aesthetics of silence

Anna Stein Ankerstjerne, curator and art communicator Aesthetics of Silence, paper, 2014 http://dk.linkedin.com/in/annasteinankerstjerne/en

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Aesthetics of Silence

Introduction

We all know the sound of silence. Sometimes we even urge one another to listen to it -‐ as if it was a rare

anomaly to the norm of a world full of noise. How come we can listen to silence when it is silent?! Indeed;

how can we even speak of ‘sounds of silence’ when silence by definition is something that we cannot hear?

Why would we have invented the word ‘silence’ if silence did not exist?

This enigma opens a brief survey on the aesthetics of silence. It points at the impossibility of silence and

the thesis that silence is no less audible or soundless than other vibrations that the human ear can hear.

The world is full of sounds so why not explore the possibility that silence is one of them.

With the American composer and artist, John Cage (1912-‐92), it is possible to speak, not only of sounds of

silence, but also of music of silence. What the ‘Cagean’ aesthetics of silence will show is, that silence isn’t

silent at all, and that aesthetics of silence not only involves audible phenomena but a much broader

intermedial field.

The sound of silence

“Sound is by definition vibrations that human beings can hear.”1 Does this not make silence vibrations that

human beings cannot hear? The dictionary has one answer: Silence is “the lack of audible sound”,2 John

Cage has another: “There is no such thing as silence.”3

1 Sterne, Jonathan. (2003) The audible past. London: Duke University Press. Cited in Vandsoe, Anette. (2011)“Listening to the world: Sound, media and intermediality in contemporary sound art”, vol. 1, no. 1, p.3. 2 Dictionary definition. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/silence; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence 3 Cage, John. (1958) “Experimental Music”, in idem. (1961) Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, p.8


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The second suggestion by the dictionary is that silence also means the “absence of communication.”4 This

definition makes the puzzle no less interesting because if Cage is right, that silence is not silent at all, then

the silent that is actually not silent, necessarily also communicates something.

The dictionary operates with the narrow logic that silence is the lack of sounds and therefore also lacks

speech and communication. This is a linguistic logic that presupposes that sounds communicate and silence

is incommunicable. Two silent psychic systems (my thoughts and your thoughts) naturally cannot

communicate with each other (unless one believes in telepathy) and so we must speak to each other as

social systems in order to communicate to each other.5 In regard to linguistics, this logic makes silence “the

furthest extension of that reluctance to communicate,” and in regard to art; “that ambivalence about

making contact with the audience which is a leading motif in modern art.”6

For John Cage, silence is quite the opposite and in fact “inescapably, a form of speech.”7 Silence involves

the possibility of all kinds of interesting sounds to appear. In this logic, the dualistic relationship between

sound and silence that operates within the realm of linguistic system thinking has collapsed and become

part of the same continuum. In the Cagean logic, silence is also “pregnant with sounds.”8

4’33

The epitome of the Cagean logic of silence is his famous 4’33. The piece consists of 4’33 minutes and

seconds of silence, composed by chance methods, in tree acts. 4’33 was first performed on August 29th, in

1952, by pianist, David Tudor, at Woodstock, N.Y.. Tudor announced the beginnings of movements by

closing the keyboard lid and the endings by opening it while paying careful attention to the time using a

stop watch. 9 The piece turned out anything but silent: All kinds of ambient sounds filled up the concert

hall; the wind and the raindrops on the tin roof, and the audience making “all kinds of interesting sounds as

they talked or walked out.”10 In a letter Cage explained that “the piece is not actually silent…it is full of

4 Dictionary definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence 5 i.e. Niklas Luhan’s system theory. (1984) Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. English translation (1995). Social Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press 6 Both citations: Sontag, Susan. (1967) “The Aesthetics of Silence”, in idem. (1994) Styles of Radical Will. London: Vintage, stanza II 7 With the words of Susan Sontag. Ibid, stanza IV 8 Cage, John. “Lecture on Something”, in idem. Silence, op. cit., p. 128 9 The duration 4’33 is the rather random result of shuffling a home-‐made deck of cards, the same way that the length of the three movements (30, 2’23, 1’40-‐4’33) is produced by chance, and indicated in the score by Roman numbers and Tacit (silence): I TACET , II TACET , III TACET ”. i.e. Silverman, Kenneth. (2010) Begin Again: a biography of John Cage. New York & Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited, describes 4’33 on p. 118 10 Silverman, Kenneth. Op. cit., p. 118


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sounds, but sounds which I did not think of beforehand.”11 That 4’33 is also known as ‘the silent piece’ or

the ‘Silent Sonata’ can therefore be seen as mischaracterizations. 12

4’33 had been an ongoing idea of Cage’s, prompted by a series of events and discoveries that eventually led

to the recognition of the apriority of sounds. There is always something to hear: “In fact, try as we may to

make a silence, we cannot.... Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death,”

Cage wrote. 13 An important impetus that made the impossibility of silence manifest for Cage was his visit to

an anechoic (soundless) chamber at Harvard University; a room that absorbs and blocks all sounds so as to

approach absolute silence. In this silent room Cage heard two sounds, one low and one high, and was given

the explanation, by the engineer in charge, that the high one was his nervous system in operation and the

low one his blood in circulation.14 Even our bodies produce sounds constantly, he realized: “True silence is

virtually unknown.”15

Another event that compelled Cage to compose 4’33 was the encounter with his friend and visual artist

Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings in 1951: White canvases coated with ordinary white house paint

applied with a roller and nothing else: “Oh yes, I must; otherwise I’m lagging, otherwise music is lagging,”

he said.16 With the White Paintings Cage discovered that not only silence is pregnant with sounds, but that

there is “no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something

to hear.”17 In his “Lecture on Something” he ponders on the paradox, that nothing is always filled with

something and “that out of that nothing a-‐rises the next something.”18

In 1948 Cage first mentioned that he wanted “to compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and seIl it to the

Muzak Co. It will be 3 or 4.5 minutes long-‐ these being the standard lengths of 'canned' music, and its title

will be 'Silent Prayer'.”19 The Silent Prayer-‐plan was never carried out, but as composer, Kyle Gann, notes is

it an intriguing coincidence that Cage first mentioned Silent Prayer in 1948 just at the time when the public

uproar against Muzak began to take shape and that he finished 4’33 in 1952 just when the courts were

ruling that forced listening didn’t violate the First Amendment. Perhaps Cage wanted to sell his Silent

Prayer to Muzak in order to have it programmed on their stations so that listeners could have some

11 In a letter to Helen Wolff (1954). Silverman, Kenneth. Op. cit., p. 119 12 The American composer, Kyle Gann, suggests “Unintended Noise Sonata” instead, in idem. (2010) No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 163 13 Cage, John. “Experimental Music”, in idem. Silence, op. cit., p. 8 14 Gann, Kyle. Op. cit., p.162 15 Ibid., p. 164 16 Silverman, Kenneth. Op. cit., p. 118 17 Cage, John. “Experimental Music”, Loc. cit.. 18 Cage, John. ”Lecture on Something”, in idem. Silence, op. cit., p. 135 19 Gann, Kyle. Op. cit., pp.127-‐28


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minutes of break from the forced listening of Muzak – “for the comfort of the silent types” as suggested in

an article Cage had saved from the New York Post.20 That Muzak was meant to distract attention21 is

something that turns the sound-‐silence duality upside down, and gives silence the privileged potential of

attention. In a gesture of producing a silent piece for Muzak Co., as in the mere concept or idea of doing

so, Cage would emphasize this.

In 4’33, the sounds of silence are the focus of attention which is probably why David Tudor has called it

“one of the most intense listening experiences you can have.”22

The aesthetics of silence

The point with 4’33 is that there is no such thing as silence. As soon as one focus the attention, the

possibility of hearing silence becomes the impossibility, since any silence will contain sounds (if not

externally, then internally produced as Cage discovered in the anechoic chamber). When we listen, we will

always hear something, even though there is nothing to hear. In that sense, silence can never really be

grasped but slips through our fingers, or ears, like shadows or echoes destroyed by the sounds that

inevitably companions the listening act. What a paradox, considering that art is a technique for focusing

attention.23

In “The Aesthetics of Silence” the American writer and filmmaker, Susan Sontag, makes the point that

silence never ceases to imply its opposite and to demand on its presence. Just as there can’t be “up”

without “down” or “left” without “right”, she says, so one must acknowledge a surrounding environment of

sound or language in order to recognize silence. This is the dialectical aspect of how we understand and

comprehend silence. This is how our perception functions and this is why we think that silence is the

opposite of sound. For Sontag this means that “the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce

something dialectical.”24 What is at stake, however, in the Cagean logic of silence is not so much a

20 Ibid., p. 131 21 According to one of the conductors of Muzak, Richard Cardinell’s description: "Factors that distract attention-‐change of tempo, loud brasses, vocals-‐are eliminated. Orchestras of strings and woodwinds predominate, the tones blending with the surroundings as do proper colors in a room. The worker should be no more aware of the music than of good lighting. The rhythms, reaching him subconsciously, create a feeling of well-‐being and eliminate strain." Ibid., p. 130 22 Silverman, Kenneth. Op. cit., p. 118 23 Sontag, Susan. Op. cit., stanza VII 24 Ibid., stanza IV


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dialectical relation as a bidirectional one that places silence within the continuum of our sonic world. As

mentioned: Silence remains a form of speech.

According to Sontag we understand silence as speech’s dialectical opposite because “speech provokes

further speech. But speech can silence too. This indeed is how it must be; without the polarity of silence,

the whole system of language would fail.”25 In this logic, language becomes an event and something that

takes place. Silence then is something that comes before and after the linguistic event; both the

precondition of speech and the result or aim of speech. In other words, the surrogates to language. In

contrast to this logic, the Cagean one sees silence as the main event and language as the surrogates to

silence. In his “Lecture on Nothing” Cage says: "What we require is silence; but what silence requires is that

I go on talking."26 In this sense, silence becomes a productive space for the invention of something.

In the foreword to his “Lecture on Something”, Cage says that ”it may be noted that the empty spaces…are

representatives of silences that were part of the Lecture.”27 Here he makes the reader notice that the

silences are as important as the written words. (In fact he has left several pages in the lecture completely

blank; pp. 137, 141-‐42). Furthermore he states: “This is a talk about something and naturally also a talk

about nothing. About how something and nothing are not opposed to each other but need each other to

keep on going…Every something is an echo of nothing.”28

Cage’s “Empty words” (1974), like his “Lecture on Nothing”, are both titles that play with and put forward

the paradox of the Cagean aesthetics of silence: Words can never be empty, and a lecture on nothing is

evidently a lecture on something. “I have nothing to say and I’m saying it and that is poetry,” Cage says in

that very lecture.29 In much the same way – ‘a concert’ of silence isn’t devoid of sound.

The reception of silence

In her theory of silence, Sontag explains that art that works with the aesthetics of silence in the modernistic

paradigm often is understood as unintelligible, invisible and inaudible which frustrates the audience.30

Indeed it was a frustrated audience that walked out of the Maverick Concert Hall in 1952. Sontag claims

25 Ibid., stanza XIII 26 Cage, John. “Lecture on Nothing”, in idem. Silence, op. cit., p. 109 27 Cage, John. “Lecture on Something”, in idem. Silence, op. cit., p. 128 28 Ibid., p. 131 29 Cage, John. ”Lecture on Nothing”, in idem. Silence, op. cit., p. 109 30 Sontag, Susan. Op. cit., stanza II


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that silence in art has come to signify the missing or ruptured dialogue that such art produces. To this point

of view she obviously disagrees and says (in a very Cagean manner), that “silence can’t exist in a literal

sense as the experience of an audience.” The audience will always have a response, is her point, and she

goes on (in an even more Cagean way of speaking)”there can be no such thing as having no response at

all.”31 In 4’33 nothing happens, the composer goes on stage and does nothing. But (to recall Cage’s Lectures

on Something and Nothing) it is out of this nothingness that something, poetry, appears.

If we turn to German literary reception theory and Wolfgang Iser, we might find an answer as to why

silence is so hard to comprehend for an audience. In his “Appelstruktur der Texte” he explains how a

textual Leerstelle or empty place activates the recipient, not by telling us something but by leaving

something untold -‐ a gap in the narration for the recipient to fill out.32 Sontag has a similar point when she

says that “silence opens up an array of possibilities for interpreting that silence, for imputing speech to it…

Silence keep things “open”.”33 According to Iser, the balance of Leerstellen is crucial for the outcome and

our experience of the work. Too few will bore us and too many will confuse and distress us. This -‐ the

overload of Leerstellen -‐ is most likely what happened on the opening night of 4’33 in 1952 and probably

also what can made Sontag comment that silence in modern art is a ruptured dialogue. For Iser, meaning

occurs between the work and the recipient as a dialogue.

In regard to Cage and his composing methods, it is intriguing to notice how hard it is to place him one-‐

sidedly in the ‘author-‐position’ (on the side of the work instead of the recipient). “I write in such a way as to

hear something that I have not yet heard. Therefore, I’m in the position that the listener is in, and the critic

is in with respect to my music”, he says.34 In other words is Cage also the recipient of his own work. When

David Tudor performed 4’33 the ambient sounds that made up the work could not have been foreseen by

Cage. However, According to Professor James Pritchett, the big difference between any one listener in the

crowd and John Cage is the knowledge possessed by the composer of how the structuring of silence works

– a knowledge that he regards as highly important in order to fully understand the silence that is at work in

4’33. And perhaps also a knowledge that doesn’t give Cage the same amount of Leerstellen to get rid off as

the rest of the recipients in the audience. This doesn’t make him less of a listener, but perhaps just a more

privileged one.

31 Ibid., stanza IV 32 Iser, Wolfgang. (1974) “Die Appelstruktur der Texte – Unbestimmtheit als Wirkungsbedingung literarischer Prosa”, in Rainer Warning. (1975) Rezeptionsästhetik. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Danish translation (1996) “Tekstens appelstruktur”, in Olsen, Michel and Kelstrup, Gunver (eds.) Værk og læser. Holstebro: Borgens Forlag, pp. 102-‐28 33 Sontag, Susan. Op. cit., stanza XIII 34 In an interview with composer, William Duckworth. (1995) Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers. New York: Schirmer Books., p 27


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The Danish composer, Karl Aage Rasmussen, says something else: ”Perceived as is intended, the silent piece

4’33 transforms the unsuspected sounds of silence into art and makes us all a trinity of composer, musician

and listener.”35 Of course, one might object, Rasmussen is in fact a composer himself and therefore already

possesses a composer’s dispositions. In that case, he is not an ideal source for his claim.

Reactions to silence

“I knew it would be taken as a joke and a renunciation of work” Cage says about the reactions to 4’33.36 For

how do we handle “an art without a work”!?37

In a lecture he held at Black Mountain College, Cage expressed that silence was as important as sounds in

music because musical structure is based on duration, that is, on silence: ”Of the four characteristics of the

material of music, duration, that is time length, is the most fundamental. Silence cannot be heard in terms

of pitch or harmony: it is heard in terms of time length.”38 In this view silence exists through the time

structures that music is built upon and that can contain either sound or silence.39 In “Lecture on Nothing”

Cage also says that “This space of time is organized. We need not fear these silences, we may love them.”40

When one looks at the structure in the “Lecture on Nothing”, it is obvious how it is built on silences (open

spaces and Leerstellen where anything can happen, also nothing). “Now begins the third unit of the second

part…”etc., it consistently reminds us.41 The point is that composition structures understood as time

lengths don’t rely on sounds alone, but can exist with sounds or without sounds. This is a realization about

time structures that makes the silences just as interesting as the sounds.

To answer his own question of how we in an audience deal with the ‘silent piece’, 4’33, Pritchett proposes

that we engage in it, in one of two ways. Either we pay attention to the acoustic quality of the ambient

sounds we hear – this is treating the piece as an aesthetic object. Or we start to interpret it to search for

meaning – this is a hermeneutical approach and oevre that makes us wonder, for instance, what the

35 (my own translation) Ramussen, Karl Aage. (2012) Tilfældighedernes Spil: veje til John Cage. Gylling, Dk: Gyldendal, p. 81 36 Ibid., p. 13 37 in Duckworth, William: op. cit., p. 13 38 Cage, John. Lecture: “Defense of Satie”, cited in Pritchett, James. (2009) “What silence taught John Cage: The story of 4’33”, in exh. catalogue John Cage and Experimental Art: The Anarchy of Silence, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. (np) http://www.rosewhitemusic.com/cage/texts/WhatSilenceTaughtCage.html; see also Cage, John: “Erik Satie”, in idem. Silence, op. cit., p. 80 39 Pritchett, James., op. cit. 40 Cage, John. “Lecture on Nothing”, in idem. Silence, op. cit., pp. 109-‐10 (The lecture was first presented at the Artists’ Club in New York City) 41 Ibid..


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political or philosophical meaning is of it, is all about.42 According to Pritchett both approaches are

problematic since the first one trivializes the Cagean silence and has nothing to do with how Cage thought

of and used silence as a composition method. The second approach is even worse, he thinks, because

looking for a deeper meaning behind the piece distances us from the direct experience of it and brings us

into the world of ideas and stories. Pritchett places the root of the problem in the discrepancy between the

composer (Cage) and listener’s relation to silence, as said. Cage discovered silence as a structuring principle

and found out that within time structures all kinds of sounds can occur and be combined, whereas we in

the audience only hear the result of that discovery: “We are left with the surface phenomena of silence,

and we fumble around for ways to make the piece “work” for us”, Pritchett regrets, and finds it problematic

that Cage’s understanding and experience with silence cannot be directly communicated through a piece of

music.43 This is maybe what also caused the composer and musicologist, William Brooks, to comment on

the idea of a silent piece, as it was first presented by Cage in “A Composer’s Confessions” as Silent Prayer,

that the listener of such a piece would be distracted, that his or her experience would be imperfect and

that it might not at all convey Cage’s intentions with it.44 This lacking knowledge of the listener might

furthermore explain the audience’s experience of 4’33 as the incomprehendible and inaudible kind of

silence that Sontag ascribes to the modern art era when, in fact, it should not have been experienced as

such at all. Perhaps Pritchett’s point can also explain why Cage in an interview with composer, William

Duckworth, would repeat: “I doubt whether many people understand it yet.”45

There is no correct answer to this discussion but perhaps it isn’t completely incorrect to say that what each

one of us make of 4’33 is as varied as the sounds of the piece itself. Even though, in Pritchett’s opinion, the

listener lacks the composer’s musicological knowledge to enjoy 4’33 the proper way, Cage might have it

differently. For Cage, sounds were merely sounds and he wanted them -‐ all of them – to be appreciated as

such: “I love sounds just as they are…and I have no need for them to be more than what they are. I don’t

want them to be psychological, I don’t want a sound to pretend that it’s a bucket, or that it is President or

that it’s in love with another sounds [Cage is laughing] I just want it to be a sound.” 46 He cites the

philosopher, Immanuel Kant, for saying that there are two things that don’t have to mean anything; one is

music and the other is laughter.47

Kyle Gann explains this simple view on the sonic world with the simplicity of the well known Haiku poem

42 Pritchett, James., op. cit. 43 Ibid.. 44 Cited in Gann, Kyle., op. cit., p. 127 45 Duckworth, William., op. cit., p. 13 46 “John Cage about silence” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y 47 Loc. cit..


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The old pond,

A frog jumps in:

Plop

, and says: “Substitute for the “plop” of that frog with any sound that one might hear during 4’33 – the rain

pattering on the roof of the Maverick Concert Hall, for instance”, and the Cagean understanding of silence

and sounds might start to emerge.48 In this light, Pritchett obviously has a point when he renounces a

hermeneutical reaction. However, that sounds are just sounds and should be listened to as such, according

to Cage, suggests that Cage, likely, would disagree with Pritchett when he says that the appreciation of

silence takes a composer’s knowledge of how time structures work. (Like Cage’s “Empty Words” and

“Lecture on Nothing”, a visual equivalent that comes into mind is Roy Lichtensteins painted Brushstroke

(1965), which is exactly what the title wants to emphasize that it is; a brushstroke and not a shooting star, a

President, or something else).

***

Susan Sontag speaks of two kinds of silence, one that is loud, apocalyptic, notorious and ecstatic, carried

out by dadaists and futurists for instance, and one that is soft and cautious. Belonging to the last type she

places John Cage’s silence. This is a type of silence that is open minded, not only to different sounds and

noises but also to the listener’s perception and experience of it, as suggested with Iser above. This kind of

cautious silence goes hand in hand with what Cage eventually came to think that function of music should

fulfill: “To sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences,” in correspondence

with his devotion to Zen.49Cage’s fascination with Zen, and its influence on his aesthetics, is another story.

However, it is worth noticing here that Zen is about similarities that are way different from Western

dualistic thought. This means, from a Zen point of view, that there is no difference between “playing a note

and not playing a note, [between] a chord on the piano and a cough from an audience member behind you

and the patter of rain on the Maverick Concert Hall roof”.50 Those sounds are the same, in Zen

48 Gann, Kyle. Op. cit., p. 141 49 Ibid., pp. 4 and 12 50 Gann, Kyle., op. cit., p. 144


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understanding, and when you get this, Kyle Gann writes, you might be able to get 4’33 as more than a hoax,

a joke, or a nihilistic act of dada.51

Whether one thinks about 4’33 as music or not, and whether one is offended by it or reacts in one of the

two ways that Pritchett suggests (with either aesthetical or hermeneutical procedures), or in a completely

other way, one thing can be said: That Cage re-‐defined silence as something far more nuanced than the

simple, no-‐sound dictionary definition. The Cagean silence is intriguing and compelling exactly because it

escapes definition. As he says: “People still ask for definitions, but it’s quite clear now that nothing can be

defined. Let alone art, its purpose etc. We’re not even sure of carrots.”52

Silence and the senses

In The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture of the Senses the Finnish architects, Juhani Pallasmaa, regards the cave-‐

like, muddy and “haptical”, architecture of Antoni Gaudi, as more tactile and sensuous than transparent,

“optical”, glass architecture of Mies van der Rohe.53 This points at the opinion that what sounds the most,

smells the most, etc. is culturally viewed as activating the more senses. This cultural habit of thinking about

the senses is exactly what Cage proves wrong. Glass architecture, blank canvases and silent music are no

less sensuous than loud sounds, lots of paint (abstract expressionism) and muddy architecture. In other

(Mies van der Rohe’s) words: Less is more.

Cage explicitly relates his understanding of silence to the material properties of glass.54 In the architecture

of van der Rohe, the glass walls opens up the building’s structure to the environment, and makes outside

and inside boarders dissolve.55 This is a structuring principle that is compatible to Cage’s music and 4’33

where the (un)intended sounds of the rain and the audience become part of the composition.

That Cage saw Richard Lippold’s wired sculptures as well as Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her

Bachelors, Even or (The Large Glass) (1915-‐23) in a similar way, shows that a Cagean aesthetics of silence

51 Loc. cit.. 52 Cage, John. “Diary: How to improve the world (you will only make matters worse) 1965”, in idem. (1963) A year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings by John Cage. London: Calder and Boyars, p. 9 53 Pallasmaa, Juhani. (2005)The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture of the Senses. Chichester: Wiley Academic 54 Cage, John.”Experimental Music”, in idem. Silence, op. cit., p. 8 55 Joseph, Branden W.. (2011) “John Cage and the Architecture of Silence”, in Robinson, Julia (ed.) John Cage. London: MIT Press, p. 79.


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does not limit itself to the sphere of the audible.56 To The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even Cage

has said that “the thing I like so much is that I can focus my attention wherever I wish. It helps me to blur

the distinction between art and life and produces a kind of silence in the work itself. There is nothing in it

that requires me to look in one place or another or, in fact, requires me to look at all. I can look through it

to the world beyond.”57 In Cage’s own work, the ‘architecture of silence’ is evident in his Variations (I and II)

which express his ideas of transparent structure and spatial differentiation. The structures literally take

form of transparencies. In Variations II (1961), the structure consists of 6 separate transparencies, each of

which has been printed with a separate line, randomly arrayed on top of the points, and the acoustic

identity of a sound hence determined by measuring the distances from a point to each of the different

lines.58

Cage and Intermediality

To put Cage’s work in a labeled box is difficult to do. He made music and lectures and writings but never

abided to the conventions of the genre he engaged in. Instead, he invented new principles and expanded

the narrow definition of silence. For Cage, no hierarchy of sounds existed and he saw no difference in

sounds coming from musical instruments and from other phenomena in the world. The sounds of traffic

were as good as Beethoven to him (whom’s sounds he wasn’t, actually, fond of anyway), and he collected

sounds like he collected mushrooms – always enjoyed when encountering a new sort. 59

Cage composed music and writings in an analogous way and there is an obvious parallel between his music

and its structural alteration of sound and silence to his written ones. “Lecture on Nothing” is, for instance,

a composed talk, as Cage himself says, “for I am making it just like I make a piece of music.”60 Professor

Deborah Weagel writes: “Cage believed that something and nothing, words and silence, music and rests

could compatibly coexist and mutually benefit each other, and that nothing, silence, and rests were of

equal value to, if not more important than something, words, and music.”61

56 See appendix A 57 Cited in ibid., p. 82 58 To the parameters of frequency, amplitude, timbre, duration, time of occurrence and number of sounds. Ibid., pp. 84-‐85 59 Silverman, Kenneth. Op. cit., p. 122 60 Cage, John. “Lecture on Nothing”, in idem., op. cit., p. 110 61 Cited in Weagel, Deborah. (2010) Words and Music: Camus, Beckett, Cage, Gould. American University studies XX, Fine arts, vol. 38. New York, Berlin, et al.; Peter Lang., p 79


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Structural continuities such as these are what the artist and writer, Dick Higgins, has termed “intermedia”

(in the 1965 essay “Something Else Newsletter”) in which “continuity rather than categorization is the

hallmark.”62 Intermedia works occur between media and perceptual categories which is why the term is

applicable to the art of John Cage. It doesn’t take long to realize the visual character of Cage’s musical

works and writings. A different example (used by Dick Higgens’ daughter, Hannah Higgins) relevant in this

context is poet and composer, Jackson Mac Low’s, A Notated Vocabulary for Eve Rosenthal (1978).63 It

consists of text and music fragments, and is a graphic mode of presentation that resembles the Cagean one

in its “opening up of the space” of the written page in all directions. “One thinks of a verbal/musical

rendition of leaves caught in the wind,” miss Higgins describes.64 A Notated Vocabulary for Eve Rosenthal

becomes a place where visual, literary and musical structures overlap -‐ as intermedia -‐ and invites the

viewer into an alternative visual logic that isn’t left-‐to-‐right in much the same way that Cage invites the

listener into an alternative auditory logic that isn’t based on twelve tone harmony or silence as the absence

of sound.

Cage’s performance or reading, “Indeterminacy” (1958 et. al.), is a 30 (expanded later to 90) minute

delivery of short stories that each last exactly one minute to tell. This time limit makes the oral delivery

vary; long stories are told rapidly and the other way around. 65 This is another example of Cage’s composed

talks, which his Lectures on Nothing and Something also resembles. That the expanded version of

“Indeterminacy” was accompanied by David Tudor playing the piano only pushes the work further into the

Cage-‐cleft of indeterminality -‐ in regard to a labeled definition of genre -‐ and intermediality.

***

Like most people, Cage also associated silence with the color white. In Rauschenberg’s White Paintings he

was fascinated that the canvases were never empty but hypersensitive to their surrounding spatial context.

In the 1961 article "On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work" Cage states: "The white paintings were

airports for the lights, shadows, and particles."66 Cage saw an emptiness in Rauschenberg’s paintings, in

62Cited in Higgins, Hannah. (2002) “Intermedial Perception or Fluxing Across the Sensory”, in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into Media Technologies, vol. 8, no. 59., p. 59. 63 See appendix B 64 Ibid., p. 60 65 Silverman, Kenneth. Op. cit., p. 161 66 Cage, John. “On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and his Work”, in idem., op. cit., p. 102


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which the shadow of the viewers, and the dust and particles that moved around in the room could become

part and parcel of the painting -‐ just as unintended sounds would become part of 4'33.67

In a letter, Rauschenberg describes his paintings with the words “organic silence” and goes on with “the

plastic fullness of nothing”68– a description that resembles Susan Sontag’s ‘cautious’ type of silence that, as

mentioned, is not an uproar but an openness that leaves an empty space for something else to arrive. Like

Cage’s silence, the White Paintings weren’t empty at all, in Cage’s words they were ‘airports’ for ephemeral

performances of the movements around them. Again, the parallel to 4’33 is not hard to see. If Cage created

(in his own words) “art without a work”, Rauschenberg created pictures without pictures.69

Rauschenberg wanted to liberate his art from the shackles of imagery. In this quest he quickly became

disillusioned with his White Paintings and decided to obliterate something great, something that existed

independently of himself.70 This resulted in the creation (through erasure) of the Erased de Kooning

Drawing (1953):71 Rauschenberg spend one month erasing another artist’s (Willem de Koonig) drawing. In

the end he created a work that hinges on the interrelatedness of destruction and creation—Jasper Johns

famously referred to Rauschenberg’s gesture as “additive subtraction.”72 As with the medieval palimpsest,

the thing erased lingers—even if it has no physical presence, art historian Amelia Groom comments.73 In

deleting the older artist’s marks, Rauschenberg created a new icon, but one that was completely

dependent on what was there before – as indicated by the title. With the words of Susan Sontag, as long as

a human eye is looking, “there is always something to see. To look at something which is “empty” is still to

be looking, still to be seeing something—if only the ghosts of one’s expectations.” Or with the words of

Groom: “To erase an image is always to make another image.”74

Cage’s “Empty Words” is an overnight event where a text drawn from the Journals of the 1800-‐century

poet and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, is gradually deconstructed, verbally, as the 12 hour

performance is carried out. It consists of four parts: Part 1 omits sentences, part 2 omits phrases, part 3

omits words, and part 4 omits syllables, leaving nothing but “a virtual lullaby of letters and sounds”75 in its

67 Gann, Kyle., op. cit., p. 158 68 Ibid., p. 157 69Karl Aage Rasmussen writes in his newly published book on John Cage. Op. cit., p. 17 70 Groom, Amelia. (2012) “There’s Nothing to See Here: Erasing the Monochrome”e-‐flux journal, vol 37, np http://www.e-‐flux.com/journal/there%E2%80%99s-‐nothing-‐to-‐see-‐here-‐erasing-‐the-‐monochrome/ 71 See appendix C 72 Loc. cit.. 73 Loc. cit.. 74 Loc. cit.. 75 ”Empty Words” is described in Silverman, Kenneth. Op. cit. in the chapter “Empty Words”, pp. 244-‐74


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lack of syntax. In other words, an act of erasure similar to Rauschenberg’s Erased de Koonig Drawing where

another artist’s work is gradually deconstructed.

Conclusion

Recently, a famous painting has been undergoing auto-‐erasure.76 Visual artist Kazimir Malevich’s black

monochrome, the Black Square (1915) is cracking up after a century.77 According to Malevich, the Black

Square resembled “the embryo of all possibilities”78 and now, it is hard not to smile at the irony when

(Groom with a strain of humor remarks), “its solid opaque surface is giving way, reluctantly opening up to

what x-‐rays confirm are other geometric shapes behind it. The twentieth century’s most remembered

radical gesture against the image is revealing the images it has always contained within itself.”79

Every time an artist removes something, something else emerges. There is no such thing as silence and

there is no such thing as an empty space. The French composer, Erik Satie, whom Cage admired, once

noted, that music was just dots on paper. Cage discovered that when he took a white piece of paper into

his hands, it already had music on it.80 Even a monochrome painting contains images within it, even when

an image is erased the image still lingers, and even when music is supposedly silent it is still full of sounds; a

“musical mobile”, in Karl Aage Rasmussen’s words.81 But that is the point. Thas is what the Cagean

aesthetics of silence is all about.

This is also why silence is not lacking something, as suggested by the definition in the introduction. Silence

is not an absence or the lack of, or the unwillingness, to communicate. In fact, it contains an openness that,

contrarily, can be taken as an invitation to communication. What Cage did, was to redefine silence as

something rather than nothing. This is a redefinition that converts the rhetoric of silence from being

something that follows speech or a music piece into becoming the main focus of attention so that

interruptions of the silence become the main thing to be heard. Deborah Weagel remarks that Cage

76 Loc. cit.. 77 See appendix D 78 Loc. cit.. 79 Loc. cit.. 80 Rasmussen, Karl Aage. Op. cit., p. 65 81 Ibid., p. 74


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“brought silence, or unintended sounds, out of the background and put them into the foreground.”82

Silence is also no less sensuous than all kinds of other, more spectacular, phenomena. It only sits, so to

speak, in an intermedial position; a Leerstelle that isn’t ‘leer’ at all, but a productive space for all kinds of

interesting things to appear. To read Cage, Rasmussen says, often gives one the feeling of being very close

to meaning -‐ without ever really getting there.83 How boring would it be if everything could be understood

by looking it up in the dictionary!?

82 Weagel, Deborah. Op. cit. 83 Rasmussen, Karl Aage. Op. cit., p. 102


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Litterature

Cage, John. “Diary: How to improve the world (you will only make matters worse) 1965”, in idem. (1963) A

year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings by John Cage. London: Calder and Boyars

Cage, John: “Erik Satie”, in idem. (1961) Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage. Middletown,

Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press

Cage, John. (1958) “Experimental Music”, in idem. (1961) Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage.

Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press

Cage, John. “Lecture on Nothing”, in idem. (1961) Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage. Middletown,

Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press

Cage, John. “Lecture on Something”, in idem. (1961) Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage.

Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press

Cage, John. “On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and his Work”, in idem. (1961) Silence: Lectures and Writings

by John Cage. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press

Duckworth, William. (1995) Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and

Five Generations of American Experimental Composers. New York: Schirmer Books

Gann, Kyle. (2010) No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33. New Haven: Yale University Press

Groom, Amelia. (2012) “There’s Nothing to See Here: Erasing the Monochrome”e-‐flux journal, vol 37

http://www.e-‐flux.com/journal/there%E2%80%99s-‐nothing-‐to-‐see-‐here-‐erasing-‐the-‐monochrome /

Higgins, Hannah. (2002) “Intermedial Perception or Fluxing Across the Sensory”, in Convergence: The

International Journal of Research into Media Technologies, vol. 8, no. 59

Iser, Wolfgang. (1974) “Die Appelstruktur der Texte – Unbestimmtheit als Wirkungsbedingung literarischer

Prosa”, in Rainer Warning. (1975) Rezeptionsästhetik. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Danish translation

(1996) “Tekstens appelstruktur”, in Olsen, Michel and Kelstrup, Gunver (eds.) Værk og læser. Holstebro:

Borgens Forlag

Joseph, Branden W.. (2011) “John Cage and the Architecture of Silence”, in Robinson, Julia (ed.) John Cage.

London: MIT Press


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Luhan, Niklas system theory. (1984) Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp. English translation (1995). Social Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press

Pallasmaa, Juhani. (2005)The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture of the Senses. Chichester: Wiley Academic

Pritchett, James. (2009) “What silence taught John Cage: The story of 4’33”, in exh. catalogue John Cage

and Experimental Art: The Anarchy of Silence, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona.

http://www.rosewhitemusic.com/cage/texts/WhatSilenceTaughtCage.html

Rasmussen, Karl Aage. (2012) Tilfældighedernes Spil: veje til John Cage. Gylling, Dk: Gyldendal

Silverman, Kenneth. (2010) Begin Again: a biography of John Cage. New York & Toronto: Random House of

Canada Limited

Sontag, Susan. (1967) “The Aesthetics of Silence”, in idem. (1994) Styles of Radical Will. London: Vintage

Sterne, Jonathan. (2003) The audible past. London: Duke University Press.

Vandsoe, Anette. (2011)“Listening to the world: Sound, media and intermediality in contemporary sound

art”, vol. 1, no. 1

Weagel, Deborah. (2010) Words and Music: Camus, Beckett, Cage, Gould. American University studies XX,

Fine arts, vol. 38. New York, Berlin, et al.; Peter Lang

Dictionary. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/silence ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence

“John Cage about silence” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y


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A Duchamp. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-‐23)

Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two glass panels

109 1/4 x 70 x 3 3/8 inches (277.5 x 177.8 x 8.6 cm)

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/54149.html


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B Jackson Mac Low. A Notated Vocabulary for Eve Rosenthal (1978)

(PrtSc-‐shoot in Hannah Higgens text. Op. cit. (http://www.intermediamfa.org/imd501/media/1230921876.pdf))


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C Robert Rauschenberg. Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953)


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D Kazimir Malevich. Black Square (1915)

aesthetics of silence

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