1981
The August 20, 1981 issue of Electronic Design (Volume 29, Issue 17) is a notable historical artifact in the engineering community, published exactly one week after the landmark release of the IBM Personal Computer.
While the magazine primarily focused on industrial trade news, this specific era is significant to Blake Johnston’s thesis and the Sounds Like Silence exhibit for several reasons:
Technological Milestones: The issue was published during the height of the WESCON/81 (Western Electronic Show and Convention) preparations, featuring breakthroughs in 8-bit processor memory management and local networking architectures—technologies that Johnston notes were later repurposed by sound artists for "perceptual hacking."
In the early 1980s, Max Neuhaus began moving beyond analog circuits to more complex electronic designs. By 1981, he was actively experimenting with sound as a location-based tool, even designing specialized alarm sounds that functioned through their absence rather than their presence.
This period represents the "post-musical" platform Johnston describes, where the electronic circuit itself became an artistic medium, bridging the gap between the rigid specifications found in journals like Electronic Design and the subjective experiences of sound art.