30 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: John Cage 4’33
Thanks, yeah live is how it's meant to be experienced. The story goes that John Cage went to an anechoic chamber at Harvard. It's a room designed so that no sound is reflected off the walls and is the closest thing to complete silence we can experience. When he went there he could still hear this high pitched noise and another sound that was a low hum. He was devastated as he was fascinated by silence and he thought he would be able to experience it in that room. The scientists told him the high pitched noise was the sound of his nervous system and the low hum was his organs. So we as humans can never know true silence as long as we're alive. I'm guessing he probably already knew that would happen but that doesn't make as good a story.
Comment by darthy_parker at 02/02/2025 at 14:04 UTC
10 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I used to do loudspeaker design and testing and part of that was to set up speakers in a large anechoic chamber at the NRC in Ottawa. You can definitely hear your body. Wouldn’t call it a “hum” and “high pitched noise” exactly, although with my mild tinnitus I’d hear that now for sure — about three frequencies at all times. What I heard in there was a repeated “whoosh” which was the blood flowing in my arteries with each heartbeat, and I could hear the slightly rough crunching of my shoulder and neck joints as they rotated to lift and place the speaker. I mean, if I pay close attention I can hear those things right now, it’s just that other ambient sounds — the compressor on my fridge, the fan noise from my air purifier — are louder.
When I did film sound, it was a revelation how much noise we ignore and filter out that is then impossible to get rid of in the sync sound.
So what Cage was pointing out was all the other sounds that we live with that happen both in spite of the formality of the concert event, or even because of it: shuffling of the program, clearing of throats, the involuntary sounds of people being slightly confused… Definitely a worthwhile exercise, to try to listen to what’s happening *in between* what is ostensibly happening.