These Networks gradually progressed into a series of radio/telephone events, in different cities. In the middle of the seventies I realized one for the whole of the USA with two hundred radio stations and five cities where people called into. I made huge trans-continental loops to transform their sounds.It was called Radio Net.
Max Neuhaus
'I started in another direction which I now call Networks; these are inter-connections of lay people again, having a dialogue with sound that is beyond language. I did the first one, also in the middle of the sixties, with a radio station in New York City. It involved doing something which was unheard of at that time: I plugged the telephone system into the radio station. I installed ten telephone lines at the station and asked people to call in during a two-hour period with whatever sounds they wanted. It created a live sound collage made with the participation of anybody within a twenty-mile radius the ten million people who were living there. These Networks gradually progressed into a series of radio/telephone events, in different cities. In the middle of the seventies I realized one for the whole of the USA with two hundred radio stations and five cities where people called into. I made huge trans-continental loops to transform their sounds.It was called Radio Net. At that time the word ‘network’ wasn’t a word in general us; it was a word that engineers knew but if you mentioned ‘network’ in a cultural context or any kind of conversation except with an engineer, no-one would know what it was. With these network ideas, I was also trying to go beyond the event and make them into entities. I was trying to figure out how I could take over a radio station twenty-four hours a day, or a network of radio stations. Fortunately, though, the Internet arrived. As of last year there is a work, Auracle, which is there twenty-four hours a day at a site called www.auracle.org. It is a point of meeting to create a network of people who play an instrument together using their voice'.
Max Neuhaus
Advertisement, article continues Belowe this ad hans-ulrich-obrist interview with Max Neuhaus, 22, Aug05
“Radio Net.” For two hours on 200 NPR stations in 1977, sound artist Max Neuhaus conducted a massive experimental audio symphony using processed sound from callers all around the nation. It’s a vivid reminder of the audacious experimental artistic force NPR once was.Previously unpublished video of the preparations for and execution of Radio Net:
Public Supply I - WBAI, New York City, 1966, 2 hours
Public Supply III - WFMT, Chicago, 1973, 2 hours
Radio Net - Continental USA, 1977, 8 hours
Track #1 East transmit loop (New York, WNYC)
Track #2 Midwest transmit loop (Dallas and Chicago)
Track #3 South transmit loop (Atlanta, WABE)
Track #4 West transmit loop (Los Angeles)
Radio Net Postcard Npr
William Duckworth, interview Max Neuhaus, edited from transcript, New York 1982
This work was a sound piece meant, in part, to expand concepts about what constitutes music and how it is created. With Radio Net, Neuhaus networked NPR radio stations and wired the studio he was in for multiple live phone calls. Neuhaus instructed callers to phone in and whistle and then filtered the sounds through an audio system he created. Neuhaus elaborates: “ As I continued with these [networking] ideas I began to implement two concepts which have proved important. One was to have the sounds phoned in activate instruments, instruments played by the voice. The other was to remove myself from the role of moderator and implement this function as an autonomous system. This was accomplished in Radio Net (1977) for the whole of the United States. I formed the National Public Radio network with its 190 radio stations into a vast cross country instrument played by callers’ sounds autonomously.” He called the music produced from these networks “loops.” In 1977, radio stations did not yet have the technology to take listeners calls so Neuhaus needed to configure the technology that allowed for audience participation. As part of this, Neuhaus also convinced censors that people would not call the station cursing or make inappropriate comments.
Housatonic Museum Of Art, Bridgeport, It's for You, Cured by Terri C. Smith 24-2-2011