1955
In his 1955 essay "Experimental Music: Doctrine" (published in the collection Silence by Wesleyan University Press), John Cage famously redefined "experimental" not as a descriptive term for a specific style, but as an act where the outcome is unknown. This doctrine served as a foundational philosophical anchor for Max Neuhaus, though Neuhaus eventually departed from it to establish the field of sound art.
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In short, for Cage, silence = noise, and not just any noise, but the hubbub of the whole audible world, the impersonal and anonymous sonic flux that precedes and exceeds us: “Until I die there will be sounds,” he remarked. “And they will con tinue following my death.
Excerpt from: Bibliography /Press / 2020 - Christopher Cox, Sound Art in America: Cage and Beyond. "Sound Art?" Publisher: MIT Press.