The Sounds of $ilence
Money for Nothing
Published: 11/3/2021
By: Andrew Neyer
ACT 1
John Cage was an American composer, music theorist, artist, and philosopher. He is recognized as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, and he challenged what was perceived as music and the use of non-musical instruments in his compositions.
One of his most notable performances is his 1952 composition, 4'33". It is an arrangement for any instrument, performed by not playing the instrument for four minutes and 33 seconds. Instead of listening to a performance, the audience becomes the performance. The music is the ambient sounds of the room, coughing, squeeks, and other noises for the duration of the piece. Cage argued that silence is actually "the absence of deliberate sound."
ACT 2
In 2014 the band Vulfpeck released an album, Sleepify. The album was comprised of ten, 30ish-second-long tracks of silence. The track titles are:
Z
Zz
Zzz
Zzzz
Zzzzz
Zzzzzz
Zzzzzzz
Zzzzzzzz
Zzzzzzzzz
Zzzzzzzzzz
The band encouraged their listeners to play Sleepify on loop while they slept. Vulpeck's intent was to used the royalties generated by the streaming of Sleepify to fund a free-admission tour by the same name. The band recouped about $20,000 USD for the total streams before the album was pulled by Spotify.
ACT 3
An Italian artist sells nothing for $18,000.
"Salvatore Garau has sold his latest invisible sculpture. The work, titled "I Am," doesn't exist except in the artist's imagination. The buyer gets a stamped certificate in exchange for $18,000." – NPR
Not to be outdone, a Florida man sues Garau claiming he was the first to make nothing.
The Medium is the Massage
Why is the title of the book The Medium is the Massage and not The Medium is the Message? The title is a mistake. After the book came back from the typesetter's, it had on the cover 'Massage'. The title was supposed to read The Medium is the Message, but the typesetter made an error. After McLuhan saw the typo, he exclaimed, 'Leave it alone! It's great, and right on target!' Now there are four readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: Message and Mess Age, Massage and Mass Age.
“Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.”
– Marshall McLuhan
The Medium is the Massge (1967), pg. 26
Thoughts
– Does nothin' from nothin' leave nothin'?
– Do you find silence difficult to perform?
– How much would you pay for silence?
