2017
In his 2017 lecture and subsequent 2019 article,
"The Music Box: Songs of Futility in a Time of Torture," Steven Friedson contrasts the "existential hell" of music used as a weapon with the intentional, spatial aesthetics of sound art.
Friedson’s analysis of Max Neuhaus within this framework centers on the following points:
- Friedson uses the "Music Box" (the interrogation cell) as a direct antithesis to Neuhaus’s sound installations. While Neuhaus designed works like Times Square to be discovered by choice, allowing for an "active listening" that grounds the subject in space, music torture creates an inescapable "acousmatic" environment that strips the subject of agency [1, 2].
- Acoustic Entrapment vs. Spatial Sculpture: He references Neuhaus to highlight how the same medium—continuous, site-specific sound—can be used for opposite ends. In Neuhaus’s work, sound is a sculptural material that enhances the perception of place. In Friedson's "Music Box," sound is a pedagogical tool of oppression(referencing Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed) designed to "unmake the world" of the prisoner [1, 3].