In 1960 the legendary singer-songwriter Roy Orbison released his first top-ten hit “Only the Lonely (Know the Way I Feel).” He and co-writer Joe Melson originally tried to sell the song to Elvis, but after he turned it down, they decided to record it themselves. Orbison’s haunting vocals and unconventional arrangements of this song established his trademark sound. Today, “Only the Lonely” echoes through The Dikeou Collection galleries thanks to a set of handmade speakers built by artist Joshua Smith’s grandfather, which he gifted to the artist on the occasion of his high school graduation. Smith graduated in 2001 and brought the speakers into his artistic repertoire in 2007; he was 24 years old at this time, the same age as Orbison when he released the song. For a work loaded with minutiae, this secondary coincidence is another tie that binds personal, familial, and universal histories together.

In the six-year span between the speakers existing as household objects and objets d’art, they acquired the typical stains and scratches any well-loved furnishing would endure. Combined with the melodies that emanate from within, one cannot help but create a heavily romanticized and emotional interpretation of the work. But when removed from a domestic setting and programmed to repeat “Only the Lonely” every minute and 44 seconds, grandpa’s speakers become “a piece” of time-based media that calls for “a subtle jabbing not at minimalism or late modernism, but at the contemporary rush to further deconstruct these movements.” Straddled between the palpable and the conceptual, Smith’s Untitled (Speakers) also hovers around a nebulous space that engenders both collaboration and appropriation.

Engineering and constructing custom audio equipment is an artform in and of itself, and Smith’s grandfather is demonstrably adept at this craft. The speakers are the intermediary between Orbison’s music and Smith’s philosophy; it is a tripartite union bound by Smith’s artful moderation. While the art of appropriation is far from new, Smith’s use of the speaker as a primary formal device comes right at the crux of its popularity in the 21^st century timeline. Tom Sachs has been creating his own boomboxes and DJ gear with heavily appropriated materials since the mid-90s, with many of the pieces playing his personal musical selections. Mark Leckey started constructing and exhibiting his sound systems in the early 2000s, and artists Gary Simmons and Cosmo Whyte continue to build the sound system culture within the art world today. Smith’s Untitled (Speakers) may be miniscule in scale compared to works by the aforementioned artists, but its output is far from small – the sound is as powerful as the sentiment.

-Hayley Richardson