Monday, October 27, 2014

In-Class Exercise - Imaginary Landscape No. 1

John Cage's piece, Imaginary Landscape No. 1, utilizes quite a few ambient sounds and short musical snippets in its composition. Unsettling buzzing sounds, echoes, sirens, and other vaguely electronic and mechanical noises are played throughout, and make the whole composition very ominous and unsettling. I hear the plucking of the strings of a musical instrument at times, adding a sort of anxious repetition and suspense to compliment the other noises of the piece. And though the sounds being played are not cacophonous, they get rather annoying and unsettling very quickly, due to their duration and consistency throughout.

The name of the piece makes me believe it's supposed to project some sort of wide expanse of a landscape in your head, and I imagine a very empty city or wasteland, and walking through it feeling very anxious and paranoid about what could be out there. It doesn't really reflect the sounds you would hear in the landscape, but rather the feeling from being there yourself. With that, I would characterize it as an art piece, with the sole purpose of making the listeners feel a certain way.

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