Weirdness of Experiment

My job in ops has always been to keep things running. I never considered myself “working in software”, but have recently begun embracing the fact that I do. What I accomplish as an operations and infrastructure engineer is part of the system, it isn’t dislocated from its composition.

Relatedly, I have been considering the nature of the experiment in Chaos Engineering. How continuous verification is becoming a crucial part of the complex systems we build because there really is no end. Developing a software system isn’t just about writing it, it’s also every bit as much about running it. Unless there is some kind of evil catastrophic end-game planned from a volcano island hideout, most of us want to keep them running.

I’m big on experimental music. You probably know what I mean when I say that, but you might not because genres, in general, are horrible overgeneralizations. Similarly, after the composer John Cage had written his “silent piece” in 1952 (see also Living 4’33”), he seemed to have a struggle with the concept of calling the music composed by him and others he admired experimental.

In science, we often think of an experiment as a method to (dis)prove a hypothesis. We perform experiments to answer a question or assertion, often during the process of reaching an end goal. To Cage, this implied that calling something an “experiment” meant it was not complete, not finished. That there is a final state determined by products of the experimentation, and he thought that his (and others’) music was complete when performed. There was no “final state” that was decided as a result of an experiment either succeeding or failing, if it was itself called experimental.

Cage revised this view, however. He began embracing the term and actually ended up preferring it. The reason for this is the way he evolved to think about the context of sound. At the beginning of the decade, he experienced an anechoic chamber (an “echoless” room) and the non-presence of total silence, because he could hear both high and low sounds — explained to him by the engineer as his nervous system in operation and blood circulating, respectively. Whether or not that is physiologically probable, he had the now famous revelation that it is impossible to remove sound completely. 4’33” and an entire philosophy about the nature of sound and silence in music was not far behind.

To him then, the moniker experimental came to mean that which is undiscovered, because even if a piece of music requires certain sounds, environmental sounds are impossible to predict. This experimental music isn’t about the search for failure or success, but an experience of discovery, where questions become more interesting than answers. When applied to composition, each performance of a musical work is always new and different due to its context and sonic environment. Indeed, it is impossible to know ahead of time any structure of the interpenetrating sounds both intentional and not, themselves independent and unique (whether or not they are consonant). It is in fact in a total state of chaos, each and every time.

When complex systems run, they do so at the hand of indeterminacy and randomness. There certainly is a “steady state”, but it is continuously in need of verification. Just like Cage observing that no performance of a musical work is a repeat, the nature (structure and form) of distributed systems we operate cannot in truth be predicted with any kind of regularity.

So while it is useful to be very specific in defining and running our Chaos experiments, the nature of what we’re doing is more about asking questions and making discoveries, not testing for answers we already think we know or think we can guess. The “breaking things in production” mantra implies we are interested in failure when what we’re really interested in is what was determined and what questions arose, good or bad.

Appendix

Here are a couple of PDFs taken from Cage’s writing that highlight his viewpoint on the subject of “experimental music” as a title of what he did.

  • Experimental Music: Doctrine (1955) ::: This article, there titled Experimental Music, first appeared in The Score and I. M. A. Magazine, London, issue of June 1955. The inclusion of a dialogue between an uncompromising teacher and an unenlightened student, and the addition of the word ”doctrine” to the original title, are references to the Huang-Po Doctrine of Universal Mind.
  • Experimental Music (1957) ::: The following statement was given as an address to the convention of the Music Teachers National Association in Chicago in the winter of 1957. It was printed in the brochure accompanying George Avakian’s recording of my twenty-five-year retrospective concert at Town Hall, New York, in 1958.

The photo above is the album cover from a release by Craque called Meat Hacker.

Living 4’33”

I haven’t experienced Mute’s STUMM433 release yet, it’s not due out until May. The proceeds from its sale go to charities, so that’s a big huge plus for it already. Pulling big names like Depeche Mode and Moby will hopefully make for good sales.

This is also not the first time 4’33” has been “recorded” for the purpose of a record release and not as part of a live performance. Frank Zappa has done it, Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Band plus others, and some even got sued for it. However, this tweet from the John Cage Trust, of all places, put me on guard:

Immediately, I think… “cover”? How? What is this photo?

So once I start looking into this, I learn about the accompanying videos. The Laibach one featured on the Mute website (which cleverly includes a shot of the Cramps Caged/Uncaged homage from 2000) is a kind of short silent film. I imagine many (if not all) of the other videos will be similar. So it’s telling that they refer to it as a “cover” and use words like “interpolation” to describe this collection.

The terminology now makes sense to me. These are not performances of the original score, but takes on Cage’s own expansion of the idea that it could be performed as anything, at any time, for any duration (like the versions of 0’00” from Song Books). Presenting an alternative action during the “silence” of a representative version of 4’33” is not so much a reading of the score as it is an interpenetration of events. Which is fine, even enjoyable. Nevertheless, the very idea of 4’33” in the popular eye is surrounded in jokes and doubt, so it is ironically funny to think that a recording imparts the same sort of wonder that a live experience of it does.

Spoiler: it doesn’t.

In addition to witnessing it several times, I performed 4’33” at my undergraduate recital (on classical guitar!). Let me tell you… it is much more than just the sounds around you and what leaks in. It is a visceral experience that isn’t captured in a recording, where the very best of intentions can only pay tribute to the surreal actuality of sitting there, enduring the seconds as nothing happens. The tension in the audience is very VERY real. Sometimes funny, sometimes raucous, but regardless the performer must stay focussed. There is simply nothing that gives the work the heft that Mute describes without experiencing it firsthand.

As a kind of funny postscript… when I was near the end of my time in grad school, where I rigorously studied voice and Cage’s music, I was asked to participate in a production of Theater Piece, a work of simultaneous but unrelated events. Somehow, CF Peters (the sole publishers of Cage’s scores) heard of this production, that I was involved, and assuming me responsible tracked me down to demand royalties be paid for staging the piece. Except – for once – I wasn’t staging it, I was merely performing, and explained as much. I wonder… had I said we weren’t performing Theater Piece, only doing a cover of it, if they would have left us alone. 😉

Finally, I recommend No Such Thing As Silence: John Cage’s 4’33” by Kyle Gann if you’re curious about the mythology around this composition. It is far from my “favorite” piece of Cage’s but is assuredly the most important in American musical culture.

Ubuweb posts Greenaway’s 4 American Composers

Back in the mid 90’s before I ever got into techno music, I owned the original VHS copy of Peter Greenaway’s 1983 release 4merican Composers (natch, “Four American Composers”) and watched it constantly while in music school; I think I probably saw the Cage movie no less than 10 times.

As a honorable musicologist is want to do, I lent my copy out to a friend who had never heard of any of them, but then never got it back because of moving across the country. So I’ve been searching high and low for higher quality versions of these videos.

It is way out of print, but you can still find the VHS version… they’ve been released on DVD in Europe, but only in PAL format. In the digital age, this is unacceptable for me, so I finally came across someone who ripped the videos and I now have – albeit in relatively lowres VHS-sourced AVI files – all four on my iPod. The quality is what you’d expect from a 30-year old VHS tape, but it’s not horrible.

I’ve been struggling about whether to post them myself, but today Ubuweb has answered my prayers and posted all of them for me (lo and behold, the quality is no better than my collected AVI files, I suspect they may have procured them from the same source).

So here they are, I highly recommend… they are the greatest films about avant garde music you’ll ever find anywhere: