benoit maubrey builds a world of speaking sculptures from recycled sound

"It's a reason why he shifted his artistic practice from painting to making in the early 1980s. For him, painting on canvas couldn't do what he needed to do: to make the air move, aka the sounds."

"He doesn't select them by brand or acoustic quality but by availability. He describes the process as democratic, or what he calls a democracy of ohms (the ohm is the unit of electrical resistance in a loudspeaker)."

"nobody else in the world connects 3,000 or more recycled speakers together and turn them into interactive public sculptures across cities worldwide."

Benoît Maubrey creates functional public art sculptures from recycled speakers, shaped as shrines, ships, obelisks, igloos, and temples. He shifted from painting to sculpture-making in the early 1980s to activate public spaces and make air move through sound. His farmhouse in Brandenburg, Germany stores 3,000 speakers collected from recycling companies, thrift markets, and streets. He selects speakers by availability rather than brand or quality, describing this as a democracy of ohms. Maubrey uniquely connects hundreds of speakers together, managing their electrical resistance values through specialized wiring and amplification. As founder of Die Audio Gruppe since 1982, he has built interactive sculptures across Europe, the Middle East, and Japan, allowing viewers to speak, sing, or connect Bluetooth devices.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine