As I have said, I have no idea how this installation came about.  I was painting canvas during that period around 1974-75, along with my music and graphics work.  It seems to me that I painted some of the canvases that appeared at Hallwalls prior to arranging the installation there and then painting an entire, different series specifically for the installation once I had committed to doing it.  I believe the more colorful canvases that occupied the main room of the installation were done last.   All of these canvases measured 54x36 in. — some of which were intended as diptychs and triptychs — and were all painted with spray paint on unprimed canvas.  My audio portion of the installation (more about the two Richards from Albany and their contribution and participation in the installation later . . .) was a long, collaged concrete work on tape that included, along with much more, words and sounds from Cage and Friedrich Kiesler.  The title of the installation, "putting the eternal in its place," and the installation itself was meant as much in jest as it was to be taken seriously.  Unfortunately, I must say my intentions were not only not realized, but worse, I only succeeded in putting myself, once again, in my own eternal place, a special place reserved for people such as me who have a special talent for outthinking everyone including oneself:  the "eternal nowhere."

Luckily for me I had the two Richards (Richard Lainhart and Richard Kelly — and a third Richards, Eric Richards, a remarkable composer, and an old, dear friend from my few days at Mannes School in the mid 1960s who lended moral and artistic support to the installation) who supplied technical, emotional, and comic support to the proceedings. Without their help, their support and musical contribution, the installation would have done me in; far worse than it, in actuality, did.  I met them in 1974 at the SUNY Albany Electronic Studio that was headed by Joel Chadabe.  I had gone there to make the piece "The Realm of Indra's Net," a four track piece done live in the studio with a pickup microphone on the violin performed by Linda Cummiskey.   The two Richards seemed, so to speak, to come with the studio.  Both in their early twenties, they had technical know-how, humor in general, and an interest in my project.   The sessions for "Indra's Net" took two days; we were all pleased with the results.  Two years later, we worked together again, this time with the cellist David Gibson on a realization of my graphic music piece, "The Study of Changes" (1975).  The performed version that took place in Albany involved live cello and ten prerecorded, processed cello tracks. For that performance we used the matrix mixer Cage and Tudor had made for their work, "Bird Cage."  The dress rehearsal for that work — an overwhelming experience for me personally — helped convince me that I could not really continue in music, at least in music as an expression of whatever music purports to express. I knew with a certainty that couldn't be disregarded that I would never be able to do anything more interesting, and to me, or as beautiful as what I heard that night.  That turned out to be the case.

The two Richards' musical contribution to the Hallwalls Installation was as different as they were.  Richard Kelly's work, "when the wind shines," injected a feeling of nature and humor with his "electronic birds" chirping away in the face of the seriousness of what was going on inside.  He used more than 50 small ploy planar speakers, strung like Christmas lights from inside the gallery out to the parking lot.  Sadly, Richard is no longer with us: he took his own life on July 30, 1983.  Richard Lainhart is thankfully still with us.  I recently met him, after more than 30 years, in June of 2008 at a concert in the middle of "somewhere," New York, where a recent film of mine, done for The Downtown Ensemble of New York, was being shown.  It was a glorious reunion.  Richard L's work at Hallwalls, "two mirrors face one another," was classic Lainhart, by which I mean, it was calm, floating, and thoughtfully intense. His music, in the Hallwalls Installation, emanated from a second room next to the main room and interacted with both the sounds of my work and those of Richard Kelly's.

Richard Lainhart continues on his creative path having added still photographic imagery and video work to his vast catalog of music.  He can be contacted at (rlainhart@otownmedia.com) or through Phill Niblock at (www.xirecords.com) Phil, apart from being an accomplished, interesting audio-visual artist in his own right has helped countless musicians and artists through his multitude of concert series and publishes some of Richard's work amongst that of his own and others.