Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Bogart, Michele H. Cox, Christoph. | Uroskie, Andrew V | Patterson, Zabet
Date
2017-05-01
Keywords
Environmental Art, Experimental Music, Fluxus, John Cage, Max Neuhaus, Sound Art | Art history -- Music -- Acoustics
Department
Department of Art History and Criticism
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76660
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
The dissertation examines the sound-based artworks, or sound works, of the experimental musician and installation artist Max Neuhaus (1939-2009). This analysis accounts for the diverse roles of sound as an artistic medium in postwar American music, performance, and environmental art, 1958-1980. The dissertation provides a detailed overview of the musical performances, anti-musical compositions, and post-musical installations of Neuhaus and others to situate sound against dominant historical and theoretical accounts of site-specific and environmental art. The dissertation begins with an analysis of Neuhaus’s tutelage and departure from new music composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1958-1968, and assesses the diverse artistic, social, and institutional developments of the artist’s innovative practice of sound installation. The dissertation orients sound installation, and its origin in percussion performance, as a convergence of postwar avant-garde art and music. In particular, this research describes how sound installation anticipated the spatial, temporal and phenomenological conditions of 1970s site-specific art. The dissertation also examines Neuhaus’s use of printed matter and electronic media, including electronic circuits, phonography, telephone networks, and radio broadcasting, as a nascent model for networked aesthetics. This framework illustrates how the concepts of site and place are conditioned by distributed media environments. Finally, the dissertation proposes a new model of unfixed site-specificity to account for the fluidity of sound in complex material and virtual forms, redefining boundaries of music, sculpture, and public art. In this sonic frame, the act of listening is revealed as an essential paradigm for understanding the concepts of site, materiality, and place in postwar American art. | The dissertation examines the sound-based artworks, or sound works, of the experimental musician and installation artist Max Neuhaus (1939-2009). This analysis accounts for the diverse roles of sound as an artistic medium in postwar American music, performance, and environmental art, 1958-1980. The dissertation provides a detailed overview of the musical performances, anti-musical compositions, and post-musical installations of Neuhaus and others to situate sound against dominant historical and theoretical accounts of site-specific and environmental art. The dissertation begins with an analysis of Neuhaus’s tutelage and departure from new music composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1958-1968, and assesses the diverse artistic, social, and institutional developments of the artist’s innovative practice of sound installation. The dissertation orients sound installation, and its origin in percussion performance, as a convergence of postwar avant-garde art and music. In particular, this research describes how sound installation anticipated the spatial, temporal and phenomenological conditions of 1970s site-specific art. The dissertation also examines Neuhaus’s use of printed matter and electronic media, including electronic circuits, phonography, telephone networks, and radio broadcasting, as a nascent model for networked aesthetics. This framework illustrates how the concepts of site and place are conditioned by distributed media environments. Finally, the dissertation proposes a new model of unfixed site-specificity to account for the fluidity of sound in complex material and virtual forms, redefining boundaries of music, sculpture, and public art. In this sonic frame, the act of listening is revealed as an essential paradigm for understanding the concepts of site, materiality, and place in postwar American art. | 334 pages
Recommended Citation
Eppley, Charles, "Soundsites: Max Neuhaus, Site-Specificity, and the Materiality of Sound as Place" (2017). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 2546.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2546