Max Neuhaus

Neuhaus
Born 1939 in Beaumont, Texas; lives in New York and Paris. 1957-62 studied percussion under Paul Price at the Manhattan School of Music, New York. In the early 1960s, solo concerts with artists including Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Europe and the USA, in venues including the Carnegie Hall, New York;1966 «Listen,» first work as an independent artist, and «Public Supply,» first acoustic network through the WBAI New York Radio Station; in 1967 Neuhaus realized his first electro-acoustic installation «Drive-In Music» in Buffalo, New York, as a result of which he coined the presently current term «sound installation» to describe works that do not have a beginning or an end and whose structure develops in space rather than time; 1977-92 first permanent sound installation «Times Square» in the square of the same name in New York City; since then, various permanent works for museums and public venues.
Neuhaus devises his sound installations for a specific space and derives his creative principles from these parameters: firstly from acoustic and other structural properties, and then from his clients' typical modes of use. Neuhaus was one of the first to realize a number of installations in particular public venues, addressing their acoustic quality not just artistically but also as a 20th century design problem. Thus for example he suggested a siren technology for US police vehicles that was safer because it could be located more precisely, and developed an alarm clock that wakes sleeping people with silence—achieving that with a tone that slowly increases in volume and then breaks off abruptly at the wake-up time.