1982
first published in Max Neuhaus, Sound Works, Volume I, Inscription (Ostfildern-Stuttgart: Cantz, 1994)
(”Interview edited from transcript, New York 1982)
* * *
The drawings are ways of speaking: statements, indicators and tracings of these invisible sound works. They circumscribe them in much the same way that drawings by other sculptors do for their material works.
Speaking in a different language, outside the medium of sound though, they cannot be taken as reductions or imitations. Restrained by their medium, neither can they disclose what happens when sound actually engages mind, in place.
These drawings are neither guides to the experience of a sound work nor descriptions of it. They are, however manifestations of the ideas; forming catalysts for individual trains of thought, active memories, viewpoints into process and projections of what a thought might become.
a sound work's essence --
Being visual and verbal, they stand outside the medium of the sound work itself, and
-Notes on the drawing/text diptychs and the Place sound works
Most people have had the experience of accidentally drinking one thing while thinking it was another -- being absorbed in a conversation while dining and picking up the wine glass while expecting the taste of water. It is quite startling. You still cannot taste it even when you see that it's wine, and are left only with the taste of a very strange water. Many people, when faced with a new form of art, seem to find themselves in this predicament.
The sound works which transform the perception of space fall into the category of the plastic arts because they deal with space rather than the time continuum of music. Often when I have made works in museums or in the context of an exhibition of visual artworks though, I found many people quite confused. They were entangled in their expectations -- some of them to the point of searching for a visual work that was not there; others, waiting for the music to begin -- and never found the work itself. Some even thought that this entanglement was my only intention.
Still others saw the work's forms -- its shape, components, context or medium -- as the work itself, and found only a concept.
After completing one of these works, I make a two panel visual work, one panel is an image the other a text. These drawing-text diptychs are broad statements, indicators and tracings of these sound works: they circumscribe them.
They are works outside works. Being visual and verbal, they stand outside the medium of the sound work itself, and cannot be taken as imitations of it. Restrained by their medium, neither can they disclose a sound work's essence -- what happens when sound actually engages mind -- that journey of experience, as in any artwork, can only be made by each of the individual perceivers for themselves.
As these drawings stand outside, they can also form a preface for a work and some have been employed in this manner. Rather than translations of a sound work, they can be a way of clearing the ground of preconceptions and constructing new expectations, hopefully bringing listeners to their own points of departure.
As these visual works are also statements of the ideas, they, in addition, form a record of my thinking over the past twenty-five years, about sound as creator of place.
More notes on the drawing/text diptychs
Discourse about a work is inevitable; people naturally interpret and discuss it. In the case of new ideas, there is a tendency to try to fit them into old known categories.
A month or so after completing a sound work, I make a two panel visual work which is related to it--it usually takes me that long to step back and see the work from the outside. One aspect of these drawings is an attempt to avoid this misplacement and form a foundation for discourse without defining it.
One panel is a drawing, the other a short handwritten text. They do not try to define the work, they talk about some aspect of it. Frequently the two panels overlap: they talk about the same thing in different ways, speaking in two different languages, both outside the medium of sound.
This diptych sometimes becomes a component of the sound work, forming one of its possible entrances: a vehicle of orientation bringing people to the point where they are ready to find it.
These works also form an always accessible trigger for the aural memory of those who have experienced the sound.
Notes on the working, journal and proposal drawings
One traditional use of drawings by sculptors has been as a means of working on an idea before committing it to construction. In my case things are a little different. One might ask in fact, since I build aural structures, what there is to draw? It turns out there are many things.
We have two standard methods of drawing sound: musical notation and of course the one you are looking at now -- the notation of speech. As my work lies outside both speech and musical language, I have had to invent some others. The articulation of an aural idea with a drawing is an abstraction certainly, but what we tend to forget, because it is so common, is that the drawing of a visual idea is also very much an abstraction.
As a medium of expression, I find drawing a complement to sound precisely because of its tangibility and concreteness.
Drawing has always been a part of my working process. Many times it takes the form of maps: when a work uses complex sound reflections from elements in the space, I make drawings which show sound pathways; when I generate a sound topography from the space's resonances, I often draw the topography. These drawings help me understand what sound is doing in a space, or more accurately, they tell me what a sound could do there. Rarely do they tell me what will actually happen with a sound in a particular situation, but they show me where to look with my ear.
While building a work, I am frequently confronted with the problem of being able to think much faster than I can do. The act of quickly making a drawing lets me capture a frame of mind, so that I can find it again later: seeing the drawing retriggers the frame of mind again.
I also use drawings to talk about the structure of a sound work--how it is made, in a general way. These working drawings become informal journals of my working process. They are reflections of what I imagine and observe during the explorations of building a work. In this case, the act of drawing, because it is an oblique view, also becomes a means of looking with peripheral vision.
Many of my projects are large scale and require a proposal stage. There is no possibility for me to conceive and develop a sound work on paper beforehand -- my experience with the acoustic of the site is an integral part of forming the work. Therefore, the proposal itself is a dilemma in my work.
The problem faced by sculptors who work in visual mediums, of having to reduce their work to a maquette becomes a physical impossibility with a sound work made up of its surroundings. Perhaps more important though, a proposal usually assumes the work is finished, and simply requires execution. For me, the proposal is the beginning of the process of conceiving the work. The actual point of embarkation is the moment I try the first sound at the work's place. To reach this point though, approvals must be accomplished and the means need to be in hand.
Rather than the vehicle for reducing a three dimensional reality to two, the drawing in this case becomes a means of overcoming this chicken/egg impasse; a way of stating an idea in an open medium without the fixative of verbal language; a medium outside that of the sound work which does not impinge on it.
The sound works themselves are experiential. These drawings are neither guides to that experience nor descriptions of it. They are manifestations of ideas; forming catalysts for individual trains of thought, active memories, viewpoints into process and projections of what an idea might become.
Notes on using computers to work with sound
There is no possibility for me to conceive and develop a sound work on paper beforehand -- my experience with the acoustic of the site is an integral part of forming the work. There is also no need to: I have the advantage of being able to directly shape the full scale reality. I build my sound works by ear on site using specialized computer systems to control a sound palette.
A computer is an ideal modeling tool in many ways; in fact, one of its most powerful uses is to plan and shape things too unwieldy or large to shape in their real form -- architectural structures, for example. When used as a modeler, though it allows the development and evaluation many different possibilities, the result always remains a model; a simulation, never the reality itself.
When one uses a computer to build sound structures, it is quite a another matter. Here, the computer generates not a simulation, but the reality. At the same time, it still allows that reality to be as malleable as a model, no matter what its size. This great advantage in technique allows me to put myself directly in the perceiver's place at the point of the work's conception.
Notes on the Drawings
I
The process of building sound is an intuitive one - of trying, modifying, comparing, adding - by ear. The same process that artists have always used, I imagine, but with the ear rather than the eye.
The role of drawings as blueprints for something to be made by others is not necessary here. As I work alone with sound, the traditional procedure of drawing the idea on paper first, before taking the irrevocable steps of execution, need not be done. I don't have to communicate the idea to anyone else beforehand; even if I make a piece several kilometers in diameter, like a Time Piece, I do not need a group of workmen to make it. I build the sound with my own hand and my own ear, in place, no matter what its scale.
Which, of course, is not to say I don't need to draw.
Volume 2, Max Neuhaus, Sound Works, Drawings
Selected Working and Proposal Drawings 1978-1992
II
Many of my projects are large scale and require a proposal stage.
There is no possibility for me to conceive and develop a sound work on paper beforehand; my experience with the acoustic of the site is an integral part of forming the work.
The problem faced by sculptors who work in visual mediums - having to reduce their work to a maquette - becomes a physical impossibility with a sound work made up of its surroundings.
Perhaps more important, a proposal usually assumes the work is finished, and simply requires execution. For me, the proposal is the beginning of the process of conceiving the work.
The point of embarkation is the moment I try the first sound at the work's place. But to reach this point, approvals must be accomplished and the means need to be in hand.
Rather than the vehicle for reducing a three dimensional reality to two, the drawing here can become a means of stating an idea in an open medium, without the fixative of verbal language, a medium outside that of the sound work which does not impinge on it.
III
Sometimes, in order to shape a sound in place, I have to explain a problem to myself. Usually it's about what it is happening with sound in a particular space.
I start by thinking: 'If I do this, and this and this, that should happen'. Even if I know that it won't happen, by observing what should happen, and comparing it with what does happen, I begin to get a grip on this situation. Drawing is a good way to think about those problems.
In these working drawings I am trying to explain something to myself, usually in a special context. Say I am dealing with the aural topography of a space; making a drawing, transferring it into another medium, can show me another side of it. I can look at it in a different way. With the ear, you can only explore a sound topography by walking within it; it is a point-by-point exploration. But by snapping it into a visual world, I can examine it, imagine it with my ear, all at once.
In the elusive source works, in order to create this illusion where you find a sound and then it disappears or moves to another point in the room, I have to solve a problem like a complicated billiard shot, but with something you cannot see. You have to get the ball to go into the hole, without being able to see the ball. You only know that you have succeeded, when it goes in. Many times these drawings take the form of maps. When a work uses complex sound reflections from elements in the space, I make drawings which show sound pathways.
IV
The third volume of this series is made up of another kind of drawing - the drawing afterwards. delete underlined It is two panels an image and a text, side by side. They are a form of statement of the ideas which I have developed after many trials and errors. Although all these works are concerned with constructing places, the photograph is useless in describing them. In fact it is a distortion as it overemphasizes the absence of a visual component.
These drawings consist of two panels, an drawn image and a handwritten text hung side by side. For legibility in book form, though the text panels in volume III have been typeset rather than reproduced in their handwritten form. I felt that it was far more important to have the clear impact of the words than to reproduce the panels themselves.
The mixture of the two panels separates these works even more from the sound work. Not only to have a medium which is visual for something which is aural, but also a medium which is verbal; and then to combine the visual and the verbal at the same time, trading and passing ideas between them.
These visual works can also function as a kind of preface, reshaping the preconceptions around the sound work, without trying to replicate it on paper - clearing the ground around of what people expect a sound work to be, using both a visual image and a verbal image mixed in different ways. (strike)
V
These drawings are never shown within a sound work; they are not works within works.
The diptychs are sometimes shown outside a sound work, as a preface, depending on how difficult the context is.
The proposal drawings and the working drawings do not belong to the sound work. They are not part of the process of perceiving a sound work; they are reflections upon it.