Max Neuhaus

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Biography

1939

  • Born in Beaumont, Texas (August 9)

1942

  • Family moves to Fishkill, New York

1954

  • Decides to become a musician
  • First work with various jazz, rock and roll, and dance bands

1955

  • Family moves to Houston

1957–61

  • Studies with Paul Prince at Manhattan School of Music

1958

  • Meets John Cage

1961

  • Meets Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez

1962

  • Completes Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music with Master of Music degree

1962–63

  • Tours with Pierre Boulez’s Contemporary Chamber Ensemble

1963–64

  • Solo recital, Carnegie Hall, New York
  • Tours United States and Canada as percussion soloist with Karlheinz Stockhausen

1965

  • Second solo recital, Carnegie Hall, New York
  • Gives concerts in major European cities on solo tour

1966

  • Initiates Listen, first independent work as an artist and first in a series of fifteen works

1966–76

  • Realizes first broadcast work, Public Supply I
  • Realizes Max-Feed, an editioned sound object produced with MassArt

1966–67

  • Realizes American Can, sound event series, New York

1967

  • Realizes first sound installation, Drive-in Music
  • Realizes Fan Music on the rooftops of 137–141 Bowery, New York

1968

  • Records Electronics and Percussion: Five Realizations by Max Neuhaus, percussion repertoire produced by Columbia Masterworks
  • Decides to cease performing as a musician
  • Artist-in-residence at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he experiments with acoustics and electronics

1969

  • Lives on a boat journeying along Eastern Seaboard, studying underwater acoustics

1971

  • Realizes Water Whistle I at New York University’s pool, first in a series of seventeen works, 1971–74

1973

  • Music Fellow, National Endowment for the Arts Conceives
  • Times Square and Paris Metro project
  • Installs Walkthrough at Jay Street —Borough Hall subway station, New York, extant until 1977

1974

  • Returns to live in New York
  • Preliminary studies for Radio Net
  • Incorporation of HEAR Inc.

1976

  • Installs Round at the U. S. Customs House, New York
  • Realizes Underwater Music I, Radio Bremen
  • Realizes Underwater Music II, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, New York

1977

  • Installs Times Square in New York, where it remains until
  • 1992, to be reinstalled in 2002 as a permanent piece in the collection of Dia Art Foundation
  • Installs Round at the U. S. Customs House, New York
  • Participates in Documenta 6
  • Radio Net realized on National Public Radio
  • Realizes Underwater Music III, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, New York

1977–78

  • Fellow, DAAD, Berlin

1978

  • Begins development and construction of first computer controlled multisynthesizer sound system
  • Conceives Sirens project, new designs and techniques for emergency sounds
  • Installs an untitled work in the Abby Aldrich Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art, New York

1979

  • First accession of a sound installation by an institution, an untitled work by Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  • Realizes Five Russians A Tuned Room at the Clocktower Gallery; Institute for Art and Urban Resources, New York

1981

  • Conducts first outdoor experiments for Sirens project
  • Lecture tour through California

1982

  • Lecture tour through Japan
  • Visual Arts Fellow, National Endowment for the Arts

1983

  • Creates first works for European museums
  • Participates in Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art with a piece he would later title Time Piece “Archetype”

1988–89

  • Continues tests for Sirens project in California desert

1989

  • Installs A Bell for St. Cäcilien, commissioned by Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, extant until 1991
  • Installs first full-scale Time Piece, Time Piece Bern, commissioned by Kunsthalle Bern, extant until 1993

1991

  • Award of U.S. patent for siren sound design, first patent ever issued for a sound

1992

  • Participates in Documenta 9, contributing Three to One, a work that would become a permanent installation in the AOK Building in Kassel, Germany
  • Begins research for Audium Model

1994

  • Max Neuhaus: Sound Works, retrospective book series in three volumes, is published by Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany

1995

  • “Evoking the Aural,” a retrospective exhibition of drawings from the Place works, organized by Villa Arson, Nice, and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli, Turin

1999

  • First freestanding sound-field work, Intersection I, at Venice Biennale
  • Installs Suspended Sound Line, commissioned by Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Bern

2002

  • Reinstatement of Times Square, which enters the collection of Dia Art Foundation
  • Installs Promenade du Pin, commissioned by Fonds Cantonale d’Art Contemporain, Geneva

2003

  • Installs Time Piece Graz at Kunsthaus Graz at the Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, a permanent installation

2004

  • Launches Auracle at http://www.auracle.org, a networked sound instrument, controlled by the voice and played over the Internet
  • Network recordings made available on internet

2005

  • Installs Time Piece Beacon at Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York

2007

  • Installs Eybesfeld in Lebring, Austria
  • Installs Time Piece Stommeln, a permanent sound work in the town square of Stommeln Pulheim, Germany

2008

  • Installs Sound Figure at the Menil Collection, Houston

2009

  • Dies in Maratea, Italy (February 3)