[NewMusic] "My Cage (Silence for Cellphone)"

Tue Jan 9 02:50:54 PST 2007

Ok, I'll bite.

I'll give you that "dumb" is probably a first round response word for 
something I dislike without much other thought as to its meaning, it 
obviously takes a learned mind to spew this much bullshit,...

but my social pathologies aside:

I think it is unintelligent (i.e. "dumb") because I think that part of 
logical and intelligent discourse is coming to logical conclusions that 
further the state of the discourse and don't retread covered ground for 
the sake of retreading (something especially important in "conceptual" 
art).

  Is it funny?  Maybe.  Assuming he thinks its funny, which is actually 
the outcome I would like to have.  I haven't talked to him.

In my original post I put a link to a  blank web page that I said was 4' 
33" for web site.  I was joking, of course.  What if I had been 
serious?!  That is not outside of feasibility...and I could have come up 
with a whole bunch of textbook experimental art and technology new media 
theory to support my art...and it is about as conceptually and 
technologically advanced as what this guy did.  Why haven't I done it 
before reading this?   Because the idea isn't even slightly 
interesting... unless I mire myself in some pseudo-intellectual theory hole.

The other option is that he is serious, in which case this is not at all 
clever, it is just exploiting a bunch of stuff that people
  perceive as deep because they don't understand it. People have been 
selling silent ring tones for years now, this is not the first.  This is 
just the first one to invoke the holy name of Cage when they did it. 
The reason the other purveyors of silent ring tones didn't do this were 
twain: 1) They probably didn't come from experimental art backgrounds 
and 2) They weren't pretentious assholes that thought their concepts 
were any deeper than the rest of the human race.

There isn't a person who has been on the building blocks of the 
cellphone industry, or a person that has heard an annoying ringtone, 
that hasn't said "gee, it would be nice if there were a silent 
ringtone".  But don't tell me its fucking "all-encompasing".  Leave your 
art vocabulary aside and say what it is, a silent ringtone...  thats 
BEEN DONE.  Technology is a TOOL, not an end result, as anyone who has 
built things for long enough knows.  I do awesome shit all the time, 
this is not meant to be pretentious, what I mean is that I myself am 
dumbfounded by the state of the art and with what I can do with it 
sociologically and pragmatically.    I build websites and things and 
look at the end result and the stuff that went into it and say "son of a 
bitch, this is awesome that such things are possible".  Want good net 
art?  http://www.wefeelfine.com.

Contrary to the tone of this post, I actually really like 4' 33".  I 
think it said something important in its time, and even today, I 
especially respect the work in the context of Cage's musical progression 
over the years.  I would even go so far as to say that if I went to a 
ring tone site, and saw 4' 33" on the site, I would laugh.  If someone 
slipped it in there.  Then it would be funny a possibly telling.  But 
when you call attention to yourself by doing press releases and saying 
it was your fucking "conceptual art piece", then fuck you.  Make 
something original, real, and that doesn't throw a bunch of bullshit 
theory out for actual insight.

b

P.S.  I think the most interesting part (if I had to say one) of this 
whole "piece" is that there was mpeg compression involved.  In this 
"silent" ring tone there was actually a very advanced algorithm used 
that performed very complex math, all on zeros.  It speaks greatly to 
our times in a way, that there was very advanced math that took 
countless human hours to develop, and we don't perceive any of it in the 
final outcome.   It's kind of like having this immense  turning , always 
grinding machine under you that you can only get a glimpse of if you 
look, and I think this is  a very elegant concept that has a great deal 
to say about the age in which we live.  But this ISN't what he meant. Or 
it would have been in the press release.

Sarah - 21 Grand wrote:
> Barry opined:
> This has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of.
> 
> - Why do you think it's dumb?
>  
> With lines like "'My Cage' is all-encompassing even those who don't use
> it as a ringtone have the potential to experience it, in the silence of
> an unanswered call." the man either has to be laughing his ass off that
> anyone would give press to this, or possess such an unbelievable amount
> of hubris that  it astounds me.
> 
> - Personally I think it's funny and definitely clever - a simple one-liner,
> one may argue - but not dumb.
> 
> sl
> 
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> 

-- 
barry threw
composition : sound : programming
http://www.barrythrew.com
bthrew(at)gmail(dot)com
857-544-3967

(if you would see the stars clearly,
look hard at the surrounding darkness)
		-Ooka Makoto