Dia.Beacon
I drove up to Dia.Beacon with Alice, Andy, and Rory to hear Max Neuhaus' Time Peace Beacon. As I entered the building, I felt small -- dwarfed by the scale of the building and the ideas contained within it.
I found it interesting how Neuhaus' piece was able to dialogue with the ambient soundscape of the site without overwhelming it. I felt his sound successfully integrated with the sonic environment, transcended it, and left it different than before I heard it. Just as Peter had described in class, the absence of Neuhaus' piece once it finished left a space behind.
We created a comical incident while listening for Neuhaus' work. I became convinced at one point, while we stood in the semi-silence outside the cafe doors at Dia.Beacon, I was hearing a low-pitched throbbing sound. Its regular rhythmic rumble remained at the edge of my perception. I don't know what I heard, but it wasn't Neuhaus' work; after standing outside for 20 minutes, we finally decided to ask the museum attendants at the bookstore what we were supposed to be listening for. The piece plays at seven minutes to each hour and they claimed we would know when it was happening.
Back outside shortly before 3:53pm, we heard a train pass in the distance and wondered during the ensuing silence if we had been fallen for some big joke.
Then, almost imperceptibly, a tone began to emerge from the ambient sounds. I would describe it as a rich, sweet droning. It reminded me of a note sustained on a pipe organ -- majestic and vibrating. It was harmonically complex, yet seemingly a single tone. The tone grew in intensity and complexity. It was a beautiful sound, but only fleeting. It ended abruptly and yielded its place back to the existing environment.
I can't say how, but I felt the environment was changed somehow in those moments after the sound stopped. The sound's absence left behind a lingering memory and a heightened awareness of what my ears were now hearing. The sounds of the site seemed somehow amplified by the absence of Neuhaus' work.
What would this work be like if we hadn't been expecting it at all. Would we have been caught by surprise?