1994
Max Neuhaus - Audium Model
Audium Model is an interconnected series of artworks which propose multi-person aural space.
Briefly, each work consists of two small rooms, which the public is free to enter, installed in a museum or public space. The rooms are arranged so that the occupants can not see each other. Each room is in effect a special telephone booth with a telephone handset and stereo loudspeakers. (see drawings 1 and 2)
One can think of Audium Model as a two-way musical instrument played by two voices.
Sounds a person makes into the mouthpiece of the telephone generate an "active score" or guide sound -- a transformed reflection of his own voice which he hears over his telephone earpiece. This score sets up a listen/response dialog between the lay players and the work, stimulating them to go on beyond simply talking or the obvious clichés.
At the same time, the sounds which result from this conversation between the players and the work become components for the construction of the works output sound. This sound is broadcast outside the booths.
---
This series of artworks, when interconnected, model ideas for Audium, an international aural community made up of the public telephone network and broadcast entities. The telephone handsets in the booths model home telephones; their interconnection, the telephone network and the resulting sounds from the loudspeakers, the broadcasts.
The realization of a series of Audium Models in different countries forms the multilingual infrastructure for the growth of the ideas and the realization of Audium itself.
Max Neuhaus, 1994