2017
Max Neuhaus's "Max-Feed"
Max Neuhaus’s artwork Max-Feed (1966) was intended to be mass-produced and sold inexpensively in grocery stores. As an electronic device that creates feedback through a radio in its proximity, anyone could own the artwork and turn a room in their home into a sound installation. Neuhaus coined the term sound installation, and I share his belief that the omnipresence of sound, and its relation to public engagement, holds the potential for agency and democracy through participation.
—Camille Norment
Dia Chelsea’s talk space will host an iterative presentation of literature and sound, creating a constellation of contexts to accompany the exhibition and its live programs. The space features a rotating and expanding guest-curated library of books and vinyl records for visitors to select and listen to on turntables. Max Neuhaus’s Max-Feed (1966), a portable, self-contained feedback instrument conceived for mass production, accentuates the presentation. Displayed here in a vitrine, Max-Feed functions as a visual register of sonic feedback, which is an operative strategy and mode of engagement throughout Plexus and Norment’s practice more generally. In another reference to feedback through acts of collaboration and accumulation, visitors are encouraged to share their own suggestions for the library’s book and vinyl collections via this form.
For the first phase of this series, contributors Seth Cluett and James Hoff have curated a selection of texts and sound that will unfold incrementally throughout the project. These materials will expand and alternate in ways that reflect thematic engagements and live programs, addressing the metaphysics of sound and the relationships between feedback, agency, and horror, among other concerns.