2012 | Site-responsive sound installation | 16 channels
2017 version | Site-responsive sound installation | 8 channels
September 5–October 31, 2012 | World premiere
Listening Gallery, ArtCenter/South Florida
800 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, Florida
Created at the invitation of Laura Kuhn, Director of The John Cage Trust, for the centennial of John Cage’s birth.
Sounding Through Empty Words IV (2017) | 7′54″ | Stereo mix of the eight-channel installation presented as part of LISTEN at 924 Project Space, ArtCenter/South Florida.
THE WORK
Sounding Through Empty Words IV was created for the Listening Gallery and opened on September 5, 2012, the hundredth anniversary of John Cage’s birth.
The source is an archival recording of Cage performing Part IV of Empty Words during the Subtropics 3 Festival in 1991. Cage constructed Empty Words through chance operations using material from the journals of Henry David Thoreau. By Part IV, conventional language has largely dissolved into letters, phonemes, short vocalizations and silence.
The recording was made by Steve Malagodi of WLRN-FM. I later mastered the archival recording, part of which was published on the CD Subtropics Vol. 1: Breath by Elegua Records.
For this installation, I did not use Cage’s voice simply as a document of his performance. Instead, his vocalizations became a changing force within a field of tones derived from the resonances of the Listening Gallery site.
Permission to use Cage’s voice and material from Empty Words was granted by C. F. Peters.
VOICE, RESONANCE AND SILENCE
I had already mapped the acoustical resonances of the approximately 160-foot ArtCenter/South Florida façade. From those findings, I composed a group of sustained sonorities aligned with the architecture and maintained them at an understated level.
Cage’s recorded voice controlled gates assigned to different channels. The gates were not allowed to close completely. Instead, the tones remained quietly present and became louder in the shape of his vocalizations.
When Cage’s voice entered, the resonant field rose with its shifting contours. During the silences in the performance—some lasting six or seven minutes—the tones gradually returned to their resting level but never disappeared.
The voice moved through the sixteen-channel system along the façade while the resonant tones remained mostly as a field beneath it. Cage’s sounds did not replace the architecture. They caused what was already quietly present within it to become more audible.
The installation operated continuously, as did all Listening Gallery programming, accompanying pedestrians along Lincoln Road and around the building’s façade.
THE 2017 VERSION
July 5–September 3, 2017
LISTEN
Subtropics 24
924 Project Space, ArtCenter/South Florida
Miami Beach, Florida
In 2017, I recomposed Sounding Through Empty Words IV for LISTEN, an exhibition of indoor orchestrations of works originally created for the outdoor Listening Gallery.
A new score of resonant frequencies was developed from the acoustics of 924 Project Space. Cage’s voice retained its function within the work, raising and shaping the resonant field, but the tones now belonged to the new room.
Unlike the extended line of speakers along the Listening Gallery façade, the eight speakers at 924 Project Space surrounded the listener from irregularly chosen positions. The work was played from eight-channel files stored on an SD card using a dedicated media player.
The 2017 version was therefore neither a replay nor a transfer of the original installation. The relationship among voice, resonance and silence remained, while the sounds and their spatial behavior were recalibrated for another architecture.
RELATED CENTENNIAL PRESENTATION: WATER WALK
The 2012 Centennial program also included an installation arrangement of Cage’s Water Walk.
Inside the long entrance vitrine at ArtCenter/South Florida, the score was drawn at a large scale across the wall. The instruments and objects called for in the work were arranged beneath their corresponding places in the score.
At the end of the vitrine, a television monitor showed Cage performing Water Walk on the television program I’ve Got a Secret in 1960, a video provided by The John Cage Trust.
CREDITS
Archival recording of John Cage: Steve Malagodi, WLRN-FM
Archival mastering: Gustavo Matamoros
2012 installation: Listening Gallery, ArtCenter/South Florida
Presented in cooperation with The John Cage Trust
Permission for the use of Empty Words IV: C. F. Peters
2017 installation: LISTEN, Subtropics 24, 924 Project Space