Cage at the Movies: Sound of Noise

Saw a great film last night with such a whimsical, Cage-inspired premise, that I thought it would be worth mentioning here.

Sound of Noise is a 2010 Swedish-French film about a police officer from a family of prestigious musicians. The black sheep of the family, the officer is tone-deaf, has no musical talent and does not enjoy listening to music. Meanwhile, a group of "anarchist musicians" begin staging some less-than-legal performances around the city. During the officer's investigation and pursuit of the guerrilla musicians, the everyday objects they use to create their music are rendered soundless, and the audience also experiences his literal tone-deafness.

In the spirit of Cage's all-sound music, the film is an entertaining introduction into the musical sounds of non-musical instruments. The story is a follow-up to the 2001 short film Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers. The title of the film purportedly comes from Italian futurist Luigi Russolo's 1913 manifesto The Art of Noises.

You can watch the trailer here

image credit: Nordisk Film

Sonic Dining

I knew it!
With the right music, you can influence the taste of your food.

Heavy Metal Macaroni.
Monk Monkfish.
Edith Piaf Pilaf.
The possibilities are endless...

Read the story here.

The above image is the cover of author Kara Zuaro's book, I Like Food, Food Tastes Good: In The Kitchen With Your Favorite Bands.

Cage the Mycologist

A new exhibition opened last week at the Horticultural Society of New York to celebrate John Cage the Mycologist. It's called, “By Leaves or Play of Light- John Cage: Artist and Naturalist." (I always knew he was a naturalist at heart). His fungal legacy, I've learned, consists of his revival of the New York Mycological Society in the 1960s and his extensive fungi collection, now at the University of California, Santa Cruz (and, of course, his phenomenal success in game show history). I've also recently learned that Cage did some visual art projects that will be on display at this exhibition. Most notably some of his 1990 "Edible Drawings" made from snow peas, bitter melon, hijiki, and black beans — ingredients in his macrobiotic diet at the time.


He also collaborated on a project with mycologist Alexander H. Smith called The Mushroom Book (1972), a collection of disjointed poems alongside beautifully mushroom illustrations by Lois Long, as well as fields of seemingly random text with sporadic mushroom drawings and details scrawled by Cage all over the page. As he described it in a 1991 interview with John Retallack, this writing was meant to show ”that ideas are to be found in the same way that you find wild mushrooms in the forest, by just looking”; you can’t just come upon them directly, they “come to you as things hidden.”


Learn more about the exhibition here: http://thehort.org/programs_exhibitions.html

Then, buy me a ticket to New York so that I can see it.

Moo-d Music: The musical preferences of the working bovine mother

Some dairy farmers have long suspected that playing a bit of mood music can boost milk production in dairy cows. It's not unheard of for farmers to play relaxing jams for their herds, and the picture above shows a vaudeville act serenading the cows in the University of Wisconsin, Madison's dairy barn in 1930. The show was apparently part of an experiment to see whether the soothing strains of music boosted the cows' milk production.

Read more at:http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/03/06/285314648/secret-life-of-cows-part-deux-milking-mood-music

John Luther Adams- The Drums of Winter

A Valentine Out of Season

Submerged Turntables

Evan Holm on his "Submerged Turntable" installation.

"There will be a time when all tracings of human culture will dissolve back into the soil under the slow crush of the unfolding universe.  The pool, black and depthless, represents loss, represents mystery and represents the collective subconscious of the human race.  By placing these records underneath the dark and obscure surface of the pool, I am enacting a small moment of remorse towards this loss.   In the end however this is an optimistic sculpture, for just after that moment of submergence; tone, melody and ultimately song is pulled back out of the pool, past the veil of the subconscious, out from under the crush of time, and back into a living and breathing realm.  When I perform with this sculpture, I am honoring and celebrating all the musicians, all the artists that have helped to build our human culture."

http://evanholm.com/about/

Apparently, with the right electronics, you can submerge a record player in water and still get perfect audio. Could this turn Cage's Water Walk into a... water waltz?