The inspiration for the last experiment was a piece by Alvin Lucier called “I am sitting in a room”. In that piece, as he describes in the text that he reads, he is interested in the process of the gradual disintegration of speech and the reinforcement of the resonant frequencies of the room he is occupying. As he describes in the book Chambers,
“space acts as a filter, it filters out all of the frequencies except the resonant ones. It has to do with the architecture, the physical dimensions and acoustic characteristics of the space.”I think the specific effect of space on sound exposed by Lucier’s piece provides a method which could be utilized to directly impact an occupant’s understanding of the architecture they inhabit.
Max Neuhaus (1939-2009) website: http://www.max-neuhaus.info/
There are several aspects of the work by Neuhaus that I find fascinating:
- the location of many of his pieces in transient spaces with the idea that anybody has the opportunity to find the work (public sites)
- using sound to add a presence, growing a new place with a sound presence
- accumulation of the inaudible which then becomes audible
- process: how do you attach sound to the space and then build the work by building its sound
- unseen sources: located within ventilation chambers, disguised as drains in the ground etc.
Times Square (1977-1992, reinstated in 2002) exemplifies many of these qualities as it is located within a subway ventilation chamber beneath a grate in midtown Manhattan in Times Square. In the midst of the chaos and “noise” of the site, Neuhaus builds a thick textured drone that projects a volume of sound up from beneath your feet. With no markers indicating the entity as an artwork, the passerby may unexpectedly encounter this resonant presence or may not.
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Max Neuhaus, Times Square, 1992. Colored pencil on paper. Available at: http://www.diabeacon.org/sites/main/timessquare |
Time Piece at Dia: Beacon 2006, with variations also located at Graz (2003) and Stommeln (2007), employs the sudden "sound signal of silence" in order to expose the sounds of the everyday. A gradual entrance of a granular texture fades in over a period of several minutes before the hour strikes. On the hour, the sound is abruptly discontinued which leaves the listener with the sensation of loss. I am intrigued by the power of such a simple concept. One's ears calibrate to their surrounding aural environment and might not even perceive the additional layer of sound that Neuhaus has imposed on the site. However, the violent introduction of absence compels the listener to re-frame their relationship to the surrounding environment. The effect of these works can somewhat be experienced here in the last 2-3 minutes of the video about the Sommeln work.
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| Max Neuhaus, drawing for Time Piece Beacon, 2005. © 2005 Max Neuhaus. Photo: Cathy Carver. |
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