DAT503 – Reflexive Design Workshop 1 – John Cage

John Cage – 4:33 silence

During the first part of today’s workshop we witnessed a recreation of John Cage’s 4’33 piece, performed by our lecturer.

Following this, we were asked to make brief observations on the performance. These are mine:

• Listening to sounds coming from outside the room, listening to the sound of the projector
• The ‘lack of performance’ (sound) concentrated my hearing
• Observing our lecturer for any reaction as a result of the talk in the room
• I noticed that the noise level increased from silence at the beginning to quite a high level of chatter/questions towards the end of the piece
• We expected a musical performance. When we didn’t get what we expected, it caused confusion amongst some of the group
• Was the performance, in fact, the audience, rather than the lecturer?