The truth we know

2012
Sally Rodgers + Steve Jones

Rodgers and Jones write, "In radio interviews between John Cage and Morton Feldman between 1966/67, the composers discussed the notion of intrusive sound. Feldman cited the buzzing of transistor radios on the beach as an example, but Cage countered that we should accept such sounds as the part of the reality in which the artist must practice—what John Ashbery described as ‘the truth we know’. Situated simultaneously in Paris and the UK, we constructed an audio work from found sounds and by utilising chance operations in homage to Cage’s ‘Radio Music’. Cultural detritus, both analogue and digital, gathered from unmarked tape spools found in a junk shop and from random surfing on YouTube, were processed according to our own inclinations and then combined in an exchange of files and ideas sent backwards and forwards via the Internet, which acted as the transmitting medium."