Max Neuhaus
«Radio Net»

«Radio Net» went further than the idea behind «Public Supply I.» Here again Neuhaus used only the sound from incoming telephone calls as his material, but controlled it with completely automatic mixing desks. He also activated radio technology, in the form of the national loop used by the American NPR Broadcasting Corporation, to process this material aesthetically. Instead of merely transmitting signals from one station to the next, Neuhaus converted the whole system into a closed loop, so that sounds could circulate throughout it.

«It created a sound-transformation ‹box› that was literally fifteen hundred miles wide by three thousand miles long with five ins and five outs emerging in Washington. […] even if you do have a frequency shifter and gain control, each loop was in a sense a living thing—they could get out of hand very quickly. […] My role was holding the balance of this big five-looped animal with as little movement as possible.»
(Source: Max Neuhaus, «Rundfunkarbeiten und Audium,» in: Transit (publ.), Zeitgleich, Vienna 1994, pp. 25–26)

Golo Föllmer