John Cage, an American composer, musician and artist who lived in the 20th century is possibly most famous for his 1952 composition 4’33”. In this composition, Cage invited an audience to watch him sit in front of a piano without playing for four minutes and thirty three seconds.
When I watched a clip of 4’33” on Youtube, like most of his first audience I was baffled because on first thought it was just four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence. After a quick Google search, I learnt that Cage’s intention was to challenge the perception of silence with the idea that “everything we do is music”. This concept made me reflect on my perception of my everyday environment. What is silence? Do we ever get silence, really?
In my normal life, there is sound around me everywhere in conversations, public transport announcements, songs, text message pings, and constant chatter in the background – so my definition of silence would simply be being in a quiet room without talking. But I realise now that even when I’m sitting alone at my desk in my house that is located on a quiet suburban street, there is still sound. When I stop and listen, I can hear the soft whirring of my laptop, the ticking of the clock in the living room, the fridge coming to life in the kitchen, and the distant sounds of traffic roads away. When Cage visited a completely soundproof room at Harvard University, he could still hear noise, one high and one low, which he was informed was his nervous system in operation and his blood in circulation.
Linking to this week’s lectorial topic of noticing, I think this is a skill that will be continually relevant during the rest of this course as well as in my future career as a media practitioner. As a maker of media, I will need to learn to notice and find inspiration all the endless pieces of information around me. Even in something as simple as my morning commute to uni, there is so much meaning surrounding me. In conversations between strangers, in the billboards on the side of the tram, in the colourful shirt that someone is wearing, in the background noise of the daily grind – stories and fascinating little details are everywhere if we just make the effort to notice them.
If Cage can hear sound in a soundless room, then maybe silence really is impossible. So the next time I have to sit though a boring moment, I will remind myself to notice the fact that noise, and meaning is, in fact, everywhere.
