If you look at the link i put up on the first page, you can see the score, which is indeed divided into 3 pieces.

As far as music (or the sound that makes up music) being infinite, vibrations continue as long as there is a medium for them to travel through, be it air, water, etc. But if there isn't a medium for them to travel through, can they exist? I don't know, but i don't see how they could. So if the medium is finite, than the product too must be finite. Or if we go about it a different way, let's talk about the listener. The music lasts as long as the organized sound vibrates your timpanic membrane, etc. etc. and your brain interprets that sensory perception. Once the music is done, you percieve it to be done, so it too is finite.

And that's the coolest god damn thing about music and the medium of recordings, more so than any other art form to me. With alot of visual art, there's a sense of permanence and consistency. With the recorded medium, as a musician who records, yeah you can do it till it's as perfect as you can make it, but even when you're done, you go back and hear "mistakes". It's that moment in time, that sense of urgency and finiteness that is captured. And that's amplified even more with the live music experience, especially as a musician. You can hear Caruso on old recordings, but the audience members who experienced his talent are the only true testaments to his legend. Even more so with say a Paganini, or a Mozart, where the legacy lies through a genealogy of prodigious students. We can only wonder at what the original must have been to have handed down the knowledge to make such bad ass students who were the legends of their own times.

The finite and temporal nature of sound and music turns me on.

That's why they invented the rewind button.

As well, a recording made by a child is imbued with sentimentality, something that Cage's piece is completely devoid of.

Does art/music etc...

does it require intent?

I believe it does, but i'd be interested to see what others think.

I belive the purpose of art or music is to communicate an idea from the author to the audience through a medium.

From the artist through the art to the viewer, or from the composer through the performer to the listener, etc...

I believe the intent is the genesis of the organization that allows one to claim it as art or music.

Cage intended to communicate 'something' to the audience, whether it was the 'music' around us, or that he was a prankster getting the best of us, or to generate discussion on the very topics we're talking about here... who knows. But there was intent, and then there was organization, then the attempt was made by the composer through the performer(s) to an audience.

But anyhow, what do you think about the intent question?

Maybe it's sentimental to Cage. It IS his most famous piece.

If one considers the genealogy of a piece of music, like a piece of art, as a valid temporal extension of the original composition, then it becomes difficult to refute the possibility of music being infinite (within reason). I would maintain that a tape loop has a certain beginning, but could be allowed to continue indefinitely, and would be the closest thing to achieving infinite art (more so than an immortal painting, in that it is infinitely creating (even by repetition). I'm just saying it's possible.

Music is communication. Communication requires intent, regardless of whether that intent is properly transmitted or distorted in transmission, or ever even received.

I say yes, but the intent need not necessarily be perceived.

of course it requires intent. Well, here's how I see it. If you are planning on composing a piece in any medium you already have intent. You're intending to do something, to create something to fulfill your momentary desire. Even if that's all there is to it, that's your intent. Some work doesn't obviously convey any certain meaning which would cause a person to say it's not a work of art. The point i'm trying to make is that every human perceives a composition differently. Whether it be visual art, music, literature, etc. When one person says it has obvious meaning or intent within the work, another person could not. There is no solution to this answer, but what you believe yourself.

If a tape loop of a tree falling in the forest is infinitely looped, but all living organisms who might percieve it have either died out or evolved beyond needing a sense of hearing, does the infinite tape loop of the aforementioned tree make an infinite sound?

Or some shit like that. I fail to see how something can be infinite 'within reason'. It's either forever or it isn't.

so esh and cemetary belive that intent is essential...

is there anyone out there who believe that Cage didn't have intent? Or that he did, but it still isn't art/music?

I maintain that it's boring music.

I think it's funny that people still feel the need to label stuff like Cage's 4'33 or Duchamps urinal as "pretentious" or "gimmicky". Surely you realize that simply by doing this you are justifying their existence as commentary/discussion pieces on what can and cannot be considered art.

That's oversimplifying things a bit, but the way I see it these were more historical events in the development of Western art than they were masterworks intended to be admired. As Esh said, they were reactionary, and those reactions were a necessary part of a larger dialogue. If anyone were to do anything like this now, it would of course be pointless. They'd be saying something that's already been said, and nothing new could really be added without changing the basic point. It was something that happened in the past. We talk about it to understand it, and we move on. Unfortunately, there are always art students who think there's still justification to be doing this sort of thing.

This brings us to the intent part of the discussion. I didn't even scroll down so perhaps this is how it was brought up in the first place. Did the 5 year old know what he was doing? I would think he was a very smart child if he were to come up to me and say "Miss, i'm trying to prove a point. I believe there is no such thing as silence, because nomatter what there is always something there keeping humanity from that purity, and in order to prove this I will attempt to sit in complete silence and document this with my tape recorder and then I will see if I can prove my thesis."
Do you think a child thinks like that? No. That's why those stupid abstract paintings people think are so brilliant that a little child can do are not valid works of art in the sense of abstraction. They are valid as childish art, but does the child understand what they're doing? No, they do not. This makes their art work which may be beautiful, completely hollow. There is no real substance within the piece because there is no meaning or emotion put into it.

Anyways. What Cage did was simple, and anyone could have thought of it. But it was his idea, and he intended to prove his theory, and that he did.

Speaking of art, my current obsession is Lucien Freud. Jesus Christ.

Well, if you're still around when forever arrives, then you can prove infinity, without reason.

If the loop outlives anyone who can perceive it, then it's infinite by virtue of having beat us out, the only ones capable of dreaming up infinity.

7'14

All right, give me a recipe for an infinite loop. And while you're at it, i want a frictionless pulley. And my flying car that folds into a suitcase.

And a recording contract, or a job playing bass for someone that will allow me to quit teaching.

All pipedreams i say... pipedreams. Especially that damn frictionless pulley.

cemeterypolka, I think the intent arrives in how the child's recording is presented.

Conceptually it's possible. Admit it.

Maybe there's a Neptunes remix?

Yeah, I got so involved in the artistic aspects of my post, I kinda lost track of time.

I'll admit it's conceptually possible if you admit that it's still in your dreams.

I do dream of it.

But, of course, Disintegration Loops comes before infinity.

Sucker.

?

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-re ... oops.shtml

what, this horseshit? Of course it comes before infinity, it's only a four disc set.

so where's my frictionless pulley or my infinite loop?

C'mon, quit jawin' and get crackin'

What would be more artistic is if an orchestra performed this, and the conductor cut it short and berated the 2nd chair trumpet for coming in early.