1995
Neuhaus Interview - 11 August 1995
Side A
Drive in music in 1967 was your first sound installation but you didn't have the term sound installation in mind when you made it. At what point did you coin this term?
I think it was early in the 70's I remember discussing it with people in the plastic arts in something like 1972/1973, because that was when the idea that the special meaning of the word installation in the plastic arts had come about by then and
After that?
Yeah
After sound installation
Yeah but installation without sound then something in the plastic arts in the early 1970's or not.
Yeah absolutely
And so that was the key you know finding a concept that was about a specific place attaching the word sound to it, coining a new word meaning no-one understood what I was talking about.
This was in New York?
Yeah.
Why did you have to name it? You know someone must have said what is that?
Well no it became clear to me at that point it is hard to remember its 22 years ago but it was clear to me that it was no longer music. I had the first idea for sound installation. I remember in 1965 in Spilato I proposed to Giancarlo Manotti to make a piece in a place outside Spilato I think it may have been an amphitheatre or something that would be there for the festival but of course they kind of laughed at me and I was fighting with him because he was as you know I was a virtuoso playing solo concerts and he wanted to save money by having me play in the opera Piet Onso which I did but I made a lot of errors by kicking over symbols and things that we finally settled that I would not play in the opera orchestra but I would not do a sound installation either.
You should have gone to the Jul........ who would have taught you about not kicking these things over.
I knew perfectly well how to not kick them over but you know when a symbol falls over in the middle of an opera especially one of his horrible pieces of shit.
We are going to have to get this on tape Max restrain yourself.
Don't worry this will be edited.
Furthermore public supply in 1966 was your first broadcast work but when you made it I suppose you didn't have the term broadcast work in mind.
No.
At what point did you coin that term.
It is a good question. I don't remember and I have never felt completely comfortable with it because it doesn't really describe the thing.
It describes the means.
Partly the means but these are connections of a telephone network and a radio network and so this idea for volume 'x' whatever of using, imagine we have sound works, network to talk about what I have called broadcast works before it is much more apropos because that is what they are really they are networks.
What you now call network you would not have called it network.
Indeed well I knew what a network was and the title of Radio Net was really Radio Network in 1977 but nobody else knew what a network was. The word was not common in fact the people at NPR thought I was naming the piece National Education of TV (NET) but maybe you know there was one of the first publications I think was in 1968 Source Magazine and I don't think I named things in there I just put
This could be checked
Yeah
But I mean I am asking you about this because at certain points you've contrasted broadcast works with sound installations.
Yeah
And so that I, for instance, in the Dockworth interview.
Right
and so I am curious to know when these categories
Well for me the broadcast works never left being music and they were the extension of this idea of music as an activity among people going back to what I felt was the original impulse for music in society and taking new means and reinstating an additional thing I was not saying we should eliminate music played by musicians or music as a product even it is just saying that this was original impulse and we have the means to do it in a much different way now. Why not take this telephone network and plug it into the radio station? Bang, we've gotten something special its called the network.
Now then about 10 years ago you coined the term place works as a better way to refer to what you had been calling sound installations because you found that some people were using the latter term to describe works that were fundamentally different from your other. Yes or No?
Yes
The idea - its not all the sound installations are place works there are other sound works, what I would have called before sound installations at this part that are about transforming or rebuilding or creating a new place in a given place and this idea of what place means in English at least that place is not just a physical place a place is all its meanings that we think of. I mean the people there, the people who use it, who own it who does what in it, its character visual its oral character - its character. A place has a character a space doesn't have a character. So calling them space works didn't make any sense. They are about building a place, a new place at a given place.
Right, but the, so and what about the term sound works was that formulated at the same time?
No that was a little later as that was the real rejection of sound installation.
More so than place works?
Yeah because sound work was finally a neutral term which could cover all my work.
Right.
So in a way .....
It was clean, its short, sound work bang, no installation no bla bla.
Yeah but sound work is more general than sound installation.
Much
It includes my whole work.
And place work is more narrow than sound installation?
More specific.
Because some things you would call sound installations that you wouldn't call place works.
I would have called sound installations?
Yeah
That I don't call place works like passage, that kind of music is about passage, all the underwater pieces aren't place works.
But you choose place works because of the connotations of the work place.
Yes.
Rather than in, for its contrast time or moment - it seems to me from reading that time pieces is a formulation that happens before the formulation of moment works. Yes or No?
No.
Yes because I mean you know sometimes I use double meanings in titles I didn't see time pieces at first as a form I thought it was a piece and the fact that it was a moment that was periodic and we have this formal word time piece for a watch or a clock but also using the word piece in terms of a ....
In the artistic sense?
Yeah exactly so with a double meaning and then not I think Beaumont really came very recently probably in trying to in 1989 or something but I think I use the word moment well I use the word moment there but I called them time pieces still in the 1989 Catalogue from Bern but moment really probably came about when I was outlining these books in deciding what they should be and finding one word for each journal.
Right so even though nowadays you would contrast the place works and the moment works the origin in the case of place works was not in terms of contrast with moment works.
Well as I always say I try not to know what I am doing until I have done it I mean there is no way that I can start out saying this is going to be a place work I mean I can now, but I am never sure until I finish and it could turn out to be something knew that I didn't think of before you know.
Then we come on to the question about you know is there a danger in regard to the terminology that you use now say place work and sound work, of the same problem arising that arose in the case of sound installation that is other artists will come along and you know set up a lot of tapes and say you know there is my sound work.
Well I mean they can actually and because sound work I don't claim in a way I mean it is a very general term and when I say Max Newhouse sound work that specifies it but in terms of co-opting or usurping place moment they have to defend that but nobody had to defend sound installation. Many of them did not realise that they were doing something different you know. They were just doing their thing whether its conceptual loud or electronic music and there was this new term around and so they used it. As soon as it became established and people stopped saying what when somebody said a sound installation then do you know it opened up a whole new territory for artists, musicians, kinetic artists to move into.
Well what opens the territory is the work not the term right and that is you know if you are doing something new then you are subject to imitation both in terms of working and in terms of describing what it is.
I don't mind the imitation I don't mind other people doing the same thing on the day but would they destroy the term by doing not something new and using the term as a vehicle it is hard to do something new it is hard to present a new word especially in situations where one is dealing with an institution. The institution feels comfortable now with the sound installation they didn't when I coined the word. So it is a vehicle for somebody to do anything in.
Well maybe the thing about imitation is that because people can't see deliberately what is making the sound they don't know how you do it and so if they come up with the tapes to try to do something similar you know they may not realise that they are doing something quite different.
No I think that is true and you know it is partly a problem of a resistance on my part for many years to not articulate verbally or visually what it is I do.
That is very important because that related to how you want the things to be perceived right? So that you should insist on I mean the hiding or concealing of the, you know, what goes into producing the various works so that people who experience it they don't know right. They can't see it.
No, I never hid my diagrams and whenever anybody would ask me questions about how I built this piece I would always answer them, the lecture in Tokyo was the best example. It is not a matter of hiding that but I mean from a person walking into a piece I certainly would not put construction process drawings outside the piece otherwise it would turn into, you know, something about the technique of doing acoustics or something.
No what I had in mind is that you don't I mean like you can't see the speaker that's producing the sound because you don't want the perceiver to have a physical reference right.
But also the speaker sound isn't coming from the speaker in most of the pieces its coming from the walls and the space or another place so its very misleading to put the speaker there. All the connotations of recreational music as opposed to something created, it recreated recreation.
Well I mean that for whatever reason I think it is important that using sound and you don't want something to be seen so that people immediately sort of connect their experience with some sort of source. I didn't mean that you were concealing in the sense that you wouldn't explain but I mean even if you explain you see whereas people are familiar with tape recorders are not familiar with you know computer generated sound.
No no-one is I mean I invented these systems.
Exactly. There is the, I mean I suppose we are talking about the issue of imitation right that there is a lot that isn't obvious and however much you may be willing to you know bring it all out into the open to anyone who can follow you a lot of artists are not going to be in the position to imitate the thing for what it is. I can see that they might.....
Some of its innocent I agree its just misinterpretation and I mean one of the reasons, there are a couple of reasons I think that all the books are coming out now and more texts and the drawings and all that part of it is that there is enough of body work that I can look back and see what it is. Before that I mean its still like a plant that's growing from the ground you don't know what it is at the first few shoots that come out of the ground and when it starts to form you can say OK this is a branch, this is a leaf but also it is because the field is becoming so mixed that its important to distinguish what it is that I do and the fact that its not music placed in another place and its not conceptual art with audible words rather than written words its not kinetic art which is focused on motion and the sound is a bi-product - its something new and you know I was never interested in focusing on something new you know.
Yeah no I understand, but you know I am really trying to look at the future by virtue of looking at the past is there a way in which what happened ten years ago with the abandoning of the term sound installation you know could that happen again in relation to the terms that you use now.
No I think I'll defend these terms now, we're defending them right now - if somebody else wants to make a place work I have no objection to it if they make a place work but if they call a tape recording of their latest computer music composition a place work I'll kick their ass.
Right,
No no no I'm going a long way from moderation you never let me talk about kicking ass. How about this I think you're happier now are you happier now yes you're happier now.
What does the headphone object?
No I'm just trying to get a better signal I mean I think it's loud enough on there.
Right.
I just want to make sure that its - stop it. OK hello.
Sound art.
Yeah
I mean this is one thing its termed it seems to have arisen independently of you - you didn't coin it
Certainly not
But it's used with reference to your work right, but is it an attempt to be able to describe these bad imitations together with your own work or what.
I mean its a horrible term to begin with
It is right because it doesn't include music does it?
No but its about the phenomena of sound entering into the plastic arts - art we consider the plastics arts sound - its short, clean, gives us a whole new area that's new but not new its just a term for, you know in my counter then there was basically a music centre in Hanover this June where I asked them as my contribution to make this button which said sound art the medium is not the message which I think is, I mean its the wrong way to categorise its a misleading way and its about marketing its about marketing this idea of - I mean people have used sound in the visual arts for a long time - many conceptual artists in the 60's and 70's played tapes in their pieces many performance artists of course use sound. Its not something new but its been around long enough so that the hearsay curators feel brave enough to actually do something with sound if they have this word sound art but instead of - the last thing they want is something really new you know their happy if you know its simple and how many tape recorders do you want, where do you want the speakers and you walk in with your tape and you play it.
But then I think we have to ask a technical question namely the difference between the making of a sound work in the way that you do it to doing it in this way of using tape. I mean it seems obvious that the differences are enormous like that you know they aren't for one thing they don't have to know as much about the properties of sound.
Well I think the main difference is that in order for it to be sound work for me one has to shape the sound one has to shape it in several I usually often I shape it physically in a space but I also shape its nature and those two things are large distinctions between most other work that's called sound art. If its a conceptual work that uses a text that's spoken the sound is not shaped and certainly its not shaped in space in any way maybe the speaker is put somewhere so its heard in a certain area but its sound as we know it. If its electronic music it has no spatial dimension I mean its homogenous throughout the room that its played in or maybe there are some basic ideas that have been in music of having sound move around but still its not in that case the sound is moving but you are the audience and the audience place is always built as a homogenous place you want the guy in the first row to hear as well as the guy in the last row. So even though its moving around its not about space or its not about space in the way I mean it. So I woke up this morning with these two distinctions about shaping, sub category space sub category nature/character.
Lets come back to the first and talk first about the second. That is what do you include under the nature of the sound its being shaped? I take it you're referring to things like Tambour.
Well this term that I want to start using and I want to start articulating sound characters which Tambour is so ill defined I mean even in the scientific community they don't know what it means.
No no no its a very subtle term. It's an interesting term because it apparently is taken from the French and we still - you know its a word like nuance I mean its a borrowed word presumably to talk about something that we don't have a name for in English but we haven't made it into English we still give it a French pronunciation.
What I am saying is that even from the field of psycho acoustics which are the scientists who deal with the perception of sound they reject the term because it has been used in too many different ways and I don't for me its not good because of I guess that but this idea found character so its not just the difference between the sound of my voice and the sound of your voice its also embodied in sound character is a meaning.
Well this character seems to be only a little less loose than nature and less wide
Than nature?
There must be certain things that you, you know would
Well nature and sound implies that its there like mother nature and character is something we build in a way or weaken these are the associations with the work that I am trying to attach and I believe that we have a sense of sound character that we are born with perhaps that is inherent in our language though unconscious that we use in communication as another language on top of the verbal language but also its to a large part what orchestration is getting sound of the orchestra not just the melody and the harmony and the rhythm to have a meaning which is I guess is 80% or 90% true of orchestral music where for the first time you can't just play it on the piano and have the same piece because its the sound of the orchestra.
So its a term that exists?
It doesn't exist nobody would say or you could if you were trying to say the character of this passage the orchestra has a dark no they would say had a dark colour or if you're talking in orchestration terms no I don't think its used because it has this connection with mentality and when you are talking about orchestration you're talking about technique of orchestra you know this colour is darker than this, this is more open than this is more ..
Well that's one aspect of the sound works of your works this isn't going to stay up - yes it is but the you know your works don't deal only with that I mean they really explore sound character but they you know also you deal with pitch for example.
Yes well I deal with pitch in terms of its rarely rhythm in its musical sense it in terms of in so far as pitch is meaning in character I deal with pitch but I don't deal with pitch in terms of melody or harmony.
No no no I didn't mean that but I mean you can say in regard to
Well I mean the parameters of sound character of course are loudness, high, low pitch what we perceive as durations but also spectrum so that spectral shape which is what we use to make phonemes with is this universe of that's the real element that I use is spectral shape and pitch of course is part of that its one part of it but it usually means a sense of highness of the whole spectral shape or the lowness in terms of sound character its the highness of the whole spectral shape or the lowness of it I mean the parameters of sound are fixed nothing new there but its what you do with them. I mean its just like the parameters of vision are fixed.
So is there anything more you want to say about what you would include under sound character. Well its shaping a sound to have a universal meaning in this area you know and I'm not sure that I know consciously the dimensions of sound character which are different than the parameters of it. The dimensions of it have to do with the perception of it and I know its multi-dimensional and when I'm building a place work and I'm building a texture in a place work that's what I'm building is this sound character and I don't try to isolate its dimensions
Yeah Yeah No No its obviously one thing to make it in here and say well that's it and another thing to try to put it into words and say you know its got its elements A B and C right.
In fact I did that with 3 to 1 after the fact not so much to figure out the dimensions of the sound character but to figure out how I made the layers appear at first and how because its an acoustic impossibility because its one space not three how I got these layers to be evident in one acoustic space and also how it could form one thing after a while so I did a spectral analysis and also a spatial analysis.
No its a very good example because is shows exactly the difference that we are talking about that is that you do it by hearing in a sort of intuitive way
I do it by ear
and its you know it is at the same time susceptible of articulate analysis at a later stage but that not part of your making it?
No no more well no much less probably I mean we can make an analogy which is perhaps dangerous but lets try it between a painter building colour except that colour we can say a colour has a character we can say all those kinds of things except that colour is not the colour of our environment is not as powerful as the character of the sound of our environment. Colour is more conscious but character goes so deeply through communication through our whole lives but in a completely unconscious way because we have never had any way of articulating it we have never had any way of examining it until we could record the sound was gone before you could examine it. Now we just have the tools to be able to examine it and develop a vocabulary about it but I mean its all unnecessary we use it and we use it very well but I don't know whether I want to make the colour analogy because then immediately a sound character becomes the oral equivalent of colour and its not at all. Oral perception is completely different than visual perception.
The point about recording is important right because of the opportunity of analysis that it provides in regard to sound.
Exactly I mean a colour has always been there when you make it you can look at it
Yeah but I'm not sure I agree in regard to the unconscious perception of colour because you know blue blue green
Yeah but for example we don't use visual colour to communicate ideas right now in not only the formation of the separate sounds that make up the verbal meaning of the word I am using character but in every shape of intonation in my sentence is also in that meaning. Its a meaning you can't analyse you can't stand back and say well because he put a little emphasis on the 't' over there and he put a little dip in the 'u' I know he means you know you read it directly as meaning just as you read language and you read it as a very very subtle and fine level of articulation of state of mind.
But a painter uses colour that way doesn't he?
Exactly that's why I started to make the analogy because he builds I mean painters probably know in a way they are less free because they are dealing with something which is physical it has limitations of the physics of colour you can't make a blue without finding something blue but because sound the shaping of sound
Actually you can but go ahead yeah it's hard
It's hard as hell yeah its a lot harder than it is because sound shaping can only take place in a virtual domain and not a real domain you're not limited by the physics.
Right
So I don't have to think well I've got to find some colours if I want this kind of blue all I have to think I don't have to think about any of that material stuff I just have to get it to sound right and its as easy to make one colour as any other colour.
Well my scruple is to do with the interaction of colour right that is I can make you know something appear blue by putting the complimentary blue next to it.
Oh OK.
But you do the same thing don't you in the sound work.
Absolutely of course I mean
And that's worth talking about.
These three colours in three to one are completely out of shape colours I mean they only exist as separations because their next to each there are others and that's why they combine into one thing.
Right, well I say right I don't quite understand that.
I've got all these working drawings I mean I should probably put them on the wall for you and we can talk about it to get into three to one so to speak but its not
Yeah I mean when we come to particular works
Yeah
We can consider that but then lets now go back to the first question of shaping sound.
Hold on a sec (phone rings)
Really something about your initial realisation that sound had a shape and that you could shape sound and then how to make an artwork out of that.
I think it grew out of drive in music you know this idea there I was really thinking well it was a lot of simultaneous thoughts but I mean this idea of placing sound in places and letting people put it in their own time and building this piece where there were different areas where different sounds were broadcast and having people go it but at the start of it I thought of it as music you know that in fact the car going along the line in either direction played the piece for each person at the moment according to their place their speed their own listening.
So in the definition of the work it was to be different according to your location in the work
Yeah but I mean the reason that's not a place work is that the path is limited so it becomes a passage for me that because there is a succession you can't make a 'U' turn and drive in circles in the middle of the road
Why not
All right
Well you could I mean and the other passage example is the Paris Metro yes you could jump on the centre thing of the moving side but its not the way that ...
The normal procedure is to go in a line.
Or two directions and you could change but so that was like I think the first step in saying
That's an important step but its not I mean it uses existing technology rather than.
Not really because it was nobody had ever done that before a radio station has broadcasting is about disseminating again the same thing over a huge area just like sound in air is.
Yeah
And I took something and applied it in a completely different way so it no longer was a radio transmitter it became a sound terrain maker I turned it around actually and made it do the opposite of what it was designed to do which is you know a characteristic of the way I work in general.
But where is the step from that to a work where someone is not in the car but the work is again different according to ones location in it.
Well I think fan music first was that these had to be events because well that was the nature of things people thought of me as a musician and I didn't have a word for this thing. There was confusion when people came on the roofs of waiting for the thing to begin and not knowing that it was there which is always what happens to the person from music walking into a sound work of mine. They wait for it to begin because they are used to sitting in one place and hearing it and it goes passed them but there with each building it was a terrain built up proximity to source and mixtures of different things depending on their physical proximity so you walked into different zones and different levels if the roofs weren't all on the same level you went to different places in this terrain superimposed on the **superinsisition** of the real terrain the ground
Right
This artificial land of Manhattan
Those are shapings and sounds that the
Well it was this idea that a real sound wasn't broadcast sound real sound and real place had a different nature depending on where you were that's the basic element that's different from music its into physical space and out of time and I mean this whole introductory paragraph that our whole experience our whole idea of civilisation is the communion the sound takes place in time. Language and music only have a meaning from the thing that happens before and the thing that happens after and the step, the leap that I made was taking sound out of time.
Yeah Yeah but I mean that you see still doesn't define the shaping of sound that is its characteristic of the desire to deal with a public at large that the thing not being an event in the sense of having a beginning and end in the way that music does right I mean the thing is on and you can go to it at any time and that is certainly true of drive in music as well as fan music right but the
I don't think it just came from the circumstances that I wanted it wasn't driven I don't know how much of it even was driven by this idea of moving out of the concert hall and into a different group of people in looking back I tend to see it as a more general - I was fascinated and envious of a physical sculpture who could make a piece that people would perceive by walking around it and that may have been a kind of key but also if you look at the musicians who moved into prominence after those pieces in a sense that's what Phil Glass and Steve Rife were trying to do but they didn't leave the concert hall so they weren't able to do it. I mean
And they still are connected to traditional instrumentation
Yeah of course I mean if you're connected but I mean that's not really their problem the problem was that they never escaped from the audience and the event and they tried to move they tried to move sound out of time in an event which is a contradiction that they never realised.
I think its a good example Glass because there is a kind of
In early Rife too because they were both kind of competing with each other in the early 70's and Rife went more into music and Phil just stood. I don't know his recent work but that early stuff was just big loud sound rooms with activity in them the activity was made by musicians and it started at 8:00 and ended at 10:00 but that was the direction he was trying to go in.
Well maybe then the question is that in the decision to put something that people could enter into at will did that determine the sort of nature of the sound in a sense that it had to be that caused it to be well it seems it would cause it to be without beginning and end. You had to make something that was continuous.
I think it was more this you know seeing the other side of a sculpture being able to place something and yes it connected with this Utopian idea of culture accessible to anybody who is ready to receive it but that wasn't the real heart of the matter it was a fascination with turning this thing over and also and it wasn't conscious completely I built these I didn't really think I didn't use the word terrain, I didn't have the word installation when I made fan music and I couldn't really tell people to walk around even you know I just did it and its now that I'm looking back that I can see that so I mean it wasn't a great idea for an event you know its fan music it was a great idea for an installation but without the word.
Yeah but what I am saying is that the
Tape 1 - Side B
Now lets talk further about making fan music because I'm not sure how much we lost. You said that it started as a kind of birthday gift.
Yeah I mean these three friends Alan, James and Phil I mean they knew that I was having these ideas but I didn't have any way to do them and I was living in this building so they came to me and each came up with US$100 and we did it. I collected the **fant** by calling around I mean the process of discovery that I talked about was knowing that what made a loudspeaker make sound was changing a voltage across the two terminals and I knew that if I took photo cell and put a voltage across it as a resistor then if I covered up the photo cell I would get one voltage and if I uncovered it I would get another change in voltage therefore a sound out of the speaker. So I was really starting up the very source of electronic sound with this speaker and moving back and saying OK how do we get this thing to make a sound and realising that I had a fan next to me that I could put this photo cell behind and it would cause shadows and then realised that the shape of the shadow determined the tambour and building this placing these fan speaker photocell systems in various locations in roof topography.
The discovery of the fans is a source of sound?
Well not really as a source of sound but as a generator of electronic sound.
Generator of sound ie if you put that together with a photocell.
Yeah but I mean but how could the angle of the fan blade change the tamper is not the shape of the way form. And then realising that it was light that it was sound and therefore this whole thing could you know grow and change with light a cloud appearance in the morning and disappearing in the evening and then it gets into a lot more installation too but I didn't I think I called it a concept and the idea was it went on for 3 days you know and it arrived when the sun arrived and disappeared when the sun went down and people came there was no time to come you know I'd get rid of the time you'd come to the concert at 8:00 o'clock on August 9th 10th and 11th.
And what about the transformation of the place you were talking about this as the creator of a place first of all what the rooftop in Manhattan is as a place?
Well I mean its the remainder of the land its the result. Its an outside space that's open that's there. I mean when you think of Manhattan from the street as being enclosed canyons when in fact there is all this space up there as much space as the island has and yes we think of it as a place of solitude but place to meet a place to I mean when people cook up there its the outdoors of Manhattan. But wanting to build to grow something on this surface so not of this whole idea that we mentioned about interpretation it wasn't interpreting this roof and saying this is a great place to be or interpreting the city by as I said making recordings of what the city sounded like 100 years ago and playing them on the roof. It was growing in an imaginary place a place from my imagination on top of this new terrain.
Its not a reproduction of anything.
And its not an interpretation of anything you know its this idea of something from the imagination new built on top of this or grown on top of this. You know its the way these pieces happen.
Well its particularly nice in relation to its use with sunlight you know its a way of building sound.
Yes but I mean but even the 3 to 1 was a piece which grew you know.
Yeah we'll come to that.
Maybe we should just go on to the next one the walk through.
The next one was Sofusto.
Sorry yes - where is the sound going into this, you keep an eye on it that its moving I think it does do something when it finishes.
Right OK.
Well we've got enough 1/2 hour you know just in terms of well 45 minutes it should be.
In regard to south west stairwell the you know you can try to describe the sense of place as it exists for you over there and what you try to move it to.
Yeah I mean this idea that I encountered all my life are these kind of stereos which are usually emergency stairways where every landing looks exactly the same as the next landing. This one wasn't one of those I mean it was just a utilitarian staircase in a university building but it was enclosed and it was this square spiral and it had this labyrinth feeling.
Just because each turning is the same.
Yeah and your turning and it comes to a landing and it looks just like the landing above and you know its just this it is a labyrinth yeah. You're never sure unless you look at a number which floor you're on you know its this - you're going somewhere but the landscape doesn't change. And going a little further with the idea of installation of making it not dependant on the sun making it electronically generated I don't remember how I actually generated it but I had 8 channels I think one on each at some landing or half landing and three different tambours that gradually changed that had something in common each one had something in common with its neighbour you didn't sense the change but the difference between the top and the bottom were two extremely different sounds and so I mean it was again building a pathway maybe growing in an imaginary place I mean of course the sound changed the way the - these stereos are not open places you know they are usually built tight so that you don't have a sense of space really you're confined and you're kind of disorientated.
What would the experience of it be.
I think you are right I did it when I was doing public supply too there and I was invited for this festival and I'm not sure whether I proposed it before or proposed that I do a sound piece that was not a network piece or not or whether I found the stairway and the opportunity was there but I think I was there for several weeks before this festival because I had to build public supply and somehow in that process. I think it was probably announced in some way but it wasn't this idea that people would find it accidentally.
Well I mean the reason I am asking that is simply how did it work in terms of removing one to a new place.
Well it changed it from being a rather dull stairway to being a rather special place. I mean I don't remember enough of it to really - I've pulled out in the drawing what I remember of this idea of transition and this idea of path.
And would you compare it in any way to later staircases or is it not profitable to do that.
Well everybody does you know and I think its profitable to really show how completely different and that its not the stairway that has - we talked about this yesterday its not the stairway that really has anything to do with it.
The idea of stairway?
No the next one is really Chicago isn't it.
The next stairway yeah?
And that’s 11 years later and its quite different in the sense that its not a labyrinth its a big tube we got this yesterday but we weren't taping yesterday.
No that’s right.
So its a big tube with this really flowing pathway through it. I saw it as a space which had the facility that people could walk through it in 3 dimensions and that’s how I treated it. What should we talk about now?
I think we need to talk about it because its quite different in the sense that we knew in the case of Chicago that you were involved with an exhibition area whereas the Toronto work isn't.
Yeah
You chose it because it was something that they didn't think of as an exhibition area.
I chose it because I think walk through is the first idea discoverable of making anonymous work in a public place and not insisting (there's a dog barking like mad in the background here!) that although its there and adding something for people to notice in everyday space. So there is the beginning of ...?..... leading into two escalators and stairways.
You began to hear it already on the stairway?
Yeah
This is so handy. So the escalators were up escalators so as soon as you got beyond this point here you were in the zone and you heard and you came up into it and I thought that the thing was at your level when you were standing on that.
No they were projected from speakers with the top of these pillars in the direction speakers and so making zones I saw them on the ground but they passed through the year zone.
So yes I see you would use them on the stairs coming up the stairs.
Yeah sure but I mean it was more this idea that it was a completely transient space it was a moving space but not a passage because people moved in diverse ways.
But with the Chicago work be harder to discover just because of the expectation .............
No I mean its a further development really the Chicago evolved to Time Square I don't know whether we should jump to there.
No I think we should move on to walk through
OK yeah and then deal with it as it comes across
So whilst this first idea that I could make a piece that should be discovered and that it should be anonymous that it should have the opportunity - anybody has the opportunity to find it I mean it was subtle but it was also very clear once you have heard it you always heard it and this idea still connected to making a process that was somehow connected to the environment.
Yeah I mean in that respect its similar to fan music.
Yeah I had the idea that I was building - the circuit wasn't not just the sound it was a kind of process it was the beginning of this idea of building circuit as a realiser of an idea an abstract idea but also the realisation of this idea and that this idea should be connected not just autonomous not just dead it should be connected somehow which probably came from fan music and connecting it to the weather but in a very subtle shift.
Which people did nevertheless notice.
I think so yes
From certain things that I've read
Yes the major problem was that on the very base level people only saw there - people are always asking well what's that for, especially in America, I mean you know a work of art usually many times brings up this question well what's it do? and I inadvertently had given them something giving it something to do. That was forecast the weather or keep the pigeons away.
Its also a confirmation of its novelty isn't it that its something unfamiliar what's it for? signifies that its unfamiliar its a new art form and but yes I take your point that having connected to changing weather conditions makes it like a barometer.
Well it just makes it flex you know it flexes its not sitting there in an ice box and this other idea about working with this level of subtlety that we notice change - a very small change in a very familiar environment and this was a piece for the people who just happened to go in that building every day it wasn't meant for the art world or whose supposed work in its context.
Did you see it having any relation to drive in music - I'm just asking about the way I mean its obviously different because there's no radio but in terms of the ...
Drive in music was weather sensitive too
Yeah no I meant in terms of moving through the
No because the path was free you know it was about movement and it wasn't you know I mean standing in one of these zones
Yes you could get involved in changing what they did and it wasn't about that it was something to have a Walkthrough the name was about just going through it but going through it everyday repetitive few seconds a day.
Who did you have to negotiate with I'm thinking ahead to Time Square where you had to incorporate yourself and so on was that the MTA
Yeah
It was the MTA building actually
Yeah but they didn't give you as much as you encountered in the case of Time Square.
It was on a much different timescale I was much less prepared there was a producer who raised the money and then stole it but the good thing she did was introduce me to the guy who was then the public relations officer for the ............... Authority and he later became, where was he on Time Square, well he was crucial he moved gradually and became the press officer to the major and then became the press officer of the board authority for New York. He was always, he's retired now but I wouldn't have been able to get through the Time Square bureaucracy if I didn't have his kind of
Right
Bit it wasn't so simple I'll tell you a nice story about Time Square, his first idea when I said well I've got to get in this place - OK look the city's just set up a new agency to revitalise Time Square and clean it up and I wanted to talk to this guy and go up and see him and I went up I walked through the door and there's this big black bureaucrat sitting behind the desk and I start and he says what's this all about kid and I started trying to talk about this and after 10 minutes he kind of looked at me squinting and he said you know I don't know what the fuck you're talking about but this better be good or I'm going to throw you right out that window. You know 50 floors up!
Yeah Yeah
I'll throw you right out that window kid - I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. This was the kind of help I got from my friends.
But that is help I mean he's committing himself and that's interesting.
I mean I tell this story to Europeans and they don't believe it they just can't believe it like you know it happened.
I've heard other stories in New York about such things.
I'll never forget it - I'll throw you right out that window. That one right there, and he could have done it I mean he could have picked me up with one hand.
I've noticed that Walkthrough was a piece that developed over a couple of years I mean your idea of it was ......
No I was ready to go when I got it but, and did as a result of this negotiation you know and you know and it was the first time I encountered this question what's it going to sound like?
Well it's your first sizeable bureaucracy I know universities have bureaucracies but its nothing like the city government.
No and in the course of the festival I was an artist who could write anything they liked you know I had the licence but this was in foreign territory.
So you must of I mean that must have been a major step because its a question of in order to deal with the public at large you are going to have to get into those spaces right and that means that you have to come to terms with the guardians of those spaces.
Exactly no I learned 2 things that the 2 obstacles in doing pieces in spaces of the public at large one was the security service who even though you had letters and permissions and everything knew that you were not a normal person acting in a normal way and their sense of security alerted them that there was something wrong here - they couldn't identify themselves they would be always in the way and making things difficult.
Because you could be an impostor.
No it was you know everything was absolutely in order just like it was in Buffalo with drive in music but this you know they didn't care, this was a person acting out of the range of possibilities for normal behaviour and that's what they're trained to smell.
What I meant is that you might under cloak have been an artist you know and been planting bombs in their trees or something like that.
I was reminded of it in Barcelona when I was lying down taking pictures of ............... they thought I was going to graffitise the building.
Well I'm sure its got much worse now you know with organised bombings in cities.
Well the room where the equipment was was passing the security desk so every night I would go into work I would have to get passed this guy, you know, who was always there. And then when I was building the piece I had to pass him every time I changed something I would have to walk pass him go outside and listen go back and you know. And the other person is always the maintenance person of this space and I couldn't figure out why for a long time but those people in a way are like accountants you know the accountant always feels that the money he's spending is his own. The maintenance person feels the building or the structure or whatever it is is his personal property, emotionally he feels this even though he knows its not just like the accountant feels.
The watchdog yeah.
And so this is like an invasion of his property you know and in fact he was the one this guy who after 4 years destroyed this piece with the excuse that they had to paint the ceiling. It ended up in a box full of tangled wires so it could never be used again. I felt so sorry - he won.
And what about then does the same thing apply in regard to the rooms?
No rooms is the next thing.
Yeah I mean rooms followed by round. I mean those are the rooms that these are less public.
It was in between.
In more like exhibition spaces or not?
Well I was living with a woman who was a director of an institute and she wanted to find a space for it.
Right
And she had several choices and one was a fire house in Manhattan and one was this huge public school in Queens which you know in terms of distance wasn't any further than the fire house and the fire house wasn't really available I told her to go to Queens. Thus was born PS ....... and the opening exhibition this public school had been abandoned for 10 years or so well I mean the roof leaked but it was huge a huge space just opposite you know more spaces than MoMA you know and so the .................. exhibition was many artists that we all know there's a photograph in the Peoples Friend of all of us together going into this raw building and making an inaugural exhibition so to speak. So it wasn't a known space and I chose, the building was amazing because of the architecture it had these gabled roofs.
For no reason?
Yes this was in the attic. A space which could never be used, they had no classrooms up there but just for the shape of the roof and I chose, the only way you could get into this space was climb a ladder. It was very crowded and it was very much connected with ...........
Is that what people had to do to hear it?
Yeah climb the ladder. You could get through another part of the attic but I mean its like you would fall through the floor and its a fairly well known exhibition now because it was a lot of people, it was at a kind of crucial point and you know it was done so fast that everybody did something without worrying whether he had the right - nobody got any money they just you know did it.
And this space has become you know the alternative space in Europe in the past 20 years. Well no it was very private and it was more about colleagues and it was working with a group. Not that it was connected to any other work or anything but I don't really know anything about the Institute for Art and Urban Resources I've never lived in New York.
So was this the beginning of it?
No **Alana** had this space the clock tower also which was the top of the municipal building on Leonard Street and she had this square room where Five Russians would come. But then after we stuck together.
But I mean how long had the institute been in existence from the time you did rooms. Where did you get its money?
For a few years
Well she gathered up from the health council and she was in London for a while.
Halfway through our relationship I found out I got a very good slice of it she told me that in fact she'd been to my percussion concert in Chicago because she was there with her husband he was going to the University of Chicago I think studying philosophy or something yes he was.
What was his name?
Gene Heighstie. Your mouth is open. How are you spelling the surname, last name?
I thinks its Heighstie I think I knew a Gene somebody I think it was probably him, who did ultimately break up with his wife. I mean this is completely irrelevant.
We're just getting it down on tape.
No no we can talk about it in that way but
but she'd like to discuss it and she walked out.
I see
She had a beautiful ass Greg yeah.
In 1976
Strike that, its not so nice now right.
But then that would have been your first sort of exhibition work, work with exhibitions.
In the plastic arts?
Yeah
We could sure because certainly this festival was yes basically a music festival in Toronto.
But it also wasn't the stairwell but you yourself didn't think of that as an exhibition of space in the same sense.
Well it wasn't a plastic arts exhibition because it wasn't in a plastic arts context.
Yeah
It was more like a musical festival connected with a musical festival or something.
Were there any other soundworks in the rooms shown?
I don't think so I have the catalogue and I'm pretty sure there wasn't.
In fact if that had been would you have used the word sound installation?
I could have on that occasion there is I did a page in this catalogue which is a photograph of a space with two words on it.
Not with the text that's in the .............
Something like that with high tones but its actually the same. It could have been the point yes of course because I was in you know I was mixed up in yeah - I wasn't I hung up after 19 when I stopped performing as a performer it was more comfortable for me to be in the visual arts world where people didn't know who I was I could be anonymous, I mean they knew who I was but you know I wasn't in their field you know it was like foreign territory kind of. Yes I could of started using the word well that was what 1976 oh I'm sure yes.
No in 1973.
No that’s Walkthrough 1973.
Sorry Sorry yes 1976 is where we are. And what about the sound itself I mean you describe that as the texture work, that is.
Well its two high tones at the threshold of a pitch.
At the other threshold?
Yeah
Two high soft tones mixing at the upper threshold of hearing so they're soft it has to be high in pitch shaping a different kind of air. But noticing that as sound approaches the threshold of a limit of hearing its not allowing its an area and its a very interesting area because this thing is there and its not there, and mixing 2 sign tones which of course did make it kind of topography but it wasn't perceived that way because but at this place where they were not quite sound but not quite not sound.
It that true of all your texture works?
What that its not a line but an area we were saying.
No this is threshold upper threshold and lower threshold of pitch perception.
So you know dogs hear higher than we do. Yeah if you take a pure tone you gradually raise it up at one point it disappears.
Right
But from the time you're hearing it clearly as a tone until the time it disappears it goes through, it doesn't just stop it goes through a zone and that was a very interesting zone and I later used it with the alarm clock.
So that was what you were exploring in terms of sound in that thing. But it was this idea also that it was the beginning of the idea that it was the clearest point that said sound is not the work. You can't even hear it. This idea of using sound to add a presence. I called it a presence there but that's growing in a new place.
Why was that appropriate to that particular place?
Again, you know, no thought of that just not knowing what I was doing just knowing exactly what to do.
Right