Artist
Joan MacIntosh & Richard Schechner
Experimental sound artists Joan MacIntosh and Richard Schechner pioneered avant-garde cassette documentation in 1970s.
About
Joan MacIntosh and Richard Schechner are experimental artists known for their collaborative work in performance and sound art. Their practice emerged from the avant-garde and experimental theater movements, blending interdisciplinary approaches to create unconventional sonic and performative works. The duo's most documented release, "The New Guinea Tapes" (1977), was issued on New Wilderness Audiographics, a pioneering cassette label dedicated to experimental and environmental sound art. This work exemplifies their interest in field recordings, ethnographic material, and the documentation of sound in cultural contexts. MacIntosh and Schechner's contributions to experimental music situated them within the broader underground sound art scene of the 1970s, a period marked by increasing exploration of non-traditional recording formats and conceptual approaches to composition. Their work with New Wilderness Audiographics connected them to a network of artists prioritizing cassette culture as an accessible medium for avant-garde expression, influencing subsequent generations of experimental and environmental sound practitioners.