2011
Anette Vandsø, in her 2011 article "Listening to the world," his work is a crucial historical and conceptual precedent for the themes she explores regarding contemporary sound art. Vandsø's analysis of how sound art operates through intermediality and contextual relations aligns closely with Neuhaus's pioneering methods, even though his work was created decades earlier.
Key points of comparison
| Theme | Anette Vandsø's analysis (2011) | Max Neuhaus's work (1960s–2000s) |
|---|---|---|
| Intermediality | Vandsø examines how sound artworks function across multiple media, such as the relationship between spoken text, recording technology, and sonic artifacts. | Neuhaus explored intermediality by combining different media to create a single experience. For example, he used radio and telephonic feedback in his Network works and created "circumscription drawings" that reflected on his sound installations, bridging visual and verbal information. |
| Context and Listening | Vandsø argues that contemporary sound art compels a re-evaluation of the subject-world relationship by focusing on the listener's interaction with the sonic environment. | Neuhaus was a master of using context to shape perception. His site-specific installations, like Times Square(1977), used continuous sound to transform a chaotic urban space into a perceptible acoustic place. The context of the listener's environment was paramount to the experience of the work. |
| Media and technology | Vandsø questions how technology influences listening and the production of sound art. She notes that technology can both record and alter sound, creating new meanings in the process. | Neuhaus was a pioneer in using new media and technology in his sound works. He experimented with electronic sound, radio transmission, and early synthesizers, using them not for musical composition but for creating site-specific sonic effects. |
| Experience over object | Vandsø explores the idea that sound art moves away from creating a fixed, expressible object towards generating an immersive sensory experience. | Neuhaus famously moved away from the object-based constraints of traditional music and art. He declared that his work was not the sound itself, but the place created by it. His sound installations focus on the ephemeral, experiential, and non-visual aspects of sound. |
In summary, Neuhaus's foundational work anticipates many of the theoretical issues Vandsø explores. By moving sound out of the concert hall and into public space, and by utilizing technology and context to shape perception, Neuhaus effectively paved the way for the critical discussions surrounding sound, media, and intermediality that Vandsø addresses.