[HN Gopher] John Cage Organ Project in Halberstadt
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       John Cage Organ Project in Halberstadt
        
       Author : geox
       Score  : 113 points
       Date   : 2022-04-23 12:08 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (universes.art)
 (TXT) w3m dump (universes.art)
        
       | awiesenhofer wrote:
       | Reminds me of the Culture series book "Look to Windward" - in
       | which a composer creates an almost everlasting symphony whos
       | finale coincides with the arrival of the light of an ancient
       | supernova on his planet (IIRC)
        
       | PoachedSausage wrote:
       | Only 639 years?
       | 
       | It would take approximately 1.3m years to ring every permutation
       | of the 16 bells in the tower of the church of St Martin in the
       | Bull Ring, Birmingham, UK.[0] I'm not sure the bells, tower or
       | ringers would last that long though, get there early to avoid
       | disappointment.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Martin_in_the_Bull_Ring
        
         | rufus_foreman wrote:
         | Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | I assume that this project has funding. I'd like to see the
       | details of that.
        
       | iansowinski wrote:
       | Reminds me this instalation in Hamburg Kunsthale, where artist
       | constructed conditions for creation of a stalactite. It will be
       | ready in about 500 years: https://www.hamburger-
       | kunsthalle.de/sammlung-online/bogomir-...
        
       | drunkonvinyl wrote:
       | Saying "Encore!" in 2640...
        
       | saalweachter wrote:
       | Damn, I missed the start of this performance. Does anyone know
       | when the next is scheduled to start?
        
       | adam0c wrote:
       | why... lol
        
       | labrador wrote:
       | I've don't know why people are so fascinated with John Cage's
       | conceptual music like 4'33'' which is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of
       | silence. It doesn't do anything for me and seems like b.s.
        
         | b3morales wrote:
         | It's not what you think. The concept isn't "oh ha ha, here's
         | 'music' that has no sound, smoke that!". It's that while you're
         | sitting there with the performer doing nothing, there's _still
         | sound going on around you_. Creaking chairs, water in pipes,
         | bus going by outside the venue... If someone makes a recording
         | that is literally a string of 0 bits, they 're doing something
         | different than Cage's piece. (EDIT: Although while listening to
         | that recording you the listener can experience the sound of the
         | space _you_ are in. So perhaps it would be the same thing, in a
         | way.)
         | 
         | Cage was interested in how -- or whether -- accidental and
         | incidental noise could be incorporated or experienced as music.
         | 4'33" is just the most notorious (and probably starkest)
         | expression of that idea.
        
           | labrador wrote:
           | I get that but do people really need to pretend it is art to
           | sit silently in a room full of people in a concert hall and
           | notice the ambient sounds long with their thoughts and
           | feelings. People who sit in meditation with others do this
           | all the time. I suppose the concept is foreign to most
           | Westerners so they need an artist to come alone and give it
           | the stamp of approval.
           | 
           | "Let's have a moment of silence for those we have lost"
           | 
           | People understand the above and do it without complaint
           | 
           | "Let's sit quietly in meditation and notice our environment,
           | thoughts and feelings. You may find it helpful to focus on
           | your breath"
           | 
           | Most people grudgingly do this but find it boring and
           | unnecessary
           | 
           | John Cage: "Listen to my piece 4' 33" which the musicians on
           | stage won't play"
           | 
           | People: "Oh my God, John Cage is brilliant. What an amazing
           | artist! I can't wait to tell my friends that I 'heard' this"
        
             | b3morales wrote:
             | I would say that what Cage added was indeed the statement
             | (or maybe question) that those noises are music. And
             | listening to music is a different thing than meditation.
             | That said, one can definitely disagree with his perspective
             | on it.
        
               | labrador wrote:
               | Ambient sounds do not fit the definition of music
               | according to Oxford:
               | 
               | vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a
               | way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression
               | of emotion
               | 
               | That said, I get that it's interesting for sparking
               | conversations and thought about music
               | 
               | https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/from-no-such-thing-as-
               | silence-j...
               | 
               | like Duchamp's urinal
               | 
               | https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-
               | fountain-t07573
               | 
               | Needless to say, I don't ever put 4' 33" on play and I
               | don't have a replica of the urinal hanging on my wall
        
         | robonerd wrote:
         | I agree, it's pretentious nonsense that only exists so people
         | can pretend to like it and scoff at the unsophisticated proles
         | who call the spade a spade.
        
       | ARandomerDude wrote:
       | Sorry, but anyone who thinks this will see completion is
       | delusional. It'll be amazing if our distant posterity will
       | recognize a map of today's Europe, much less be interested in
       | this song's performance.
       | 
       | We live closer to Christopher Columbus than the end of this song.
       | Think about how much the world has changed in that time.
        
         | kobalsky wrote:
         | when columbus set a foot in america there were 1000 year old
         | pubs in europe that are still open today.
         | 
         | sometimes it's hard to understand how mind boggingly old europe
         | is, being from the younger continent.
        
         | Honga wrote:
         | Medieval Christianity revived and resumed ancient Greek culture
         | and philosophy. That's a larger gap than we're talking about
         | here. There's precedent if you look hard enough.
        
         | replygirl wrote:
         | i also have a nervous breakdown when i see evidence of the HRE
        
         | goldphotograph1 wrote:
        
       | nabla9 wrote:
       | This is so called conceptualism, or conceptual art. art for which
       | the idea behind the work is more important than the finished art
       | object.
        
       | genghisjahn wrote:
       | Dude. Turn it up! This is my favorite part.
        
       | homonculus1 wrote:
       | This is anti-human and antichristian. Take a beautiful church and
       | fill it up for the rest of people's lifetimes with monotonous
       | droning. That sanctuary should be glorifying God, not some
       | pretentious gimmick.
       | 
       | This isn't music, this is a mockery of music. It's the auditory
       | equivalent of brutalism and everybody should see through it and
       | despise it.
        
         | je_suis_music wrote:
        
       | soneca wrote:
       | The phrasing confused me. It is being performed for almost 21
       | years (since 2001) and it will be continuously performed for the
       | next 618 years (hopefully).
       | 
       | Initially I thought it was being performed since year 1383 (639
       | years ago).
        
       | cool_dude85 wrote:
       | Anyone else recently heard about this on the Uhh Yeah Dude
       | podcast?
        
       | GrumpyNl wrote:
       | The organ used looks pretty new, how did they do that without
       | interrupting the continuous playing?
        
         | Bud wrote:
         | It probably looks new mostly because the pipes are so shiny.
         | This is because, in order to change any note, a new pipe is
         | actually installed in one of the slots.
        
       | gunfighthacksaw wrote:
       | My cool hipster roommate told me about this 10 years ago when I
       | first moved out for school, and I'm now the age she was back then
       | (and the piece is 10 years older)
        
       | gotaquestion wrote:
       | Once again, for those looking down on artists with their keen
       | Vulcan engineer logic brains:
       | 
       | modern art = i could do that + yeah but you didn't
        
         | tomc1985 wrote:
         | modern art = i could do that + yeah but you didn't + you didn't
         | have the artist's cachet + you didn't have the connections to
         | exhibit your work + you don't have the body of experience that
         | lead you to this particular output + nobody is going to care
         | about your low-effort piece but somehow this artist got them
         | too
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | I think this still completely misses what's interesting about
         | this: the number of interesting performance attempts, not the
         | piece itself which is neither first/last of the concept or the
         | focus of the post.
        
       | coastflow wrote:
       | This video presents a version where the piece is sped up to 36
       | seconds in length: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5-Yo328Rp4
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | Unfortunately the choice of using a sawtooth wave for playback
         | of an organ piece makes it nearly just as unintelligible as the
         | 639 year performance.
        
       | je_suis_music wrote:
        
       | CompleteWalker wrote:
       | I wish Cage had kept the acronym ASAP
        
       | JasonFruit wrote:
       | Does anyone love this as music, rather than as an idea? Of
       | composers, there are two schools: those who try to express
       | something interesting musically, and those who produce
       | interesting concepts. Some of Cage's work, especially, takes the
       | second approach to extremes, where it cannot even be
       | _experienced_ as music. I don 't think any of that sort of music
       | will survive long, because the concept is no longer clever after
       | it loses its novelty.
        
         | caymanjim wrote:
        
         | swayvil wrote:
         | Artists are generally in the first camp. Nonartists in second.
         | 
         | Go to a gallery full of abstract expressionism. Hear people
         | asking, "what does it mean?"
        
         | tomcam wrote:
         | The first 15 years weren't so catchy, but the chorus starting
         | in easily 2016 is catchy as hell
        
         | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
         | It's pretty silly IMO. Extreme Concept(tm) isn't difficult to
         | do, and it's even less difficult to imagine.
         | 
         | It's trivial to make extremely long time-based pieces on the
         | web. You load the page, it works out the time/date, and it
         | plays whatever the algorithm says is right for the time date.
         | With the right algo you can make pieces that last for millions
         | of years.
         | 
         | And so on.
         | 
         | There is a sense in which it's an interesting idea, but it's
         | also a cultural dead end. You can only make it bigger and more
         | extreme, and that's more about spectacle than music.
        
           | enduser384729 wrote:
           | This is a bad take, but unsurprising when most Western
           | culture still lauds virtuosity playing and "skill" over most
           | other things. If it's a cultural dead end it's because of the
           | culture not the idea.
           | 
           | That aside, John Cage was having these ideas when they
           | weren't as obvious as they are today and we have the benefit
           | of hindsight. Dismissing that is also a pretty ignorant
           | mistake.
        
             | dahart wrote:
             | Would you mind elaborating on what you mean? Why is that a
             | bad take? What is culturally relevant about this? I'm not
             | saying it isn't, but I don't know what it is, and tearing
             | down others doesn't help me.
             | 
             | John Cage didn't intend this piece to last 639 years,
             | right? What ideas of his are you referring to? This long
             | running organ piece was conceived by someone in Germany and
             | is intended to highlight the history of Halberstadt, right?
             | 
             | The question @TheOtherHobbes is raising seems relevant: how
             | does this performance contribute to musical culture, or
             | even to Cage's work? It can't be enjoyed as music, it's
             | more of a logistical piece intended to create a mythology.
             | In that sense, this performance is, in a way, very much
             | lauding a sort of skill over most other things about the
             | music - the skill of pure perseverance. Like other
             | conceptual art, it's the story of this work that is
             | interesting, but not really the work itself. You seem to
             | suggest otherwise, would you mind coloring that in for me,
             | so I can appreciate it more?
        
             | rnd0 wrote:
             | >This is a bad take, but unsurprising when most Western
             | culture still lauds virtuosity playing and "skill" over
             | most other things
             | 
             | Why is that a bad thing?
        
               | enduser384729 wrote:
               | If you think music and art are entirely about skill
               | that's fine, but I personally am not interested in
               | hearing anything further about your opinions in that
               | case.
        
               | rnd0 wrote:
               | > but I personally am not interested in hearing anything
               | further about your opinions in that case.
               | 
               | Fuck me, you say? No, fuck YOU.
               | 
               | Feel free to mute me (edit: assuming HN has that feature)
               | if you're unwilling to engage in an exchange of opinions
               | and perspectives like a reasonable adult.
        
             | PolygonSheep wrote:
             | > most Western culture still lauds virtuosity playing and
             | "skill" over most other things.
             | 
             | We must be in different Western cultures because I
             | definitely _don 't_ see a lot of skill and virtuosity in
             | most popular music.
        
               | CharlesW wrote:
               | > _We must be in different Western cultures because I
               | definitely don 't see a lot of skill and virtuosity in
               | most popular music._
               | 
               | I think it depends on the lens you use. If you're looking
               | through a "Tom Scholz" lens, that kind of skill and
               | instrumental virtuosity may not exist today (although
               | artists like St. Vincent are an argument that they do).
               | But tech has completely changed music making, production,
               | and distribution since that time, so today's Toms are
               | people like Finneas O'Connell, and making music today is
               | more akin to software design and engineering.
        
             | rufus_foreman wrote:
             | >> Western culture still lauds virtuosity playing and
             | "skill" over most other things
             | 
             | It was my understanding that everyone had heard.
        
           | Bud wrote:
           | No, it's not trivial to make extremely long time-based pieces
           | on the web.
           | 
           | Because you have to keep the computer running continuously.
           | That turns out to be extremely difficult.
           | 
           | So there is no spectacle, here.
           | 
           | Part of the magic of Cage's piece, in this incarnation, is
           | that someone actually built the special organ, in a suitable
           | space that might plausibly remain undisturbed for several
           | centuries. It requires some maintenance and some care and
           | feeding, of course, but not much. So one doesn't have to
           | suspend disbelief too much, here--this performance may
           | actually occur as planned. It's been going for over 20 years
           | so far, after all.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | NoOneNew wrote:
           | Agreed, extreme concepts are not hard. But I think the
           | fascinating part is the salesmanship involved. Something I've
           | noticed, really high concept artists are fantastic
           | salesmen... and really shitty artists (80% of the time). They
           | can convince people that a duct taped banana on the wall or
           | just splatter paint can emotionally transcend you. Dont get
           | me wrong, I like some abstract art when there is an aesthetic
           | quality to it. But the worship status given to something like
           | this, one incredibly slow note every however months... come
           | on. You could do the same with Vanilla Ice's Teenage Mutant
           | Ninja Turtles 2 song from the 90s. Doesnt mean anything...
           | other than that song still slaps :)
           | 
           | I'll take listening to an amateur messing with guitar chords
           | while drunk in a shitty bar over something like this. Because
           | I can actually experience the shitty bar music. You literally
           | cannot experience this "art project".
        
             | somewhereoutth wrote:
             | The artist as _messenger_ - through inspiration or
             | otherwise to bring us a new way of looking at things; the
             | artist as _theoretician_ - to build on work that has gone
             | on before and progressively expand our horizons; the artist
             | as _performer_ - acting out a role in society.
             | 
             | I'd suggest all three are present in artists across the
             | ages, but in recent times the last seems to have become
             | more prominent.
        
           | Honga wrote:
           | The work doesn't necessarily argue against you. It may have
           | been the intention, or it may be the effect of the work that
           | ideas like yours come into existence. One idea of conceptual
           | art is that the work plays out in your mind, and the physical
           | creation is secondary, utilitarian even.
           | 
           | The authenticity of the piece and it's validity is reinforced
           | by our conversation and replay.
           | 
           | On this measure the timeline is arbitrary, and trumping it is
           | a second work all together, creating a new conversation.
        
             | blenderdt wrote:
             | What good does this work of Cage bring the world?
             | 
             | Most people think it is uninteresting and a total waste of
             | time.
             | 
             | I can also understand the aggression a lot of Cage's work
             | got in the past. It's very destructive for people to listen
             | a long time to a man who is only speaking letters. Almost
             | like torture.
             | 
             | Is a waste of time art?
        
               | vlunkr wrote:
               | IMO the point is to question the limits of what can be
               | considered music. There's precedent (way too much in
               | fact) in visual arts. Is a signed toilet art? Mona Lisa
               | with a mustache? Banana taped to a wall?
               | 
               | None of these things are meant to be enjoyed in the
               | traditional sense. But they might make you think, or make
               | you angry.
               | 
               | So what good do these things bring the world? I don't
               | know, probably none.
        
               | Honga wrote:
               | It's not the job of the work to bring good to the world,
               | nor to interest people in the slightest, as can be said
               | for yourself, or myself. Though you're right that the
               | success of the work is probably intrinsically tied to
               | it's interest.
               | 
               | Art, and media in general are productions of culture
               | which celebrate our humanity. That is, they rejoice in
               | all of our abilities to perceive, conceive and enact upon
               | the world. Wasting people's time in this light makes
               | people aware of their time, and allows for further
               | interrogations of our humanities to arise. Just as we're
               | doing now.
               | 
               | It's good to remember that art only gains it's status
               | through a production being named art by an exhibitor. IMO
               | there's no special purpose to the term. Consuming art is
               | just another form of recreation, and people are right to
               | hate it for any reason, just that tyranny of what is
               | useful is usually not in the human spirits best interest.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | rerx wrote:
         | This is all concept, of course. But walking around the
         | dishevelled old church, listening to the constant humm in the
         | background is an experience that grows from knowing that this
         | tone will last for years until it will change as prescribed. A
         | tone change is a small event that draws some attention from
         | wider circles. There are people who have cared for the project
         | for more than 20 years and it's not only folks who initiated
         | it. It will be fascinating to see how long there will be
         | interest and resources to keep it up.
        
         | klelatti wrote:
         | I think that there are several issues with this perspective.
         | 
         | Firstly, it presupposes that the music and the 'concept' are
         | distinct. I love say Mahler 2 and the Rite of Spring but I love
         | those pieces as a collection of notes and a concept together
         | and trying to separate the 'concept' from the notes is
         | impossible - when I listen to them the concept is an essential
         | part of the experience.
         | 
         | In this case I can imagine listening to the notes in the
         | knowledge of the wider context and being profoundly moved by
         | the experience. I don't see this as any different to music that
         | is highly repetitive (and so not 'interesting' musically), for
         | example, but still elicits an emotional response from many
         | listeners.
         | 
         | Finally, if the classification is of composers into two camps,
         | with Cage being in the wrong camp, then I'm afraid that the
         | idea that Cage's music won't survive long isn't backed up by
         | the evidence as most of it is still doing really well many
         | years after it was composed.
        
         | chki wrote:
         | Maybe that's part of his art? To show where music and
         | experiencing something as music "ends" and where art "begins".
         | Exploring the boundaries of what constitutes music or art is
         | interesting to me.
         | 
         | > I don't think any of that sort of music will survive long,
         | because the concept is no longer clever after it loses its
         | novelty.
         | 
         | At some point it stops being a novelty and becomes a historical
         | event, where a piece of music has already been playing for 400
         | years. Wouldn't it be interesting to visit a place where you
         | know that people hundreds of years ago have listened not only
         | to the same piece of music but to the same performance as you
         | are experiencing right now. That listenership spans centuries?
        
           | JasonFruit wrote:
           | I believe we're agreeing, except in our value judgments. You
           | say:
           | 
           | > Exploring the boundaries of what constitutes music or art
           | is interesting to me.
           | 
           | Interesting, yes, as a concept, and perhaps even as a
           | cultural event, but we certainly agree that it's a different
           | kind of experience than a musical performance.
           | 
           | > Wouldn't it be interesting to visit a place where you know
           | that people hundreds of years ago have listened not only to
           | the same piece of music but to the same performance as you
           | are experiencing right now. That listenership spans
           | centuries?
           | 
           | I honestly have no interest in visiting such a place to hear
           | a note, or even the change from one note to another. And
           | recognize that what interests you in such a visit is not
           | musical interest, but conceptual interest.
        
         | UncleMeat wrote:
         | Is it wrong to explore the boundaries of the art form for
         | reasons other than enjoyment? Formal experimentation is
         | powerful and gives ideas to later composers. By constraining
         | oneself to the goal of enjoyable performance, one can't be as
         | free to experiment formally.
        
           | ogogmad wrote:
           | plausible but [citation needed]
        
           | swayvil wrote:
           | Well you're trading music for a story about music.
           | 
           | It's a matter of taste, of course.
        
           | JasonFruit wrote:
           | Wrong? I don't see it as a moral issue. I see it as an
           | abandonment of music, but not a moral wrong.
           | 
           | I think there's a value distinction to be drawn between
           | boundary explorations that expand the art form and those that
           | simply depart from any definition of it separate from the
           | other arts. That leaves a broad scope for innovation: the
           | composers of the _ars subtilior_ , Carlo Gesualdo, Hector
           | Berlioz, Debussy and Satie, Harry Partch, Antheil and Edgard
           | Varese, and the progression of serialism from Schoenberg
           | through Webern to Boulez -- all of them explored and expanded
           | the boundaries of music, but you can still experience their
           | works as music, even if some have argued that it's bad music.
           | It all can be, and has been, accepted as music.
           | 
           | But some of Cage's works (of those which he presented as
           | musical) depart from musical material _and_ musical
           | experience to play with the nonmusical culture that surrounds
           | music and musicians, or, abandoning that, the idea of
           | performance itself. Obviously 4 '33", with its formalities of
           | opening and closing a piano, is an example of the former, but
           | his lesser-known 0'00" runs simply, "In a situation provided
           | with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action." In
           | that case, the performer is as justified in a disciplined
           | soiling of their pants as any musical act. I refuse to
           | countenance such wanking. (Cage was by no means alone in
           | this, but he's probably the most famous.)
           | 
           | I'm glad to see that even academic composers seem to have
           | retreated from this dissolution.
        
             | klelatti wrote:
             | 4'33" isn't about about non musical culture although some
             | have mistakenly construed it as such. Cage made it
             | absolutely clear what it was about in his comments about
             | the piece.
        
               | JasonFruit wrote:
               | I could have worded that better: to make its point about
               | sounds and, if you please, music, it depends on
               | nonmusical cultural expectations that surround musical
               | performance. Its adherence to the outward trappings of
               | musical performance in the 20th century prompt the
               | audience to perceive what occurs during it as part of a
               | "performance". Apart from that, there's nothing more
               | musical about it than sitting alone in a meadow -- which
               | I think was essentially Cage's point.
               | 
               | That I find myself using the word "point" so often here
               | emphasizes, to me, that Cage was engaging in philosophy
               | rather than musical composition.
        
               | klelatti wrote:
               | Your last sentence is very interesting and probably
               | captures our different perspectives. I see Cage's work as
               | pointing towards an experience that I might enjoy and be
               | enriched by in practice (not always but then I don't
               | always enjoy performances of my favourite works) and the
               | concept is part but only a part of that.
               | 
               | Messiaen found sitting in a meadow quite a musical
               | experience!
        
             | fipar wrote:
             | I enjoy reading Cage a lot more than listening to his music
             | (for that matter, he was fine with not being called a
             | musician if people deemed his work not worthy of that, I
             | can't recall exactly but I believe sound architect is the
             | alternative job description he proposed).
             | 
             | I don't relate to most of his music but I do think he was
             | on an honest quest for something. In fact, I think it could
             | even be fair to say he was a philosopher using sound as his
             | medium, instead of a musician.
        
               | JasonFruit wrote:
               | I agree with everything you wrote there.
        
         | jeegsy wrote:
         | Its an excellent point. You really cant get a sense of the
         | whole thing since its mostly one tone stretched out most of the
         | time. Hopefully it survives the stated 639 years
        
           | Bud wrote:
           | You could listen to one of the versions out there that only
           | lasts an hour. That would give you a good sense of the full
           | piece.
           | 
           | Then you could go listen to a snippet of it, in this
           | extremely slow version, and get a sense of that.
           | 
           | Then combine the two.
        
       | kderbyma wrote:
       | it would be nice to live through a crescendo
        
         | je_suis_music wrote:
        
       | mhb wrote:
       | Perfect soundtrack for the pitch drop experiment:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment
        
         | MikeDelta wrote:
         | Indeed!
         | 
         | I remember a few years ago when the drop was supposed to fall.
         | It was so exciting watching the drop almost fall, but after a
         | few weeks of no visible movement it got dull.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _639-year-long John Cage organ performance has a long-awaited
       | chord change today_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24384140 - Sept 2020 (1
       | comment)
        
       | jdrc wrote:
       | "A pretentious piece of avant garde struggles to remain relevant"
        
       | da-bacon wrote:
       | Music for the thousanders from Anathem.
        
         | jacquesm wrote:
         | Interesting. Besides the fact that they would sing to
         | themselves but yes, when you live on a different time-scale you
         | probably would have entirely different musical art. Though I
         | personally do not think this is interesting and I suspect a
         | thousander wouldn't either, they seemed rather more complex
         | creatures.
        
       | elihu wrote:
       | Kind of a weird corner case for copyright law; a piece whose
       | copyright expires part way through the performance. Presumably it
       | expires (in the U.S.) 70 years after John Cage's death (1992 + 70
       | = 2062), but if it had instead been produced by a corporation and
       | the score wasn't published ahead of the performance, each portion
       | of the performance would presumably expire 95 years after that
       | portion first played. However, there's apparently also a rule
       | that corporate copyrights also expire 120 years after creation
       | regardless of when they were published.
        
         | b3morales wrote:
         | It's not really relevant. There isn't a copyright in the
         | performance itself, and if they had permission to start the
         | performance, then the expiry of the copyright certainly doesn't
         | _prevent_ them from finishing.
        
         | jancsika wrote:
         | If you can't even finish the piece before its copyright
         | expires, then the duration for copyright protection is _way too
         | short_!
         | 
         | Is there a list of edge cases like these collected somewhere?
         | E.g., this piece for music performance duration, avocados for a
         | high-fat content fruit, qmail's small issue list, etc. I'd like
         | to use it as a reference to sharpen my shitposting.
        
       | nonrandomstring wrote:
       | If nothing else this piece is optimistic.
        
         | replygirl wrote:
         | seems pretty cynical to me
        
           | nonrandomstring wrote:
           | By optimistic, I meant the idea that humans would be around
           | for 600 years.
        
       | zb wrote:
       | Any thread about this is incomplete without mentioning the
       | article about a note change in this performance by John Darnielle
       | (of the band the Mountain Goats, who is also a novelist):
       | https://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/there-are-other-forces-a...
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Incredible that Cage managed to provoke riots in his audiences
         | in 1974 and 1976.
         | 
         | Impressionists and modernists famously did so in earlier
         | generations but the mid-70s is astonishingly late for an art
         | riot. Among Buddhists in Boulder, no less!
        
       | saalweachter wrote:
       | Hmm, so imagine setting up dozens of organs, hundreds, maybe a
       | few thousand in a large circle.
       | 
       | You set them to playing ASLSP in, well, a round, each set to take
       | some long period of time to finish.
       | 
       | If you stand still, you'll hear it at it's ponderous pace, but if
       | you walk, run ahead of the music, it will go faster and faster;
       | if you reverse directions, it will slow down, stop, or even
       | reverse.
        
         | musingsole wrote:
         | Do you have a Kickstarter?
        
         | atoav wrote:
         | Organs are kinda expensive instruments, but if they just have
         | to play a few notes...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | anonymoushn wrote:
       | The page on the linked official web site has already link rotted
       | within a few months!
        
       | jmclnx wrote:
       | EDIT: hprotagonist beat me to this :) Took a while for me to find
       | the link. Ignore me
       | 
       | Interesting, will need to check it out.
       | 
       | Also there is https://longplayer.org/
       | 
       | which is on the same idea as this piece
        
       | cm2187 wrote:
       | "Art"
        
       | rubyist5eva wrote:
       | And I thought 20 minute prog rock songs were awesome.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | je_suis_music wrote:
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | If you play long enough, will you not at some point infringe
       | someone's copyright?
       | 
       | Or will the lawsuit take 639 years too?
        
         | Broken_Hippo wrote:
         | I'm pretty sure it would be considered fair use, even if it was
         | quite heavily influenced (and in some parts, taken) from a
         | work. It isn't like anyone is going to listen to the two pieces
         | and get them confused nor is any copyright holder going to lose
         | money because someone plays their song so slowly that most
         | folks just hear a single tone, even if they stay for days.
        
       | wintermutestwin wrote:
       | This version of Pyramid Song by Radiohead is slowed down 800% and
       | IMO it is amazing and beautiful.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiKWfcy-Z70
       | 
       | But then again, the source is an incredibly beautiful song which
       | has an interesting time signature and chord progression:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdZSOoOF5Ms
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKMAV8pvlOA
        
         | antiterra wrote:
         | Nearly anything sounds beautiful when it's spectrally smoothed
         | and lengthened 50x by Paulstretch, including the most
         | irritating pop song you can name off the top of your head.
         | 
         | http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/
        
           | wintermutestwin wrote:
           | Good point. I wonder how much of the beauty is due to the
           | interesting SW approach vs. the speed. Here is an interesting
           | discussion with the creator:
           | 
           | https://web.archive.org/web/20120217161857/http://www.micros.
           | ..
        
           | corporealfunk wrote:
           | I haven't played with Paulstretch, but it looks similar to
           | what Tom Erbe's "Soundhack" program did (windowed FFT with
           | overlap add resynthesis). Soundhack was originally written in
           | the late 90's and was used by the sound designers of The
           | Matrix.. anyhow. Soundhack is now defunct, but Tom released
           | the source and I ported the time stretching bit of the
           | software to Go if anyone's interested:
           | https://github.com/corporealfunk/gopvoc
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | pwython wrote:
         | This is great, I have to check out more slowed down songs. The
         | only other one I've heard is the Jurassic Park theme (-1,000%)
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX40crWTTYs
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | https://longplayer.org/about/overview/
       | 
       | longer duration, faster tempo
        
         | js8 wrote:
         | They could also play a superpermutation:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tpNuulTeSQ
        
         | 2143 wrote:
         | Let me add that this is scheduled to be completed on 31
         | December 2999, which is nearly 1000 years from now.
         | 
         | It began on 1 January 2000.
        
           | dahart wrote:
           | This piece and the Cage piece both began in 2000, and both
           | descriptions imply the turn of the millennium are an
           | important marker. So probably not many > 100 year pieces have
           | started since then, but maybe we'll get a new set in the year
           | 3000. Makes me curious if there are a bunch of unknown 100
           | year performances conceived around the turns of centuries.
           | 
           | Anyway, I like the Long Player's description of survival at
           | the end; even if the music seems silly, these are interesting
           | questions - "How does one keep a piece of music playing
           | across generations? How does one prepare for its
           | technological adaptability, knowing how few technologies have
           | remained viable over the last millenium? How does one
           | legislate for its upkeep? And how can one communicate that
           | responsibility to those who might be looking after it some
           | 950 years after its original custodians have perished?"
        
             | 2143 wrote:
             | I had read the portion you quoted and found it interesting
             | as well.
             | 
             | I've always been fascinated by long running processes. I'm
             | sure you might have heard about the Clock of the Long Now
             | [1] (Wikipedia article [2] seems more useful than the
             | official website), which is meant to work for 10000 years.
             | It's under construction, but their strategies to handle
             | adversities over a 10000 year period worth looking into.
             | 
             | Related to that, I've read about an attempt by a software
             | engineer presumably named Brandur who, inspired by the
             | aforementioned clock, has attempted to build a software
             | that would send out tweets for the next 10000 years [3].
             | While I personally feel it probably wouldn't succeed
             | because there's too many things that can go wrong, it was
             | nice to read the considerations that went into the program.
             | Perhaps more than tweeting for the next 10000 years itself,
             | Brandur was really trying to point out that it's difficult
             | to build long lasting software products.
             | 
             | Writing software that endures for a long time without too
             | much additional maintenance is something I'd like to do.
             | 
             | Another long running -- though in comparison to the above
             | much smaller -- group of equipments are the space probes
             | Voyager 1 (launched in 1977), Voyager 2 (1977) and New
             | Horizons (2006). Unless I'm mistaken they all continue to
             | function in limited ways and continue to send back data to
             | the earth. Isn't it mind-blowing that something that left
             | Earth about 45 years ago still works?! (Or maybe it's not
             | mind blowing because I guess space doesn't have as much
             | distrubances as the Earth).
             | 
             | I also like long running processes in nature. Comets are
             | one of them. Isn't it just so cool that some of them
             | actually (very likely) come from Oort cloud and their
             | orbits can take hundreds or even thousands of years?
             | 
             | Halley's Comet -- which has an orbital period of 76 years,
             | and whose appearances have been recorded by various people
             | in various places over the past couple of thousand years --
             | will show up again in 2061, nearly 40 years from now. I
             | sincerely hope I can see it then. Infact I have a calendar
             | reminder set up for it in 2061 July. Just in case I forget.
             | (The calendar program I currently use might die first. Or I
             | could be dead).
             | 
             | [1] https://longnow.org/clock/
             | 
             | [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now
             | 
             | [3] https://brandur.org/10000-years
        
       | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
       | Depending on the criteria, it may not be the longest piece ever.
       | 
       |  _* On July 10, 2014, the band [Bull of Heaven] released 305:
       | Hostages are Human Beings. On July 12, 2014, 303: n(k), 304:
       | 0(2^18x5^18) and 306: It is Not a Lack of Love were released. On
       | the very next day, they released several other tracks of various
       | lengths. By the time, 310: OSPx0(2^18x5^18)p*k*k*k is their
       | longest release, and lasts for 3.343 quindecillion years.*_
       | 
       | ref:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_of_Heaven_%28band%29#2014...
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-23 23:01 UTC)