Public Supply I, WBAI, New York, 1966, Radio Station WBAI New York City
Dimensions: 20 miles in diameter, Extant: October 8, 1966 8:30 - 10:00 PM -
- First broadcast work
In the same year that he conceived Max-Feed and the first Listen walk, Neuhaus began his productions for and with radio networks. When he was still playing as a percussionist, the non-commercial WBAI radio station in New York offered him an interview. Since Neuhaus was questioning his career as a musician at that time, he offered to produce a piece rather than talk about his work. This is how he developed the first version of Public Supply, a project for which he connected 10 telephone lines to the WBAI network covering 32km2 of New York's urban space. At this time, no technique exists that allows this telephone involvement of the listener.
Neuhaus thus built a coupling and mixing system associated with that of a semi-automatic answering machine. This analog system lifts the receiver when the phone rings and sends the sounds picked up by a microphone installed in a plastic cup into a mixer. Neuhaus publishes an announcement indicating the time of the “show”, as well as the phone number to call and asks people to make any sound. We now hear readings, songs, musical instruments, cries, as well as feedback loops created by the proximity of the radio set to the telephone, the call of which is limited to three minutes per listener. During the broadcast of the project, these sounds are mixed and output according to different groups and levels established by Neuhaus who describes his role “not as a manipulator of the material, but as an 'equalizer' of the people”.
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william-duckworth-interview-edited-from-transcript-new-york-1982-first-published