ANDY WEBSTER
What if Cage’s 4’33” - that meditation on stillness and ambient sound - were literally set in motion, transforming his exploration of silence into an absurd pilgrimage across the landscape?
Cage’s 4’33” asks audiences to sit motionless, listening to incidental sounds around a stationary piano. “Moosach Piano Roll” takes this premise and sets it in motion, pushing a piano down a rural German street for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The piano transforms into a musical tumbleweed crossing an empty landscape, converting Cage's static meditation into dynamic choreography. The reversal reveals: instead of silence punctuated by ambient noise, you get ambient noise punctuated by silence—the piano’s journey creates a moving soundscape that begins distantly, crescendos as it enters the frame, then fades as it disappears.
What happens when the thing meant to stay still becomes the thing that won't stop moving?
The work was developed with the support of the Kunstverein Ebersberg and Atelier Hubert Maier, Moosach, Bavaria, Germany [2022].