2000
Water Whistle series (29Sep00)
These event/installations were done in water and mark the beginning of my transition from working in concert halls to making site specific sound works. The basis for the series was the exploration of the new sound world offered by our different sense of hearing in water.
I did the first one in 1971 after I'd been living on the water for year. I had not yet established the idea that a sound work could be done in the form of an installation. I was commissioned by New York University to make an event. I thought if I insisted that it last all night long that it would be clear that it was not a performance but something where people could come and go. Most stayed from the beginning to the end: the traditions of contemporary music die hard.
Quite a wonderful thing happened accidently during the work. The overflow drainsfor the pool had somehow been shut off. The sound being produced by the running water through the whistles, added enough water after the first six hours to escape from the pool and start to invade the basement was dry land became submerged with sound.
The works were realized in various public swimming pools in United States and Canada. I built each aural typography on site using the acoustic formed by each pool's different underwater shape as the work's foundation.
The sound sources were hydraulic: a network hoses fed water through a configuration of whistle like devices, each enclosed in a reflector. The water pressure in the hoses caused them to flex constantly reorienting each sound source independently. This formed a shifting sound texture which varied according to the listener's position in the pool.
This suite of 17 drawings constitute a detailed record of these works. As each of the drawings have the same scale, the suite as a whole reflects the difference in volume and underwater shape of each underwater sound field. All the drawings have a common form composed of three basic elements. At the top is a projection of the underwater sound field. Underneath this is a plan view of the pool showing the location of each sound source and its area of movement. At the bottom is a perspective drawing of these sound source area.
Max Neuhaus