John Cage Organ Project in Halberstadt

Good point. I wonder how much of the beauty is due to the interesting SW approach vs. the speed. Here is an interesting discussion with the creator:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120217161857/http://www.micros...

I haven't played with Paulstretch, but it looks similar to what Tom Erbe's "Soundhack" program did (windowed FFT with overlap add resynthesis). Soundhack was originally written in the late 90's and was used by the sound designers of The Matrix.. anyhow. Soundhack is now defunct, but Tom released the source and I ported the time stretching bit of the software to Go if anyone's interested: https://github.com/corporealfunk/gopvoc

Interesting to me at least, but the start reminded me strongly of parts of This Mortal Coil's, Song to the Siren. A lovely song. https://youtu.be/HFWKJ2FUiAQ

It's also a lot cheaper if you don't have to install a keyboard and all kinds of stops.

I mean, you could definitely build a bespoke organ for the proposal above: You wouldn't need a manual (keyboard), or any sort of other bits and bobs required for performance (stops, pistons, couplers, pedals). Mini wind chambers per pipe, probably with an interconnected tubing so you could set up this big ring of pipes for people to walk around and observe. As for pipes, it'd just be one rank of pipes—not scores of them like with typical organs—and probably just one blower and bellows.

And, given the nature of the performance, some sort of self-powering renewable energy source and battery backup.

I was thinking more about the copyright on the score, and whether other people would be able to freely copy it, make their own recordings, create derivative works, and so on.

This piece and the Cage piece both began in 2000, and both descriptions imply the turn of the millennium are an important marker. So probably not many > 100 year pieces have started since then, but maybe we’ll get a new set in the year 3000. Makes me curious if there are a bunch of unknown 100 year performances conceived around the turns of centuries.

Anyway, I like the Long Player’s description of survival at the end; even if the music seems silly, these are interesting questions - “How does one keep a piece of music playing across generations? How does one prepare for its technological adaptability, knowing how few technologies have remained viable over the last millenium? How does one legislate for its upkeep? And how can one communicate that responsibility to those who might be looking after it some 950 years after its original custodians have perished?”

I get that but do people really need to pretend it is art to sit silently in a room full of people in a concert hall and notice the ambient sounds long with their thoughts and feelings. People who sit in meditation with others do this all the time. I suppose the concept is foreign to most Westerners so they need an artist to come alone and give it the stamp of approval.

"Let's have a moment of silence for those we have lost"

People understand the above and do it without complaint

"Let's sit quietly in meditation and notice our environment, thoughts and feelings. You may find it helpful to focus on your breath"

Most people grudgingly do this but find it boring and unnecessary

John Cage: "Listen to my piece 4' 33" which the musicians on stage won't play"

People: "Oh my God, John Cage is brilliant. What an amazing artist! I can't wait to tell my friends that I 'heard' this"

How many John Cage fans have you actually had a drink and talked with?

Thanks for the suggestion Bud. I didn't realize he was a writer too. I'd like to know what his real intentions are with his work.

You could listen to one of the versions out there that only lasts an hour. That would give you a good sense of the full piece.

Then you could go listen to a snippet of it, in this extremely slow version, and get a sense of that.

Then combine the two.

The work doesn't necessarily argue against you. It may have been the intention, or it may be the effect of the work that ideas like yours come into existence. One idea of conceptual art is that the work plays out in your mind, and the physical creation is secondary, utilitarian even.

The authenticity of the piece and it's validity is reinforced by our conversation and replay.

On this measure the timeline is arbitrary, and trumping it is a second work all together, creating a new conversation.

No, it's not trivial to make extremely long time-based pieces on the web.

Because you have to keep the computer running continuously. That turns out to be extremely difficult.

So there is no spectacle, here.

Part of the magic of Cage's piece, in this incarnation, is that someone actually built the special organ, in a suitable space that might plausibly remain undisturbed for several centuries. It requires some maintenance and some care and feeding, of course, but not much. So one doesn't have to suspend disbelief too much, here—this performance may actually occur as planned. It's been going for over 20 years so far, after all.

Agreed, extreme concepts are not hard. But I think the fascinating part is the salesmanship involved. Something I've noticed, really high concept artists are fantastic salesmen... and really shitty artists (80% of the time). They can convince people that a duct taped banana on the wall or just splatter paint can emotionally transcend you. Dont get me wrong, I like some abstract art when there is an aesthetic quality to it. But the worship status given to something like this, one incredibly slow note every however months... come on. You could do the same with Vanilla Ice's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 song from the 90s. Doesnt mean anything... other than that song still slaps :)

I'll take listening to an amateur messing with guitar chords while drunk in a shitty bar over something like this. Because I can actually experience the shitty bar music. You literally cannot experience this "art project".

This is a bad take, but unsurprising when most Western culture still lauds virtuosity playing and "skill" over most other things. If it's a cultural dead end it's because of the culture not the idea.

That aside, John Cage was having these ideas when they weren't as obvious as they are today and we have the benefit of hindsight. Dismissing that is also a pretty ignorant mistake.

I believe we're agreeing, except in our value judgments. You say:

> Exploring the boundaries of what constitutes music or art is interesting to me.

Interesting, yes, as a concept, and perhaps even as a cultural event, but we certainly agree that it's a different kind of experience than a musical performance.

> Wouldn't it be interesting to visit a place where you know that people hundreds of years ago have listened not only to the same piece of music but to the same performance as you are experiencing right now. That listenership spans centuries?

I honestly have no interest in visiting such a place to hear a note, or even the change from one note to another. And recognize that what interests you in such a visit is not musical interest, but conceptual interest.

plausible but [citation needed]

Wrong? I don't see it as a moral issue. I see it as an abandonment of music, but not a moral wrong.

I think there's a value distinction to be drawn between boundary explorations that expand the art form and those that simply depart from any definition of it separate from the other arts. That leaves a broad scope for innovation: the composers of the ars subtilior, Carlo Gesualdo, Hector Berlioz, Debussy and Satie, Harry Partch, Antheil and Edgard Varese, and the progression of serialism from Schoenberg through Webern to Boulez — all of them explored and expanded the boundaries of music, but you can still experience their works as music, even if some have argued that it's bad music. It all can be, and has been, accepted as music.

But some of Cage's works (of those which he presented as musical) depart from musical material and musical experience to play with the nonmusical culture that surrounds music and musicians, or, abandoning that, the idea of performance itself. Obviously 4'33", with its formalities of opening and closing a piano, is an example of the former, but his lesser-known 0'00" runs simply, "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action." In that case, the performer is as justified in a disciplined soiling of their pants as any musical act. I refuse to countenance such wanking. (Cage was by no means alone in this, but he's probably the most famous.)

I'm glad to see that even academic composers seem to have retreated from this dissolution.

Well you're trading music for a story about music.

It's a matter of taste, of course.

By optimistic, I meant the idea that humans would be around for 600 years.

The Americas are just as old, it is just that people in their arrogance have chosen to overlook the works and achievements of Mesoamerican civilization.

History did not begin with the arrival of the Europeans, that is just when colonization began. The long history of these continents is treated as some sort of lost and mysterious thing of times past, yet the people from those civilizations are still here today.

Cage and Glass both understood this and named a number of their works aptly.