2007
In his essay "The Jerrybuilt Future" within the collection Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music (2007), Christoph Cox contextualizes Max Neuhaus as a pivotal figure who transitioned from the world of avant-garde performance to the birth of Sound Art.
Cox highlights 1968 as the "year of the break," when Neuhaus—then a world-class percussionist—famously gave up performing music. Neuhaus's shift is used to illustrate the move from time-based music (performances with a beginning and end) to space-based sound (permanent installations).
Cox places Neuhaus alongside groups like the Sonic Arts Union (Lucier, Mumma, Ashley, Behrman) and MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva). He argues that Neuhaus helped pioneer a "materialist" approach to sound, treating it as a physical substance—"sound sculpture"—rather than a symbolic or narrative language.
The essay discusses how Neuhaus took electronic music out of the concert hall and into the "real world." By using radio transmissions (Public Supply) or underwater environments (Water Whistle), Neuhaus bypassed the traditional "performer-audience" hierarchy, a core goal of the 1960s underground electronics movement.
While groups like MEV focused on raw, improvisational live electronics, Cox sees Neuhaus as the one who refined these "jerrybuilt" (improvised or DIY) electronic techniques into sophisticated, site-specific permanent works that redefined how we inhabit urban space.