The Archaeology of Synthetic Sounds: Luke Fowler’s View on Patrick Cowley and the Birth of Hi-NRG

On this floor of No-26, we shift our route slightly north, toward Glasgow’s gray yet creatively charged atmosphere. But the story awaiting us flows from 1970s San Francisco, emerging from the haze of synthetic sounds and high-BPM rhythms. At The Modern Institute’s Aird’s Lane gallery, Turner Prize nominee Luke Fowler invites us into the world of one of the 20th century’s most mysterious and influential figures: Patrick Cowley.

In the Boiler Room of our apartment today, the heat is rising—not from the machines alone, but from the grainy texture of 16mm film and the tragic yet radiant legacy of a pioneer of Hi-NRG music. Fowler’s film “Patrick” (2020), on view until March 4, 2026, at The Modern Institute, is not merely a documentary; it is a poetic archaeology of an era, a subculture, and an identity woven through sound. Blending the melancholy of the city with the euphoria of the dance floor, this exhibition redefines the uncanny bond between contemporary art and the archive.

San Francisco, mid-1970s… The city sways like a dream at the peak of queer culture, disco rhythms, and liberation. One of the soundtrack writers of that dream is Patrick Cowley. With his film “Patrick,” Luke Fowler looks through the hazy lens of 16mm film at this legendary producer’s life and the objects he left behind.

Before shaking the world with his remix of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” Cowley had already started a revolution with his avant-garde synthesizer music for San Francisco’s underground clubs and the pornography industry. While tracing the traces of this revolution, Fowler sets aside conventional biographical methods: he detaches image from sound, letting the camera glide over Cowley’s belongings with the precision of an archivist.

Hi-NRG: A Life Rhythm Climbing to 160 BPM

Patrick Cowley took disco’s soft pulse and fused it with the cold yet seductive power of the synthesizer, laying the foundations of the Hi-NRG genre. As Maurice Tani says in the film: “Patrick wanted to be at the very top of the night, at the highest tempo, at 150–160 BPM.” This high tempo was not merely a musical preference; it was also a reflection of San Francisco’s insatiable appetite for life at the time.

Fowler’s film sweeps across a wide spectrum—from Cowley’s visionary collaborations with Sylvester to communal life in Haight-Ashbury. Yet it does not only narrate successes; it makes you feel in your bones the sorrow of Cowley’s tragically early death from AIDS in 1982, through metaphorical images such as a container ship gliding across the sea or a pair of denim shorts caught on barbed wire.

A 16mm Memory Record: The Poetics of the Archive

As both a musician and filmmaker, Luke Fowler loves pushing the boundaries of experimental cinema. While working with the Megatone Records archive preserved at the GLBT Historical Society, he emphasizes that objects are not mere things—they are witnesses. Fowler’s camera lingers on resin seeping from tree trunks, water buried beneath sand on the beach, or studio equipment under dim light, transforming Patrick Cowley’s physical absence into visual presence.

This narrative style—where image and sound are not synchronized, and the camera constructs the story through its own internal arrangement—also questions the political implications of documentary cinema. Like his earlier works on Martin Bartlett or Brunhild Ferrari, Fowler dusts off overlooked geniuses and carries them into today’s art galleries.

Boiler Room Notes: Why Watch It?

This exhibition is not just a music history lesson; it is also a work that mourns a lost generation and the aesthetic language it created. The bridge stretching from San Francisco’s sweaty nightclubs to Glasgow’s cool gallery walls comes alive through Luke Fowler’s poetic language. If you want to see the human story behind the “hyper-modern” sound of the synthesizer, and how an era was built and then collapsed, you must breathe the air of this floor.

Exhibition Information

Artist / Filmmaker: Luke Fowler

Exhibition / Film Title: Patrick

Venue: The Modern Institute, Aird’s Lane, Glasgow

Dates: Until March 4, 2026

Before leaving this floor of Apartment No:26, linger once more on the 16mm smoke rising from the Boiler Room. These vapors seep into our rooms like prophecies of the world’s end, carrying the echoes of a voice that once asked: “Is your brain still there at 20:30?”