1980
TIME PIECE - SILENT ALLARM CLOCK by Max Neuhaus, 1980
The first work in the series of Time Pieces.
1980
Image: Silent Alarm Clock, 1980 © Copyright The Estate of Max Neuhaus
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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.
Photo and Text published in: Max Neuhaus: Times Square, Time Piece Beacon. Eds. Lynne Cooke and Karen Kelley, with Barbara Schröder. New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2009
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Sound continued to radiate forth, from the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1978 and in the stairway of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1979. In both works the sonic pattern acquired volume, quality and intensity of timbre according to the position of the listener in the garden or on the various levels of the stairway. At times the integration of sound and place reached a point of maximum identity between space and volume, level and surface, such that a continuous sound texture could construct a wall or define a passageway. In other cases, the anti-metaphysical approach leads to a sound that is 'fitting' to the social dimension, a design that results in a 'true' sound, one that serves society, adjusting to it and becoming a usable innovation, beyond its aesthetic and sensory quality. Still in 1979, 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.
Excertp from: Bibliography / Texts by others / 1987 - Carter Ratcliff, Max Neuhaus : Aural Spaces, Art in America, n. 10. New York Octobre. pp.154-163
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Bibliography / Publications / 1980 - TIME PIECE SERIE - SILENT PUBLIC CLOCKS by Max Neuhaus.
Bibliography / Texts by others / 1994 - Germano Celant, Max Neuhaus: An Occasion for Listening.
https://continuo.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/max-neuhaus-times-square-time-piece-beacon-book-review/
Time Piece: Silent Allarm Clock © The Estate of Max Neuhaus
Collection Musée d'Art, Toulon.
Photo Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery
MNE-DOC Silent Alarm Clock. Miriam Goodman. 1980.pdf