Moment

In 1979, Max Neuhaus adjusted the alarm clock to the sensibility of the sleeper who wants to wake up at a certain time.  He designed a sound that does not disturb sleep, but whose disappearance and subliminal absence strike the sleeper and bring about awakening.  
What counts here is not the form or presence of the sound, but its efficacy.
This work is not a decor, but a ceremony (from carimonia, which in turn comes from careo = to lack, be deprived).  It is a way of differing from the tradition.  
Not fullness of sound, then, but lack or movement in the interval between fullness and emptiness.  The first in the series of Time Pieces.

Germano Celant, 'Max Neuhaus:  Germano Celant, 'Max Neuhaus: An Occasion for Listening', 1994
Translated from the Italian by Brian Holmes

'The first large scale realization of this idea was at the Whitney Museum in New York in its sculpture garden in 1983.  Although it was large scale, it was still a model.  It was in a museum context, and I first decided to try the idea by not adding a sound but recoloring sound that was already there and very, very gradually over a period of ten minutes introducing the recoloration of the live sound into the place and at one instant pulling away the coloration and exposing the sound again in a new way'. mn

Max Neuhaus, Berlin / 26 May 1995

Exhibition: Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art  - a piece he would later title Time Piece “Archetype”

The project for Geneva proposed a Time Piece which would be perceived in a border along the Lake Geneva shore line.  The drawing shows a sound source group placed at a point equidistant from the lake shores.  The group is made up of twelve separate audio channels, providing the means of matching the varied aural environments by creating a sound / shape which has different dimensions and timbre in each of twelve vectors.

12. Mai 1989 – 11. Januar 1990
- first full-scale Time Piece, commissioned by Kunsthalle Bern, extant until 1993

'The only work which has been realized on a city scale was in 1989 at the Kunsthalle in Bern where for a distance of one kilometer around the Kunsthalle I added a half-hourly sound character, a texture of sound, a continuous sound, which at every half hour disappeared.  It's a very interesting exercise for someone who has shaped sound for his whole life as I have; it's working on the other face of the coin.  It's shaping sound to shape a silence'. mn

Berlin / 26 May 1995

Doris von Drathen, "Max Neuhaus: Invisible Sculpture - Molded Sound", Parkett 35, 1993

The exhibition was essentially a proposal for the realization here in Barberino Val d'Elsa of the ideas outlined in the panels mounted on the walls of the room. It will be the first full-scale realization of the idea.

At the heart of this Neuhaus' work is the connection of an ancient practice - the use of sound as a fundamental reference for a community - with an entirely new concept. Carrying out the first construction in Barberino, whose medieval structure is still intact, becomes a metaphor for this juxtaposition of the old with the new.

Location: Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York,Dimensions: 200 x 800 meters
Extant: 2005–Present
Inaugurated: 2006
Time Piece Beacon is planned to be officially inaugurated in May 2006, and will be part of Dia Art Foundation’s collection.

Commissioned specifically for Dia:Beacon, Max Neuhaus’s Time Piece Beacon (2005) creates a zone of sound around the perimeter and in the galleries of the museum. As each hour approaches, a low tone gradually emerges, almost imperceptibly increasing in volume; the hour is signaled when the sound abruptly ends, creating what seems a silence in the ambient sonic environment. This is what the artist called a “sound signal in reverse,” a subtle sound that is noticed when it disappears rather than when it begins. This work belongs to a series inspired by a singular early project—a silent alarm clock, designed by Neuhaus in 1979. The device produced a drone that, growing from inaudible to a distinctly haunting volume, would induce the sleeping listener to wake up as the sound shut off. Similarly, in Time Piece Beacon, Neuhaus devised a continuous, gradual sound tapestry pitched at the upper limit of the natural ambient sounds of the area: “Initially inaudible, the sound will gradually emerge from the ambient noise 

and then will suddenly stop.” The signal thus becomes the silence that ensues after the cessation of the sound. As another reference that informed the series, Neuhaus recalled the unifying role of bells in early modern societies, gathering the listeners audibly, but also delimiting the spatial perimeter of a community by means of vibrating, tactile sound resonance

Location: Town Square, Stommeln-Pulheim, Germany, 2007

Dimensions: 137 x 54 meters
Extant: 2007-Present
Collection: City of Pulheim
(a permanent sound work in the town square)

Stommeln.pdf

Manifesta7, 2008

Upon being invited to envision a work for Manifesta7 and the Fortezza fortress itself I began some research. The importance of this route as the connector between north and south is well known, but I also found that this particular spot, because of its constricted nature, has held a position of strategic importance for at least the last four thousand years. 

I propose the realization of a Time Piece as an invisible entity here. The void produced by the sound's disappearance will evoke the past history of this important site; the memory of its long gone inhabitants as well as the multitude of travelers who have passed through it. mn

Text extrat: Max Neuhaus, Project Description, 2008

Dimensions: 300 x 500 meters
Extant: 2003–Present

Collection: Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria