How Max Neuhaus got 10,000 people whistling down the phone


Matthew writes to tell me about Max Neuhaus and his remarkable Radio Net Project from 1977: "Max Neuhaus, who is a musician (percussionist), inventor, something of a visionary. He’d figured out, given the way Public Radio was engineered in those days, that he could take the phone line networks and hook them together ... to create a piece of music by inviting listeners to phone in to their local public radio station and whistle into the phone. The sound would then go round the phone line network, run thru a phase shifter, and in a matter of seconds come out on the radio in a rather mysterious, layered texture of sound." Matthew's father made a documentary half hour documentary on Radio Net, which you can now watch here (Click on "A look behind the scenes at Radio Net's realization process"). There's a nice description of Radio Net, with diagrams here.


Comments:
Wow! What a crazy and very cool idea. I wonder what it sounded like.
 
FYI, Neuhaus' current version of that project is Auracle: http://www.auracle.org/
 
I wonder what it sounded like.

The page that Tom links to has some recordings, but they're pretty big. There are some short clips on the NPR interview linked to there, though.
 
I believe he also made a piece where he put different tone generators along an auto route. By tuning your car's radio to the specified station, you got this shifting piece of electronic music as you drove along. He also had a sound installation under a subway grate somewhere in midtown Manhattan -- it's location is in John Rockwell's book on American Music (whose title escapes me). I'm not sure if it's still there, but I found it in the mid-1980's, beeping and toning away...
 
The piece in New York was reinstalled in 2002, here's a link that gives its location: http://www.diacenter.org/ltproj/neuhaus/
 
Wow that's a great idea.
 
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