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 1912-1992 @ the New School from 1956 to 1961

Saturday, October 5, 13 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 high- pitch 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 - 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 .

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 Detail from score to Poème électronique (1958)

Saturday, October 5, 13 "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 C- sharp. 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 . 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 moss- covered log at 47° 51.959N, 123° 52.221W, 678 feet above sea level.

Saturday, October 5, 13 Saturday, October 5, 13