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May 6, 2007

520 free 'Best online documentaries'; Copyright on silence

I'm gardening today -- pruning and mulching, feeding compost to perennials. I was weeding my irises when a trying-to-be-helpful cat took a flying leap into the middle of them. Ouch.

If you're not outdoors, you might want to watch some smart movies:
Best online documentaries: They're all over the lot.

Here's a screenshot of the fly-out menu, with the Lifestyle/Society section expanded:

Noted: A Better Silence - John Cage and copyright, at Tux Deluxe.

Everybody knows that John Cage, the avant-garde composer, invented silence in 1952, with his famous piece 4'33", which was premiered on 29 August of that year.
4'33" consists of a musician (or musicians), not playing their instruments for four minutes and 33 seconds, and was intended as an ambient experience rather than four minutes and 33 seconds of silence - the music is the shuffling and coughing of the musician(s) and the audience and the background hum of the performance venue - the instructions are about the conducting of silence and the demeanor of the musician(s). ...

in 2002 a group known as The Planets ... topped the UK classical charts with an album called Classical Graffiti, which included a track called A One Minute Silence. The track, which is silent, is credited to Batt/Cage, which Mike Batt admitted was intended as a "tongue-in-cheek dig at the John Cage piece", although he later claimed that the credits referred to his previously unknown pseudonymous alter ego, Clint Cage.

This didn't escape the notice of Peters Edition who, acting on behalf of the Cage Estate, contacted Batt and claimed infringement of copyright. Peters Edition asked for a quarter of the royalties, presumably on the grounds that the duration of A One Minute Silence approximates to a quarter of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence...

Batt, however, claimed that his piece was qualitatively different because the recorded silence consists of the absence of noise, rather than the presence of ambient silence.

"I certainly wasn't quoting his silence. I claim my silence is original silence... Our's is better silence", he said, "it's digital. Their's is only analogue."

Mine is real, live and therefore more profound.

Back to the garden.

Posted by Sheila Lennon at 12:48 PM | Permalink