Max Neuhaus
«Drive In Music»

Max Neuhaus was one of the first, with his «Drive-In Music,» 1967–68, to develop the idea of a ‹music› for a public space that is tonally complex but does not force itself upon passers-by. Neuhaus installed 20 low-powered radio transmitters in the trees along a stretch of just under 600 metres on a broad avenue, Lincoln Parkway in Buffalo, New York. They pointed in different directions and produced different sounds, thus producing seven overlapping zones with various sound components. The sounds were synthesized by home-made equipment on the spot, and changed according to what was going on around them. As the transmitters were all tuned to be received on the same frequency, people driving by heard different sets of sounds according to speed, direction of travel, time of day and weather conditions. In fact Neuhaus did not just work with the synthetic sounds generated by his equipment for his installations in public spaces, but also used them as a counterpoint for the random noises produced in a particular place, placing them in an aesthetic context by setting them alongside sound with tonal quality.

(Source: Golo Föllmer, «Töne für die Straße,» in: Akademie der Künste (eds.), Klangkunst, Munich 1996, pp. 216–218)