Time Piece ‘Archetype’ at the 1983 Whitney Biennial, installed in the sunken sculpture garden in front of the museum. The piece hinged on the prevailing sounds coming from Madison Avenue, which Neuhaus piped into the garden through a device that slightly altered their timbre, so that the real time acoustic events doubled a bit shifted and minutely delayed. The added relay began inaudibly and increased very gradually over twenty minutes until it matched the volume intensity of actual street sounds. At that moment, the relay suddenly ceased. Inaudibly, a new cycle recommenced, yet for most hearers it was the cycle’s cessation that first made them aware of the building electronic reflections. As Carter Ratcliff described, “With half one’s aural environment deleted…the site seems astonishingly clear. Din no longer sounds like mere din, but a rich aural texture instead.
'At the Whitney, his Time Piece was even more thoroughly at home in its Madison Avenue site, and more securely too, for Neuhaus drew sounds directly from the street. Microphones embedded in the facade of the Whitney Museum gathered in the noise of buses, automobiles and so on, then a computerized complex of circuitry 'piped' this raw aural material to speakers installed above museum's small, sunken sculpture court. Since this court is on the front or street-side of the building, it was possible to hear the sounds of Madison Avenue arrive directly from the pavement while hearing them again through electronic channels established by the artist. Thus he achieved an automatic consonance between work and site. His need, then, was to establish a difference - not a telling similarity - between the sounds of the piece and the sounds of its place'.