Junk art and music.

[twistedtom]

Pandora is calling the Imagine Dragons Dub Step, there is a dub step loop or two, but I would just call them rock. You will know them by the song that is everywhere, “Radioactive”. Do any of you like Dub Step? Skrillex? Spelling? Rob Zombie is on now, they are calling him hard rock, sometimes they call him Industrial, he is coming to Portland.

[Gravity Jim]

Spent a good part of the day at Tomales Bay Oyster Co., grilling sausages, drinking beer and soaking up sun, sea and amazing views.

The TBOC plays music on an outdoor system. I heard some hip-hop with a Tejano flavor and strong Middle Eastern elements in the vocals, and some very hip Steely Danish altered blues with a zydeco accordion. Both completely new sounds for me, and very inspiring. I need to go record shopping.

[twistedtom]

That is an odd mix of music, I have a friend who plays a zydeco blues show on the radio. I admit I do not listen to much of it.

[twistedtom]

Too cool!

[Shooshie]

Surprisingly, I've read that 4'22" (silence) wasn't entirely meant to be conceptual. Cage actually intended it to have some aesthetic purpose. The audience was meant to listen to the sound of the room, the airflow, each other, the few sounds of the musicians changing position, etc. When I learned this, it totally changed the meaning of the work. I thought it was completely a statement that "art can be nothing", which I don't know I agree with. But it seems Cage was not actually trying to make so much of a statement then wanting people to actually listen and appreciate the sound of a concert hall at rest. This actually doesn't make it much different from any normal work of art, just that it's infinitely more subtle, but it's not actually a paradigm shift like we think it's supposed to be. Add to the fact that it had never been done before so it does present some new questions, and I think it completely holds weight as an artistic work.

It's the difference between an artist finding beauty in the subtle texture of a canvas that he'd carefully prepared and displayed for the audience to appreciate, to taping a piece of blank printer paper to a wall with no other intention besides stating that "art can be anything" (a statement which has already been made 1000 times over). Not that conceptual art isn't art, but it's infinitely easier to define and take art seriously when it's intended to have aethetic value.

My father is a professional photographer. Practically all his artistic pieces (non-commercial work) are black & white. I grew up appreciating b&w photos, but one time I had a conversation with him about why he's drawn to non-color photography. His explanation was obvious: when you remove one aspect of something common (in this case color), you can focus on things that you wouldn't normally pay attention to. He loves photographing people in their daily lives, taking away color allows you to focus just a little more on their emotional expression, the form and geometry of the environment and the people, and light and shadows... basically our senses are heightened to all other aspects because we've removed one distraction.

Hearing this, I came to a conclusion: any time a work intends for us see something differently that we wouldn't otherwise, then it has some level of artistic value.

In that sense, 4'22" isn't any different from a b&w photo, it just removes a whole lot more aspects.

I transcribed 4'22" for the soprano saxophone. Funny thing, in the transcription process, it lost nearly 4 minutes, and only came out to 33". The kind of people who go to a sax concert either don't have the patience you might find in a piano audience, or else they simply "get it" faster. In any case, they were thankful and applauded much louder after 33" than after 4'22".

Shoosh

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I never thought of 4:22 as conceptual. I had read his bool "Silence" before experiencing the piece. I did many similar lessons when teaching music for dance at UCLA Santa Barbara.