"Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel"

One of Cage's first mature visual artworks was "Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel" created in 1969. Reffering to Marcel Duchamp, an artist who rebelled against all established artistic conventions, helping to shape the anti-art, anti-aesthetic character of the Dada movement. Cage held a very similar devotion to idiosyncratic. and to chance. A very reoccuring key element in alot of Cages works.

The work is composed of two lithographs and a group of what he called plexigrams, silk screen printings on plexiglass panels. Each one of the individual panels consist of bits and pieces of words in all different fonts and sizes and fragmentsof words and individual letters, all which were goverened in chance operations and scattered in placement. meaning they were all chosen randomly with no premeditated thoughts. The colors of font are very minimal and limited in a pallete of shades of gray and black.

When first glancing at the piece it reminds me of the text filled pages of a magazine. With various words popping out some screaming out for attention more than others. The work appears to ve a simple 2 dimensional object having the text crammed in on a face of glass. but actually as you manipulate your viewing point from either side you get a whole different effect. The piece now becomes a 3 dimensional work and even creates a new image of waht you were seeing from straight ahead. All the word s that you were reading in a sequence now have altered. Other various words fragmented have appeared into your eyesightand others have hidden behind other fragments and create a new thought to the work. His intention of creating a 3 dimensional work gives the viewer this expierience and allows a sort of infinite possibilities to view. For instance if a tall man were to walk by and view this piece along side a shorter woman, they would both share an entirely different expierience in viewing. Both could be considered almoist viewing a whole different work in a sense.

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." This quote from Cage i believe relates well to his what may seem very minimal piece. In a way its like theres more than what the eye can see. At what may at first a muddy and distorted image to the eye, could very well become a lovely, poetic and sympathetical pieceof art. Sometimes it just takes a few moment to develop your thoughts and generate similarities to the work and your own personal life. Your reaction may not be immediate but more gradual as you expieriment with your perspective or angle you approach the work.

4'33'' composed by John Cage performed by David Tudor (1952)

This was piece is Cage's favorite yet most controversial works.. Composed in 1952 exactly at the midpoint of his 80-year life of discovery and culminated his exploration indeterminacy. In 1951 Cage was inspired to create a musical composistion from seeing the completely white empty paintings freshly done by his friend and also very famous artists Robert Raushenberg. Cage fully worksadmired these. "I responded Immediately" he said, "not as objects, but as ways of seeing. I've said it before that they are airports for shadows and dust, but you could also say that they are mirrors of the air". "When I saw those i said 'Oh yes, I must; otherwise I'm lagging, otherwise music is lagging" H e felt that Raushenberg's paintings gave him "permission" to proceed with the composistion of the "silent piece".

Although often described as a silent piece, 4'33'' isnt that at all. While there performer may be soundless, you soon become aware of a huge amount of sound, ranging from the mundane to the profound, from the expected to the surprising, from the intimate to the cosmic-nervous giggling,shifting in seats,breathing,air conditioning, a creaking door, passing traffic, an airplane, ringing in your ears, a recaptured memory, Concerts and records standardize our responsies, but no two people will ever hear 4'33'' the same way. This is deeply personal art, which each witness shapes to his or her own reactions to life. Its the ulltimate sing along you could say. The audience and the world at large becomes the performer.

Now alot of Cages work was controversial for whether it was music. Is 4'33'' considered music? I'd say of course it is. Each sound produced has a distinct tone,duration and timbre. As far as the standard architecture of a typical song or structure of any rythym throughout the song well i believe its all determined by the listener. The listener could either be in a hightened, nervous, frantic set of mind durring the piece therefore percieving the rythym as "fast tempoed". On the other hand for a easy going, calm, and comfortable listener the tempo could be translated into a light, melodic, and peaceful tempo. This was John Cage's intention for creating this wonderful work, because the listener becomes the true composer and hears what he/she individually expieriences just by chance. Every set of ears hears a unique and different song song and no two people share the same exact expierience. I would consider it a phsycological music materpiece.

Another step toward this asethetic was taken with Cage's dictum that art and life should no longer be seperate,but one and the same "Art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it" He said that "it is time to turn the enviroment into art" This led to his interpenetration. According to Cage, music could no longer be considered new or "expierimental" unless it incorperated interpenetration . Previously sounds that were outside the composers intentions were considered alien intrusions, or unwelcomed noises. But works that welcome and include sounds outside of the composers and performers intentions are those that include interpenetration. This concept was first introduced by Erik Satie in his musique d'ambelement, or "furniture music" and was later taken up by Muzak. 4'33'' is the ultimate example of interpenetration.

Cage attributed even ecological reference to 4'33''. "We as humans species, have endangered nature. We acted against it, we have rebelled against its existence. So our concern today must be to reconstitute it for what it is. And nature is not a seperation of water from air, or the sky from the earth etc...but a "working together, or a "playing together" of those elements. That is what we call ecology. Music as I conceive it is ecological. You could go further and say that music is ecological. There is just no otherwork out there like 4'33'' that masters the idea of life and art all into one musical translation. It is music that attempts to express nothing and to communicate nothing and yet expresses and communicates everything. Just simply beautiful!

"Water Walk" Composistion (January 1960)

At the time of performing this magnificent piece, John Cage was teaching Expierimental Composistion at New York City's New School and was without a doubt one of the biggest controversial music composers in his time. Hes is greatly known for his philosophies and expierimentations with sound and to me is just a beautiful being with a passion for testing the limitations and possibilities of sound.

When I first viewed this video of Cage performing "Water Walk'', as he went through the long list of "instruments" ranging from a water pitcher, a bathtub, piano,iron pipe, bottle of wine, ice cubes, 5 radios and many more that were going to be used in his composistion, I was at first shocked and kind of doubtful o f what this was going to turn out to sound like and whether this was going to even remotely relate to what i refer to as music. When I think of music i think melody, rythym, tempo, chorus, on key, smooth flowing transistions and a theme. At first I felt that "Water Walks" lacked all of these and was simply just a slob of random noises and disjunctioned sounds lapping eachother for three minutes. But as i viewed it the next few time I slowly began to understand where Cage was coming from. Now just like what i do in a fashion with my progressive/minimal electronic music productions, I mix and tweak parameters of various sounds varying all over from synth high hats, deep soft pads, ambient lifting leads, world drums, grinding syncipated oscillators and various other digitally composed and engineered sounds that mimic such familiar sounds. i.e. cowbell,tapping on a glass bottle, door knock etc., Cage was applying the same basics. Only his is a more primitive technique. I kind of saw his act like the worlds first DJ performance.

Cage remains on a choreographed time with his stopwatch in his piece and initiates sound at no given random time but on a scheduled exact moment that he planned. So no sound initiated is accidental. So to a certain degree there is a element of order and song architecture in his work, its just a very minimal but sufficent use of this key characteristic that defines what music is.
In this work i also noted that the objects he was using were all "found objects" or "readymade" objects or average things that you or I would have been familiar with in those days. This of course immeadiately linked my thoughts to the dada time period in visual art such as Robert Roshenbergs monogram assemblage which was compiled of various found objects including a goat,tire, and a painting.

So, in whole I believe Cage was demonstrating a primitive form of sound mixing and expierimentation and combing his values of conceptual art with sound and just pushing the boundaries of music.This piece soley, greatly influenced the world of music that we hear today. His expierimentation of the simple readymade sounds in this piece are the brilliant pioneering efforts that I believe are taken for granted in music that is so widely popular in all genres of music that we hear today.