11 Responses to “The Sounds of Silence”

1. nick says:

   01.16.04 at 2:20 pm

   This is a bed metaphor/simile.

   Because any font (like any musical instrument) may be not played. So no need for a special Silence font.

   A book deliberately not printed would be the equivalent of the Cage piece.
2. Kegler says:

   01.16.04 at 2:30 pm

   Would that be a blank book without printing?

   or

   A nonexistent book?

   but

   What of the intent of the author?
3. joshua lurie-terrell says:

   01.16.04 at 4:17 pm

   Maybe a book imagined and composed – but withheld from printing?
4. Brian says:

   01.16.04 at 4:34 pm

   As a joke, the “song” is kinda funny, but actually having musicians come tune tune up and turn pages is dragging the idea a bit too far into Jr. High territory, like a kid telling a joke and saying “Get it?! GET IT?!”. We get it.

   It would have been funnier if Spinal Tap did it.

   Some interesting extras with the font, however. As for the book, I think the parallel would be a novel with a cover and copyright page and a back cover and jacket and all the fixins, but blank pages where the story would be.
5. Mark Simonson says:

   01.16.04 at 6:37 pm

   I used to do a lot of packaging design for books on tape. Once, I had the idea to do–as a gag product–a blank book on tape. It was basically the standard packaging with a blank cassette inside. We had a lot of fun with the copy on the box, with “quotes” by Marcel Marceau, John Cage, etc. Unfortunately, the book stores didn’t get it and therefore didn’t carry it.
6. Hrant says:

   01.16.04 at 7:36 pm

   If I hit a performace artist over the head with an Armenian song book, will anybody [want to] be there to hear him sing “karoun, karoun, siroun eh”?

   hhp
7. Su says:

   01.17.04 at 2:44 am

   You’re completely missing the point. The intent of 4’33″ was to show that “silence” isn’t quite what people think it is. The actual piece is all of the incidental noise that happens during it’s “performance,” which effectively results in a unique performance every time, as with any other piece of music. It’s a conceptual piece with, yes, all the associated pretense that gets attached to any such thing. If you don’t buy into conceptual music*, then don’t, but there’s no need to be wilfully ignorant. Which isn’t to say that I’m going to be tuning in. I like the thing as an idea, but there’s no way in hell I’m attending a concert.

   The book equivalent would, as Brian said, be something along the lines of a bunch of blank pages, not a non-existent book.

   *And really: While we’re on the subject, how many times have we all read the concept statement for a font and gone, “WHAT?” Let’s not throw stones.
8. Mabarak says:

   01.18.04 at 3:54 pm

   Su’s just got in before me with that explanation. Back before Brian Eno joined Pink Floyd he was a conceptual musician. In about 1968 he created a work called Decay & Delay which involved three tape recorders placed around the auditorium, where two picked up any noises and the third then played them back. This would be cumulative since, quite apart from other noises made by the audience, the play-back would also be recorded and then played back. A very elegant idea and an aurally interesting experience.

   Around that time I also took part in a performance of Cage pieces which included an ‘arrangement’ of 4’33” for piano. Every now and then the pianist would lean forward and tense his wrists without actually moving them. Even knowing how the piece worked, I was fooled into thinking maybe I was wrong, something was going to be played! Of course, this led one to ‘hear’ only one’s own inner dialogue rather than what a Zen teacher I know calls ‘listening to the silence’. It took me a long time to realise that all the noise, mental and concrete, was the envelope about that silence.

   Following through the envelope metaphor, therefore, surely a printed equivalent would be a book jacket bearing a title but without even the physical structure of the book. But a font? I’d go for one of those blank oblongs but with a breach in one side to allow the white potentiality outside to enter and crystalise as the imagined ideal glyph.

   I apologise if this sounds pretentious but appeal to all you creative people. Each of us knows the feeling of elation following creation when that work seems our best – briefly. But always and for ever for us the best is yet to come!
9. nick says:

   01.19.04 at 11:20 am

   “Comment text is required.”
10. nick says:

    01.19.04 at 11:24 am

    >Would that be a blank book without printing?

    Yes. And Su, I did get the point, in the blank book the reader would notice the paper and binding, and beyond that, notice the room.

    However, comparisons always fall short, and in the blank book there is no equivalent of the silent musical instruments, seen by the audience, or the musician, with the potential to play.

    If there were a calligrapher, poised to write…

    Ultimately, print typography is not a performance art. However, if there is a database-driven medium that provides a steady stream of type, in real time, creating expectation, and then the feed goes blank.

    >or

    >A nonexistent book?

    But then you would need to have the press running (somewhat musical in its rhythm), but no ink on the rollers…

    >What of the intent of the author?

    That’s for the publicists (before) and the critics (after) to decide.
11. Hrant says:

    01.19.04 at 11:50 am

    > print typography is not a performance art.

    Tell that to Noordzij.

    hhp