Silence is music, too? Absurdity in art
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A musical piece composed of.... nothing but silence.
http://i.gizmodo.com/5192675/dealzmodo-146-of-silence-by-john-cage-free-today-on-itunesNow I have an idea to become famous as an architect:
I'll leave a lot empty, and I'll give the "building" a weird name. Perhaps... "20090331", for today's date. It will be considered the most amazing work of architecture ever conceived, and I'll be called a genius across the world!
Hopefully, la creme de la creme will come to visit my Zen work of architecture and cough a little bit while contemplating... nothing.Now, seriously, some pieces of "art" remind me of The Emperor's New Clothes. People hail them as wonderful works of art simply because the intellectual circles do... even if all they see is randomly splattered paint.
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Interesting thoughts.
@unknownuser said:
A musical piece composed of.... nothing but silence.
The words provoked a sound for me. As I realized I wasn't getting the sound right it struck me that silence would have no sound. I didn't click on the link. I had already heard the music.
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Not a big dada fan, are ya?
Obviously you shouldn't leave out of the equasion Cage did actually compose quite a bit more besides the somewhat Duchampian piece you're referring to.
Whenever people question modern and/or contemporary art, I feel compelled to ask what they do like. Mind you, that question is born out of honest curiosity: I like to know what their frame of reference is.
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As modern Philip Glass is more consistant
Click on "Plus" for have all CD Covers choose one then press "Jouer tout l'album" (= Play all the CD)
All is free streaming of course -
Oh, the irony...
In Youtube there are many smart, inspiring, entertaining, or simply informative videos. Some of them have many visits, but most don't. And which are the ones that consistently get hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of visits? Those of girls staring at the camera, talking gibberish, or not saying a word at all. I guess the entire world has gone not only da-da, but also ga-ga.
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Stinkie, my "frame of reference" is very diverse: In music, my tastes range from Bach's Art of the Fuge to Pink Floyd's Celestial Voices, and in painting, from Fragonard's The Swing to Max Ernst's Europe After the Rain II.
But there is no way I'd buy a ticket to go hear people cough and watch a director jiggle at the thought of being paid for doing nothing. IMHO, this is a joke.
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I think itd be worth it, its not very often you hear complete silence.
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Would the auditorium open just for me? No performers, no other audience, just ME! I would love that silence and be none the poorer for it.
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I'm pretty sure the guards get to do that.
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As Mies van der Rohe said. 'Less is More'... although I think he expected 'something' to remain after his buildings' details were refined ?!
Refinement means removing unnecessary things - not removing 'everything'.Taking it to its logical conclusion in any endeavour you'd do 'less and less' until you had 'everything' left... but of course you'd actually have 'nothing' !
The appropriate amount of 'nothing' is very useful because it keeps 'things' separated and perceptible.
'Things' assembled without 'nothing' between them to give them order would be seen as a single 'thing' that'd be quite different to understand than if it had had some 'nothing' to help...
'Nothing' on its own is just 'nothing'.
'Nothing' needs 'things' just as much as 'things' need 'nothing'...
'Things' and 'nothing' go hand-in-hand - they need each other, like many 'opposites', e.g. like the two sides of a coin that can't exist without each other.
When you learn to pencil-sketch you are usually told to draw the space around things, not the things themselves; it's the space (nothing) that gives the world form - however it's the things that mould the space (nothing) - a proper symbiotic relationship...
The clue is in the English words thing and nothing...In passing, remember:
Experts learn more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
Generalists learn less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything.
Hopefully most of us are somewhere in the middle...
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That was an enjoyable read tig.
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Often missed about this kind of conceptual art is that it does exactly what is occurring here. It usually outrageous someone, and that outrage engages them.
Dadaist art was mentioned above. The Dada movement began as a reaction to the first world war essentially. The rebellious use of abstract or anti art in all visual and performance art was protest, and caused reaction, just as was intended.
So perhaps the "silent" piece is a statement about a world in which you can purchase white noise headphones to block out the constant din.
No matter, the artist has succeeded in engaging us. -
Those that can...do.
Those that can't...
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[flash=425,344:1zwemoqs]http://www.youtube.com/v/XAsGdoPRY4s[/flash:1zwemoqs]
[flash=425,344:1zwemoqs]http://www.youtube.com/v/XTOXo-FeOsc[/flash:1zwemoqs]
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As a mother of four, I think that silence is the sweetest thing I've ever heard!
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@tig said:
'Things' and 'nothing' go hand-in-hand - they need each other, like many 'opposites', e.g. like the two sides of a coin that can't exist without each other.
Just got an idea: suppose we have coins that are hemispheres? The one side and its infinite opposite sides! The head and its infinite tails! Just joking.
@tig said:
When you learn to pencil-sketch you are usually told to draw the space around things, not the things themselves; it's the space (nothing) that gives the world form...
On a more serious note, I like this part. One of our teachers used to say, "When you draw a line, you are dividing space. When you draw a bounding box, you are defining inside and outside: both are equally important".
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@ecuadorian said:
Oh, the irony...
In Youtube there are many smart, inspiring, entertaining, or simply informative videos. Some of them have many visits, but most don't. And which are the ones that consistently get hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of visits? Those of girls staring at the camera, talking gibberish, or not saying a word at all. I guess the entire world has gone not only da-da, but also ga-ga.
1000% agreed
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