2016
Sound installations in public space
I focus on the early installation works of Max Neuhaus. They were one of the first site-specific sound installations, outside the museum and galleries and his work connected people in New York City with their city. Neuhaus changed from being a musician to an artist at a time when Fluxus and Minimalism were happening, John Cage had been exploring sound for a while and installation art was taking shape. Neuhaus was a professional drummer and percussionist in the 1960ies who wanted to reach a larger audience. He wanted to reach people outside of the conventions of the concert hall. Neuhaus uses sound as his material and builds a certain sound for each work to bring an imaginary moment or place. His site specific installations ‘replace the insular domain of musical performance with spatial geographies, investigation of electronic systems (...) and their subsequent noises, with the conditions of urban space and its planning, positioning a listener inside a greater geographic field’
Reflecting on his body of work, Neuhaus categorizes some of his works as ‘place works’ and others as ‘moment’ or ‘time’ works. Neuhaus: “For a place work you have to go to the place; for a moment work you can be in any of many places at the moment.” For the moment works he creates a sound that blends into the background, it is not attended to and is not consciously heard until it stops. So the moment it stops, you realize it was there. An example of a similar sound in daily life is the droning air conditioning that, when it is turned off, evokes a feeling of relief. Creating such a sound work means working with time; the listener needs to be in the space for a while in order to experience the work. Time Piece Beacon (2005) in the Dia:Beacon, New York museum consists of a sound that can be heard through the whole museum, its source unknown. It starts every seven minutes before the hour and lasts a few minutes, increasing in volume and presence, usually not noticed until it abruptly stops.