The footbridge at Lorrianstrasse 1, Berne, Switzerland, Spring 1999

Additional credits:
Pidu P. Russek, project manager
Richard Bugg, electronic engineer
Werner Heers, technician
Andi Brechbühl, assistant
Stefan Schwendimann, assistant

About Max Neuhaus and Suspended Sound Line

Although Max Neuhaus was well-known in the 1960s as an experimental percussionist, he went on to pioneer artistic activities outside conventional cultural contexts and began to realize sound works anonymously in public places, developing art forms of his own. He began to make sound works which were neither music nor events and coined the term 'sound installation' to describe them. In these works without beginning or end, the sounds were placed in space rather than in time. Starting from the premise that our sense of place depends on what we hear, as well as what we see, he utilized a given social and aural context as a foundation to build a new perception of place with sound. With the realization of non-visual artworks for museums in America and Europe, he became the first to extend sound as a primary medium into the plastic arts.




Dense / Tension

Neuhaus' drawing for Suspended Sound Line has a text which sounds / reads like a haiku, in its combination of simplicity and suggestion:

A footbridge
lined with

Sound

Partitioned into
abutting regions

Alternating
sound entities

Reciprocating
open with dense

Tension with relaxation

A walk across this bridge. Because it is outside, because it is so seamlessly integrated into the sounds of the city, of the neighborhood, one wonders where the sound is coming from. It is a part of the structure; it is a 'footbridge lined with sound', as if the sound was another element of construction, like steel and concrete.

One of the differences, however, is that the sound is 'partitioned into abutting regions', splitting the experience of traversing the bridge rather than enveloping it in a unified block. The areas are deceptive, though, in the sense that their identity as units seems to float, to change upon close inspection. Thus, for example, as the listener walks towards a particular sound, it seems to get softer. It almost seems as if the sound from the other side of the bridge is more present. One feels that it is impossible to tie down these sounds, to fix them in any kind of concrete reality. As we try to close our hands (ears) around them, they shift into something else, disappear and transform themselves before our eyes. (Again, one has the tendency to describe an aural phenomenon in visual terms, but they do seem to be divided into regions, do seem to be completely integrated into the landscape.)

Because the source of these sounds is not evident, we never know exactly where they are coming from, how they change, how the program has been constructed. There is thus a mysterious, unexplainable side to the experience, which can elicit a number of responses. If the listener opens himself to concentrating on the nature of the sound blocks rather than their physical and technical makeup, he may find that the "alternating" entities can come to sound like, to feel like, breathing. One block of sounds mounts up, the other slides down. A leads to B leads to A.....The use of repetition and variation makes us anticipate the next block before we even hear it, until it becomes as natural as breathing in and out. It creates, indeed, a tension which is "dense", voluminous, one that you can almost feel. A tension, however, because it is endless, because it has become part of this bridge, which can also elicit a kind of relaxation, a state in which we hear the sounds almost subliminally. As we walk across this bridge, as we cross this 'suspended sound line', we ourselves become suspended, in an experience which is always present but always elusive.

It is the same when attempting to describe Neuhaus' work, to put into words this experience which affects so many of our senses. Perhaps one should end with another text by the artist, not of 'Suspended Sound Line', but of 'Untitled' (1990), a sound work made for Lake Luzern. The words from the drawing on pages 74 and 75 in Max Neuhaus, 'Evocare l'udible' (Milan: Charta 1995), bear an uncanny resemblance to the feelings evoked by Suspended Sound Line:

As one enters the work's wooded grove,
one encounters a high bright sound -
like a fine aural mist. It permeates
the grove, seeming to come from nowhere.


At first the sound seems constant, but
if one listens for a few minutes an
inner detail and motion begin to appear.
After a while the sound sometimes seems
to disappear, becoming embedded in the
sound of the woods. It is an intense
but not unpleasant place to be.


Upon leaving the wood the sound becomes
distant and things slip back to normal.


-- Michael Tarantino, Oxford, December 1998




I.

These sound works are not a form of music. They differ from music in several fundamental ways.

They're not a succession of sound events in time. In music, sound takes on meaning only as it progresses in time, as its sound events unfold over time. Instead, here we have blocks of constant sound textures, sound continuums which are unchanging. It is the listener who puts them into his own time.

The other difference between these works and music is that here the sound is not the work. Here sound is the material with which I transform the perception of space.

-- Max Neuhaus, from a conversation with Michael Tarantino, 1998




II.

In our daily lives, our eye and ear are constantly working together as a closely linked team to form our perception of the world. Traditionally practitioners in the plastic arts have adjusted this perception through vision, forming with shape and color. I on the other hand work with our sense of hearing.

-- Max Neuhaus, "Sound as a medium" in Max Neuhaus, 'Three to One' (Brussels: La Léttre Volée 1997)




III.

The impact of this form lies in its contradiction to our assumptions about sound itself. Instead of sound being dispersed evenly, here we have a seeming impossibility: highly defined sound zones standing in free space without apparent source. This physical form and its contradictions are one element of this sound work; the other, of course, is the sounds themselves.

-- Max Neuhaus, "Notes for Suspended Sound Line, 1996"




IV.

The major amount of energy that I put into making a work is in the construction of its sound. The real effort comes there - the process of placing the first sound in the space, listening to it and finding the next thing to try. It is a process of learning, on my part, about sound in that place, in the place that exists before I begin, but also this imaginary place or moment that I want to build.

In these imaginary places that I build, often the moment the listener first walks into the space, it is not clear that a sound is there. But as you begin to focus, a shift of scale happens. At first you hear what could almost be a room sound, which then suddenly becomes huge. As you enter into it, you move into another perception of space because of the change of scale.

-- Max Neuhaus, excerpted from "Notes on Place and Moment" in Max Neuhaus, 'sound works; volume I, inscription' (Ostfildern-Stuttgart: Cantz 1994)