phila

From the look of my blog, the images I tend to post, and the creations I have featured, it should be no surprise that my aesthetic tends toward minimalism. There's nothing more pleasing than clean lines, defined geometry, crisp colors, and minimal elements. As with most things, I suppose I could trace this aesthetic back to my childhood in Colorado. There, the quality of the light and the simplicity of the desert landscape fit these criteria. On the Front Range, the sky dominates. In the west, the junction of prairie and sky is seamed with a distinctive jagged pattern of mountain peaks. Elsewhere on the horizon, the gold of the grass meets the brilliant indigo of the dry high desert sky with a sharp break. Sometimes, billowing cumulonimbus towers pile above and to the east, the sunlit white of their billows contrasting with the background firmament.

When Phil sent me the link to Phila Audio Corp, I was understandably floored. As soon as I saw these beautiful turntables, a jolt of electricity traveled through my body and into my past experiences of minimalism: Peyton; the German Pavilion; the Dolomites . . .

These analog beauties are hand-crafted from natural materials: wood, granite, etc. Their circuitry is clean and simple, as are their mechanism. The softness of the organic components provides a clear but fitting contrast with the hard mineral components. Very few mass-produced machines possess as much balance and beauty.

The way in which mechanical, electronic, and natural are so pleasingly integrated in these pieces of art reminded me immediately of Pirsig's insistence in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that technology is not the antithesis of quality. So often technology is the scapegoat for the ills that beset society.  Technology is not to blame; it is the nature of our relationship with technology that determines whether technology gives life or takes it. The key difference is how we approach technology. Even simple machines are not purely linear. There is always the human intentionality behind their design, structure, and use that makes the most simple machine an object of immense complexity.

In the case of these turntables, it is not only their function as instruments of music that thrills me; it is the fact that the design encompasses the instruments themselves into the beauty of their result that gives me so much joy.

Image proeperty of Phila Audio Corp