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Today we explore the mythology around John Cage’s visit to the anechoic chamber. The chamber was designed to completely eliminate echoes. Ironically, the tale of Cage’s experience in that space has echoed through history, affecting our understanding of silence, sound, and the self. But what do we really know about what happened there? And what could we ever know about such an event? In this audio essay, based on a piece that first appeared in the Australian Humanities Review, Mack Hagood explores the relationship between sound, self, and meaning-making. To use a term Cage loved, the truth is indeterminate. 

For our Patreon members we have bonus content: Mack’s “What’s Good” segment. Join at patreon.com/phantompower. 

Writing and media content featured in this episode: 

* Mack’s essay “Cage’s Echoes of the Anechoic,” in AHR Issue 70 (2022). 

* Nam June Paik’s 1973 video Global Groove 

* John Cage’s 1959 album with David Tudor, Indeterminacy 

* John Cage’s book Silence (Wesleyan, 1961).

* The video Can Silence Actually Drive you Crazy by Veritasium 

* Terry Gross’s 2014 Fresh Air interview with Trevor Cox 

* The album Naxi Live by Jang San and the Dayan Naxi orchestra 

* Shani Diluka’s performance of “Glassworks: Opening” by Philip Glass 

* Amit Pinchevsky’s book Echo (MIT, 2022)

* Helen Rees’ book Echoes of History: Naxi Music in Modern China (Oxford, 2011)

Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood. 

Original music and sound design by Mack Hagood. 

Special thanks to Monique Rooney and Australian Humanities Review. 

Transcript

[5:19]: Cages Echoes Of The Anechoic by Mack Hagood

Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power.

[Uberduck.ai Voice Generator]

Mack: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a show about sound in the arts and humanities. I’m Mack Hagood. 

And what you just heard are the words of John Cage, the legendary composer, performer, and theorist of music and sound and silence. But what you did not hear was John Cage’s voice. Instead, I typed his words into a machine learning text to speech generator called UberDuck.ai.