Journal Entry from Jan 30 07

Romanticizing an artist is a common practice, especially among art students.
Romanticizing is not necessarily a bad thing, however critically viewing artists and basing their work in reality is important.
The other day I was watching a series of John Cage interviews, the interviews of course pertaining to Cage’s unstopping philosophy of life, music, and concentrating primarily of the work/works of Indeterminacy. I believe presenting Cage can prove to be problematic, the aura that he carries with him and his nonchalant ability to speak clearly about his life and interests can inherently persuade us to view him as a more than human. “Human” of course being the social definition of human: able to make mistakes and more importantly capable of not being completely serious.

The presentation is in question.
The interviews were projected onto a wall with use of a LCD projector, at times making Cage twenty times larger than real life: glowing and ethereal. God like.

So we find ourselves watching our new John Cage already he is no longer just human as he muses with this and that and picks mushrooms, we take his advise and reason as if it were written in stone, our god is a great god. No. John Cage is great, but not a god. It is important to note that at one time we were able to tune down the volume to speak over him. We took our god and muted him into and image, opening my eyes to the actual John Cage: a prerecorded sound and image. While artist like Stelarc may want to be perceived as something other than human we must remember that Cage wants nothing more than to be human, truly human, nothing is more human in fact than chance.
Projecting a John Cage interview is not a mistake, if anything finding problems within a simple projection is a mistake. It is much easier for a large group of people to view a projection than to crowd around a television. But why watch Cage at all? He was after all a musician. He was meant to be listened to.

I was once given a published text of Indeterminacy, and it was horrible. I read it alone in my living room, besides the ventilation system, and the small noises from the restaurant below me the house was otherwise silent. (Now of course here is a prime time to interrupt with Cage’s own ideas of silence, [4 minutes 33 seconds being a piece were Cage wanted his listeners to listen to no music from performer, but unintentional music created from the audience’s normal ambient sounds]) The reading was horrible not because it is bad work, I had heard the recording before, the reading did not contain Cage’s awkward noise interruptions, his fake Japanese accents, and certainly was not read in one minute intervals.

Is seeing a John Cage performance necessary? If you and to know that ‘glug’ and ‘trip’ sounds come from a group of seashells in varying sizes yes, if you don’t want to know were these sounds come from close your eyes, because no sound sounds better than live sound.