Re: [microsound] Silence But Louder

[scott allison <lipistal3@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

have  you ever heard that cd staalplaat released called 45' 18"? its 
interpetations of cages 4' 33" frans de waards contribution is only liner 
notes, guess that is kinda of pretty silent in a way? but the cd is not 
really silent by any means but at some points it is. the art folds out into 
a nice poster of a picture of people sitting in seats with fingers in ears.

http://www.staalplaat.com/search/catalog/11798

I found it interesting to read in a book "Off the wall' where cage talks 
about rauschenbergs white paintings as "airports for lights, shadows, and 
particles", apprently cage had been thinking about doing something with 
total silence then after seeing the white paintings at black mountain in 
1952 he came up with 4' 33", I guess those white paintings had some sort of 
influence, then rauschenberg went on to make his awesome black paintings. 
then there was a red show? in which morton feldman gave his first public 
performance, apprently all the reviewers gave the exhibit and performance 
very poor marks.

So with the idea of silence, I am wondering and interested in what seems to 
be a strong relation to works of silence and visual art. I sort of feel like 
some of the artists of that period where really interrelated with each other 
and shared ideas and tried to find expressions in the media's they choose, 
sound, painting ect. Sometimes to me people like cage or niblock have to be 
viewed not so much as composers or musicains but as artists. I dont think 
they where really ever much interested in mastering any classical styles or 
anything but more so in working with sound in a way that might place the 
listener in a space that really makes them relate more to the present 
environment and not really about any sort of narative structure outside of 
the present reality of the situation of the performance.

In some ways I think one part of cage that was really had an influence on 
todays sound world is  chance, this probably comes more into view when you 
examine "patches" by people like Twerk that make use of algorythums that are 
based on chance operations. Like his cd "now I am rendered useless" you can 
simply load in some sounds and get the patch going and it pretty much starts 
to run itself.

Was anything really changed from that point? not sure. but I think that 
looking for newness is a product of modern thinking, one thing leads to the 
next and the next until sort of a final distillation is achived or maturity 
of form. That is sort of irrelevent these days, in so many ways what it all 
seems to boil down to is what you can get away with is all that really 
matters. nothing is really "new" and pretty much everything is dirivitive of 
something else these days.

But I think Juliean knowles point is really good in asking specific 
examples, very acidemic point of view or lawerish in a way, but soild facts 
are important if they in fact exist, some might argue that solid facts can 
not ever exist.

But please keep in mind these are not theroies just my thoughts which are 
probably totally wrong and not worth reading.

One part of the new book by Toop mentioned in the review I read was a 
question about sound/hums/feild recordings relating to memory, I think thats 
a really interesting direction to think about. Miki Yuis cd "silence 
resounding" to me probably deals a lot with that subject in her 
contemplative compostions of feild recordings, excellent cd if you have not 
heard it, probably my top pick of 2003 or was it 2002?

scott "fingers" allison

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