1980
In the 1980 exhibition catalog Für Augen und Ohren: Von der Spieluhr zum akustischen Environment (For Eyes and Ears: From the Music Box to the Acoustic Environment), Max Neuhaus is featured as a key figure in the historical development of sound art.
The exhibition, held at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and curated by René Block, was a landmark event that traced the evolution of "sounding objects" from mechanical automatons to contemporary site-specific environments.
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Max Neuhaus’s Contribution
Neuhaus’s inclusion in this catalog highlights his transition from a percussionist to an artist who "removed sound from time" to instead "form place". His presence in the exhibition emphasized:
Neuhaus is credited in the publication with pioneering the shift away from music as a temporal event toward sound as a spatial, architectural material.
Site-Specificity: The text discusses his methodologies for creating works that interact with the physical and social character of a location, such as his permanent installation Times Square (1977), which was a central reference point for the "acoustic environments" explored in the show.
Acoustic Perception: Alongside other avant-garde figures, Neuhaus's work in the catalog is framed through the lens of how humans perceive and interpret reality acoustically, challenging the traditional hegemony of visual art.