reading blog #2

In this article, author David Dunn discusses the foundations of what society considers music, and how historical figures such as Jacques Attali, John Cage, Edgard Varese, and Pierre Schaeffer aim to distinguish music in regard to what pitch and harmony truly embody. With this, we see music interpreted as the everyday sounds of life, and how we as a society view them. John Cage thought of music as societal norms and social codes that are categorized and defined by rules and tradition. The goal of John Cage’s work in the mid 1950s was to “abstract” the sounds and let them flow in their natural state. Along with this, Dunn demonstrates how his work was created to connect human society with nature in the form of sounds. Dunn’s goal in contrast to Cage is to engage in the nature of the sound itself while viewing each sound as its own “conscious living system”. Dunn conducted experiments involving sound such as the mimicry of hummingbirds and a mountainous nature sit. He then later relates soundscapes to the art of photography, which then becomes phonography, and how it is ultimately documenting natural scenes of life that will one day be forgotten. Dunn then begins to discuss the two works of phonography that changed his view on the form of art itself: The Lion in Which the Spirits of the Royal Ancestors Make Their Home and Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond. Through experimentation and opening the mind to limitless ideas of the world and nature, one can successfully begin to understand the beauty of sound.