The article gave me a good look into John Cage's life as well as his way of thinking on music and art making. I really appreciate his approach to art as being about play and exploration, which I also agree is such an important thing that should almost always be at the root of art making.
I also appreciate his experimentalism and how it paved the way for many conventions in music today. I think about a lot of the modern music that I listen to that utilizes things like electronic instruments and ambience; I feel like it is so, so common now for artists to sample environmental sounds like TV and radio, voice memos, keyboard typing, sounds from nature, or really any sounds from their lives and surroundings that they feel are significant enough to include in their music. John Cage's experimental pieces broadened the definition of music and challenged the public to be silent and listen to all sorts of sounds and reconsider their meaning.
A lecture that I am in this semester on Media Production and Practices also touched on the importance of experimentalism in regards to film, saying that it "questions the inherent nature of the medium '' and in doing so greatly expands the limits of said medium. Experimental film led the way to structures of editing, video aesthetics, and practices in animation and advertising that are considered conventional and commonplace today, even though they were deemed new, strange, and eccentric in the past; this parallels with Duchamp’s works leading to the ready-mades and found object sculptures of today, and Cage’s works leading to remix, non-traditional instruments, and many other things seen (or heard!) so frequently in music today. Experimenting is so vital and important for the constant evolution of art as a whole.
