Mud Musings: Changing Systems and Ideas in Robert Rauschenberg’s Sound-Activated Artworks

Robert Rauschenberg’s Mud Muse (1969-1971) consists of a large vat filled with a mixture of water and bentonite clay. Within the vat, the mud bubbles in response to the recorded sound of its own bubbling through an audio-activated compressed-air system. Mud Muse was donated to the Moderna Museet in 1973 and remains one of the museum’s most popular works. Yet despite its popularity its mechanism is often misunderstood , veiled in rumor and mythology, some of which originated with the artist himself.

Rauschenberg began experimenting with interactive sound artworks in the 1960s, often in collaboration with engineer Billy Klüver, in what would become known as Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). Rauschenberg continued this exploration in Mud Muse together with engineers from Teledyne and sound artist Petrie Mason Robie through the Art & Technology program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Mud Muse’s initial production was characterized by a series of compromises and adjustments, both conceptual and mechanical, to create a sculpture that functioned (roughly) as Rauschenberg intended. Both the art historical record and material evidence point to its having been reconsidered and reconfigured almost continuously up until – and likely beyond – its public debut. As its own prototype, the sculpture shows evidence of many changing approaches during its creation, along with that of later repair campaigns. Fully parsing these changes, as well as the reasoning behind them, is crucial to understanding the work’s “ideal” state, and therefore to determining what interventions might be appropriate to conserve and install the work as the most accurate manifestation of Rauschenberg’s idea.

For decades, Mud Muse was exclusively installed by Moderna Museet electricians and very little written documentation was created. When the latest electrician retired in 2018, no permanent museum staff-member had a complete understanding of how to install and operate the piece. To steward the work responsibly, it was crucial for the museum to re-establish this institutional knowledge.

In 2019, Tora Hederus and My Bundgaard initiated research at Moderna Museet into the construction and history of Mud Muse, hoping to better understand the functions of the technical components and their importance in relation to Rauschenberg’s ideas. Their research in the archives at both the Moderna Museet and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation focused particularly on the creation of the sound tape, the choice of tape recorder, amplifiers, and frequency dividers. In 2024, Caroline Carlsmith joined the research team, bringing previous experience working with Rauschenberg’s first sound-activated E.A.T. artwork Soundings (1968) at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Working together, these conservators from different backgrounds were able to better identify systems that had been attempted and abandoned (including some reminiscent of the microphone-fed Soundings) as well as later changes made as components failed over time. Their collaborative investigations suggested that not all of the conflicting stories in literature about the work were accurate, and a more comprehensive technical art history based on close study of the electrical and pneumatic systems was necessary to understand what Mud Muse had been and how it had come to be.