noisesilence
Saturday, October 5, 13
Saturday, October 5, 13
Helen Keller
From My Later Life
Tremulously I stand in the subways, absorbed into the
terrible reverberations of exploding energy. Fearful, I
touch the forest of steel girders loud with the thunder of
oncoming trains that shoot past me like projectiles. Inert
I stand, riveted in my place. My limbs, paralyzed, refuse
to obey the will insistent on haste to board the train while
the lightning steed is leashed and its reeling speed
checked for a moment.
Saturday, October 5, 13
4’33”
Saturday, October 5, 13
John Cage 1912-1992
Saturday, October 5, 13
@ the New School from 1956 to 1961
Saturday, October 5, 13
Saturday, October 5, 13
Silent Prayer
Saturday, October 5, 13
. . . Of the four characteristics of the
material of music, duration, that is
time length, is the most fundamental. Silence cannot be heard in terms of
pitch or harmony: it is heard in
terms of time length.
- John Cage
Saturday, October 5, 13
Max Neuhaus 1939 - 2003
Saturday, October 5, 13
Max Neuhaus - The Silent Alarm Clock
1979
The Silent Alarm Clock belongs to the Time Pieces category. This prototype was
built by Neuhaus in 1979 to awake the sleeper with silence. It’s a device emitting a
continuous tone slowly increasing in volume until it suddenly stops at the appointed
time, thus awaking the sleeper. It’s not the subtle sound that actually awakes, but its
disappearing. The other Time Pieces/Moment works are derived from this concept,
i.e. you notice their sound when it disappears.
Saturday, October 5, 13
A response to a federal campaign on
noise, Neuhaus’ famous 1974 NY Times
editorial rejected the idea of good and
bad noise, stating that, by linking noise
pollution to urban sounds, public officials
‘in effect robbed us of the ability to listen
to our environment . . . By arbitrarily
condemning most man-made sounds as
noise, [bureaucrats] were making noise
where it never existed before’
Saturday, October 5, 13
Max Neuhaus - Underwater Music 1971-77
The various Water Whistle events organized in swimming pools between 1971 and 77
(part of the Underwater Music concerts) used submerged plastic hoses to transmit highpitch tonalities to swimmers (see picture above). It’s an early example of a Place Piece.
An interesting definition of the Place Pieces is given by Alex Potts when he qualifies
Neuhaus’s work as ‘staging an aesthetic experience’ (p46). The key point is that
Neuhaus’ work doesn’t intrude or alter the surrounding space, as it ‘does not strive to
transform the environment’ (p54) but rather ‘alter one’s perception of the space’
Saturday, October 5, 13
Max Neuhaus - Times Square 1977 & 2002
Max Neuhaus’s Times Square is a rich harmonic sound texture emerging from the north
end of the triangular pedestrian island located at Broadway between 45th and 46th
Streets in New York City.
Originally installed at this site from 1977 to 1992, the Times Square Street Business
Improvement District (BID), and Christine Burgin collaborated with MTA Arts for
Transit and Dia to reinstate the project in May of 2002.
Saturday, October 5, 13
“Though his sound installations require the same level
of attention a work of art would to be fully perceived as
a work of art (Potts, p50), Neuhaus’ sound pieces can
even be ignored and the public has the possibility of
bypassing the artwork completely (Joseph, p67). Which
is what happened to me in 2008 when visiting New York
for the first time: my hotel was located in Times Square
and though I noticed the subway ventilating system
made an unusual noise there, I wasn’t aware I was
stepping on a Max Neuhaus’ masterpiece every time I
went to the subway station!”
- Continuo
Saturday, October 5, 13
Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie (2004)
Saturday, October 5, 13
William Hogarth - The Enraged Musician 1741
Saturday, October 5, 13
1905
Saturday, October 5, 13
Edgar Allen Poe
From: Doings in Gotham 1844
The street-cries, and other nuisances to the same effect, are particularly
disagreeable here. Immense charcoal-waggons infest the most frequented
thorough-fares, and give forth a din which I can liken to nothing earthly (unless,
perhaps a gong), from some metallic, triangular contrivance within the bowels of the
"infernal machine." This is a free country, I have heard, and wish to believe if I can;
but i cannot perceive how it would materially interfere with our freedom to put an
end to these tintamarres*. A man may do what he pleases with his own ... provided,
in so doing, he incommode not his neighbor; this is one of the commonest precepts
of common law. But the amount of general annoyances wrought by street-noises is
incalculable; and this matter is worthy our very serious attention. It would be difficult
to say, for example, how much of time, more valuable that money, is lost, in a large
city, to no purpose, for the convenience of the fishwomen, the charcoal-men, and
the monkey-exhibitors. How often does it happen that where two individuals are
transacting business of vital importance, where fate hangs upon every syllable and
upon every moment – how frequently does it occur that all conversation is delayed,
for five or even ten minutes at a time, until these devil's-triangles have got out of
hearing, or until the leather throats of the clam-and-cat-fish vendors have been
halloed, and shrieked, and yelled, into a temporary hoarseness and silence!
Saturday, October 5, 13
Saturday, October 5, 13
The New York Times, perceptively responding to Free's
conclusion that horse-drawn traffic was actually louder
than automobile traffic, suggested that perhaps it was
not the level of noise that was the crux of the problem,
but rather the nature of the sounds. The problem was
that "the machine age has brought so many new noises
into existence, the ear has not learned how to handle
them. It is still bewildered by them."
Saturday, October 5, 13
By 1930 New York's papers depicted the enemy as a
machine-age beast that threatened to overpower any
human foolish enough to stand in its path. This
changing character of the soundscape, as much as any
actual or perceived increase in overall loudness, was
fundamental to the growing concern over the problem
of noise. Like Edgard Varese, the Times challenged its
readers/listeners to retrain their ears in order "to
handle" the new soundscape of their city.
Saturday, October 5, 13
Saturday, October 5, 13
Edgar Verese 1883 - 1965
Saturday, October 5, 13
Detail from score to Poème électronique (1958)
"I was still under the spell of my first impressions of
New York," Varese later recalled. "Not only New York
seen, but more especially heard. For the first time with
my physical ears I heard a sound that had kept
recurring in my dreams as a boy—a high whistling Csharp. It came to me as I worked in my Westside
apartment where I could hear all the river sounds -- the
lonely foghorns, the shrill peremptory whistles—the
whole wonderful river symphony which moved me more
than anything ever had before."
Edgar Verese
Saturday, October 5, 13
Noise Map
Saturday, October 5, 13
Saturday, October 5, 13
One Square Inch of Silence is the quietest
place in the United States. Located in the Hoh
Rain Forest at Olympic National Park, it is 3.2
miles from the Visitor’s Center above Mt. Tom
Creek Meadows on the Hoh River Trail.
Hiking time from the parking lot at the Visitor’s
Center to the site is approximately two hours
along a gentle path lined by ancient trees and
ferns. The exact location is marked by a small
red-colored stone placed on top of a mosscovered log at 47° 51.959N, 123° 52.221W,
678 feet above sea level.
Saturday, October 5, 13
Saturday, October 5, 13