1979
Max Neuhaus, Time Piece, Silent Alarm Clock, 1980

Max Neuhaus's Moment Work commemorates an unusual product that never went into production: a silent alarm clock he designed in 1979. Neuhaus described it as "five by sixteen by one inch, with a time display, buttons on the left side of the longer face, and a round face on the right, behind which a small speaker was concealed." Before the set alarm time, the alarm clock emitted a continuous, low-pitched tone, carefully tuned to the maximum volume audible during sleep without waking the sleeper. Neuhaus explained that this frequency had "a very special quality. It is present, but almost inaudible—more presence than noise." Starting at an almost inaudible volume, the tone gradually increased until it abruptly ceased at the set alarm time. The sudden silence, the absence of auditory stimuli, awoke the sleeper.

Image: Silent Alarm Clock, 1980, 

'This work is not a decor, but a ceremony (from carimonia, which in turn comes from careo = to lack, be deprived).  It is a way of differing from the tradition.  Not fullness of sound, then, but lack or movement in the interval between fullness and emptiness. 

In 1979, Max Neuhaus adjusted the alarm clock to the sensibility of the sleeper who wants to wake up at a certain time.  He designed a sound that does not disturb sleep, but whose disappearance and subliminal absence strike the sleeper and bring about awakening.  
What counts here is not the form or presence of the sound, but its efficacy.'

Germano Celant, 'Max Neuhaus: An Occasion for Listening', 1994

Translated from the Italian by Brian Holmes