2013
In Earth Sound Earth Signal (2013), published by the University of California Press, Douglas Kahn places Max Neuhaus at the heart of "aurality" and the history of telecommunications.
Kahn moves beyond seeing Neuhaus as just a "sound artist" and instead frames him as an energeticist who worked with the literal electromagnetic and telephonic signals of the planet.
Kahn provides an in-depth technical and cultural history of Radio Net (1977). He argues that Neuhaus didn't just use the radio to broadcast; he used the NPR Round Robin telephone-line loop as a massive, continental-scale electronic circuit.
The book details how Neuhaus used regenerative feedback and frequency shifters to turn the entire North American continent into a self-oscillating musical instrument.
Unlike the "World Soundscape Project" (which focused on natural sounds), Kahn shows how Neuhaus embraced technological noise—the hums, whistles, and static of the telecommunications grid—as a new type of "nature."
Kahn connects Neuhaus’s work to the history of "natural radio" (whistlers, sferics, and ionospheric sounds). Neuhaus’s 1974 Preliminary Studies are presented as an attempt to "tune" the human-built network to these planetary-scale frequencies.
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