Sound Work Location: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Dimensions: 4 x 5 x 18 meters
Proposed: 1978
Extant: 1979–1989
Image: Photo Archive Max Neuhaus Estate
(view of installation Site), 1979.
Development and constrution of first computer controlled sound source array: 64 indipendent synthesizers with remote control.
(first accession of a sound installation by an institution)
____
Neuhaus first considers the shape of the space with which he has to deal, then the substances and surfaces which define the space, and finally the sounds the space generates of its own accord _ whether the sound of traffic or of museum-goers seeking a refuge from this particular variety of noise. At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago Neuhaus set up a column of thirty loudspeakers in a stairwell of the Museum's new wing. They are not visible and the sounds they emit strike one at first as the sort of gratuitous noise that buildings often create _ the unintended side-effects of some necessity (perhaps a ventilation unit), noticeable but not distracting for more than an instant. Surely some who make their way through this stairwell never hear Neuhaus' Chicago piece as a work of art. Likewise, we sometimes walk by a work of sculpture in corten steel or aluminium without quite focusing on the fact that it is the product of an esthetic intention, not the by-product of architecture or engineering.
Excerpt from: Carter Ratcliff, "Space, Time and Silence: Max Neuhaus' Sound Installations", 1983