1966
Max Neuhaus, Max-Feed, 1966

Image: Invite Feed for A Grand Feed, presented by Max Neuhaus, Mass Art Store, New York, December 29, 1966. Collection MoMa

-Offset lithograph with collage addition. sheet: 14 x 21 15/16" (35.6 x 55.7 cm) The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift

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The piece is the interaction between, and mixture of, these feedback channels which are set up by resting contact microphones on various percussion instruments that are standing in front of loudspeakers. Although the varying of the individual intensities of these channels, which is extremely gradual throughout the performance of the piece, is done according to the score and the same in each of these performances, the actual sounds which make up piece are determined by the interactions of the sounds upon themselves, the acoustics of the room, where the mikes are resting in relationship to the loudspeakers and instruments at a specific moment (the vibrations set up cause them to move around during the piece) - in short, factors which are complex enough that even if the piece was performed twice successively in the same room with the same audience, the same instruments and the same loudspeakers, it would have completely different sounds and structures.

Max Neuhaus 1966

Note: Because of the nature of these sounds it was not possible to put them on a record without greatly reducing their loudness. The listener can compensate for this reduction and come close to duplicating the original performance by turning the volume on his record player up to about twice the normal level. m.n.

Image: Max Neuhaus, Max-Feed, 1966. © Estate of Max Neuhaus.

Although Max-Feed could be considered Neuhaus's first art bject, it could also be considered a composition, on the order of Gordon Mumma's Horpipe (1967), a cybernetically modified horn. As Michael Nyman writes about the latter, "since it is designed specifically to bring about a particular kind of musical result-it is a particular kind of composition in effect." Nyman, Experimental Music, p. 102 (emphasis in original). Indeed, Neuhaus submitted the electronics schema of Max-Feed as his contribution to John Cage's collection of musical scores, Notations. (Cage, Notations [New York: Something Else Press, 1969], n.p.)

As an artwork-composition hybrid, Max Feed takes its place within what I have outlined elsewhere as the post-Cagean "theatrical" legacy. See my Beyond the Dream Syndicate, pp. 82-84.

Another of Neuhaus's devices to follow in the art/musical lineage was By-Product (1966)...

Excerpt from Max Neuhaus: Times Square, Time Piece Beacon. Eds. Lynne Cooke and Karen Kelley, with Barbara Schröder. New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2009, 

Image: Max-Feed 'Score', 1966, 28x43 cm, Collection The Estate of Max Neuhaus

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Anne Zeitz - anne-zeitz-from-maxfeed-to-radio-net-the-radio-projects-of-max-neuhaus

Frac Franche-Comté / Cité des arts / Besançon, 2016-Max Feed Exposition collective 

max-feed-oeuvre-et-h-eritage-de-max-neuhaus

Dia Art Foundation, Video, May 21, 2019-  Artist on Artist Lecture - Camille Norment on Max Neuhaus