RAUSCHENBERG
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possibilities of varied sound, from music to purely abstract noise and
any degree in between. Each piece can
be
adjusted accordingly. One
of the ideas was to make it so simple that you would not have to be
educated to do it - so that the thing would just respond to touch.
INTERVIEWER:
When this sculpture is displayed, is someone working the
dials or are they merely present?
RAUSCHENBERO:
Anyone around it can change it; and it can also be set
up so that the sound is constantly changing, independently of anyone's
control.
One of the pieces, a cement-mixing tub, is also a fountain, because
I wanted another source of sound too in running water. I didn't want
to imply that these sounds all had to be electronic.
INTERVIEWER:
Do you consider this an "environment" or a "combine"?
RAUSCHENBERG:
Sound . is part of the piece ; it
is
not a decoration. It
is a part of the climate that piece insists on. You really do get a sense
of moving from one place to another, as you shift from the proximity
of one piece to another piece.
INTERVIEWER:
Because the field of sound is constantly changing. Several
questions come to mind: Why the field of sound? How does the sound
relate to the visual elements?
RAUSCHENBERG :
The sound relates to the pieces physically by the material
interaction - the particular kind of distortion the sound of a voice has
as it
is
shaped by its context. "Why sound?" because hearing is a sense
that we use while looking anyway.
INTERVIEWER:
One of the myths of modem culture - I associate it
particularly with Lewis Mumford's
Art and Technics
[1952] - is that
art and technology are eternally opposed to each other and that one
succeeds only at the decline of the other.
RAUSCHENBERG:
I think that's a dated concept. We now are living in a
culture that won't operate and grow that way. Science and art–
these things do clearly exist at the same time, and both are very
valuable. We are just realizing that we have lost a lot of energy in
always insisting on the conflict - in posing one of these things against
the other.
INTERVIEWER:
In contrast to nearly all contemporary artists, you did
not need to find your own style by first painting through several
established styles - by taking them as your transient models. From the
start, you were, as we say, an original.
RAUSCHENBERO:
I always had enormous respect for other people's work,
but I deliberately avoided using other people's styles, even though I
know that no one owns any particular technique or attitude.
It
seemed
to me that it was more valuable to think that the world was big
