1989
For a number of years, I have been interested in juxtaposing multiple spaces which are identical except for sound. At the Deichtorhallen in Harald Szeemann’s Einleuchten exhibition, the sound in one space was like a fluid. Once you focused on it, you were completely immersed in it; yet it was so soft you could un-focus at any time. The sound in the other space was a mixture of hollow woody sounds – a dense texture. But here it was sitting abouve your head, like a ceiling.
Most listeners insisted this space was much larger than the one with the fluid while in fact, they both had exactly the same shape and dimensions. -Part of my impetus for making a work this way could also have been to silence the Doubting Thomases, those people who were so convinced that they perceived space solely with their eyes that they thought this idea of transforming a space with sound alone was just talk. It was so nice to say: if it's just rhetoric, why are you sure that this room bigger than that one?
Max Neuhaus, 1989