"so you could almost tell how many people are in the room"

Cage: Well the most important piece is my silent piece, 4'33".
Montague: That's very interesting. Why?
Cage: Because you don't need it in order to hear it.
Montague: Just a minute, let me think about that a moment.
Cage: You have it all the time. And it can change your mind, making it open to things outside it. It is continually changing. It's never the same twice. In fact, and Thoreau knew this, and it's been known traditionally in India, it is the statement that music is continuous. In India they say: "Music is continuous, it is we who turn away." So whenever you feel in need of a little music, all you have to do is to pay close attention to the sounds around you. I always think of my silent piece before I write the next piece.
John Cage at Seventy: An Interview, by Stephen Montague

'According to Cage, it was seeing Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings that finally convinced him he had to move forward with 4′33″. These paintings consist of a uniform layer of white paint on canvases. In the words of Cage, these paintings “were airports for shadows and for dust, but you could also say that they were mirrors of the air.”'
Ben Judson, Image and Sound: Rauschenberg and Cage



Reflecting the flux of that which surrounds, the blank or empty form is dynamic in its simplicity.
Pushing Paper, we will provide the tools, you make your mark.