Rebecca Tennenbaum reading responses

I found the article about John Cage to be interesting, primarily due to the nature in which he found a working method. The paragraph on page 48 in which he talks about framing the breadcrumbs and Cage claims he “wants art to slip out of us into the world in which we live” was such a simple and direct way of explaining what his work would become deliberately capturing everyday movements and changes. As a viewer, I can’t help but notice the strength of the formal elements in his work, and they become even more captivating when considering Cage’s position as the maker and the elements of chance he is manipulating.

I also really admire Cage’s work because of his ability to fully lose control. In my personal experience with chance operations, I realized in retrospect that I had actually created situations with even more precise areas of limitations by setting up parameters for my “accidents.” I am now trying to incorporate chance operations with tight decisions, a push-and-pull relationship, so it was enjoyable to reflect on Cage’s work as one of the extreme ends of the push-and-pull.

The second reading provided new insight into authorship through sound. I enjoyed the description of recording returning to the viewer as a new sound altogether, and the concept of “material memory.” The weight of the history of all the thinkers leading up to Emerson, Edison, and the other people discussed provided interesting connections to the possibilities of originality today. I kept thinking about the popularity of electronic music today and how mash-ups of songs are created from combining songs from different periods. Are the songs unique because they come together to create something new, or do the separate contents remain individual? In applying the thinking to art, it seems inevitable that we will always take from the past in order to project into the future. To me, it seems the history always ties itself into even the most “original” idea.