with.

The Madrid show is open today, and if you find yourself in the second most populous city in Europe, then you should go and experience it. 

Stuart Smith

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