Well, Orwn, the point of 4'33" as I understand it was to have a "performance silence" in order to throw into relief all those ambient sounds that otherwise might not penetrate our awareness (a bit of a bold assumption, that). Cage didn't surround the silence with something manufactured by him; his idea was that people would hear whatever was around at the time. Similarly, you could take your laptop to the park or library and permit the splendid blankness of my poem to throw lots of varied visual stimuli into intriguing relief. I don't see why it's any sillier in principle than Cage's idea.
When are people going to start taking me seriously?
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