John Cage and the aesthetic pedagogy of chance & silence

Abstract The composer, author, and teacher, John Cage, was exercised by our ‘inability’ to truly listen when approaching sound. In exploring the influences on Cage’s avant-garde style, specifically the spiritual discipline found in both Zen Buddhism and Chance operations, this paper attempts to distinguish his philosophy (and use) of silence and chance as an aesthetic pedagogy. In accordance with Dewey’s aesthetic theory and Shusterman’s Somaesthetics, resolving the inability to listen is aesthetically conceived as somatic ‘attuning’ to the occurrence of chance sounds in the ambience of the world. By maintaining Cage’s spiritually informed approach as a compositional framework, this paper highlights how his philosophy of silence is pedagogically illustrative of the active engagement we can have with the world. This approach is most apparent in Cage’s 4’33”, where the ‘musicalizing’ of everyday sounds erodes the boundaries between art and life, creating a continuity with the world. Somewhat problematically, Cage attempted to make this possible by channelling experience into a state of immersion, unifying art and life by ‘letting go’ of subjectivity. But as is shown by the Fluxus artists who were inspired by Cage’s teachings, the possibility for negotiating Cage’s terms brings with it an opportunity to theoretically reflect on the educational processes that underpin Cage’s approach to sound.


Introduction
Cage's pedagogical reputation has proceeded from teaching at The New School for Social Research (1950, to now where appraisal is found in his experimental approach to music educational practice (Chapman Hill, 2018;Peters, 2018).Because Cage embodied an artistic style and philosophy drawn foremost from Zen-Buddhism (Blom, 1998;Doris, 1998;Haskins, 2014;Larson, 1999Larson, , 2012) ) and Chance operations (Cage, 1986(Cage, , 1989;;Haskins, 2014;Peters, 2018), he appeals to scholars for thinking and rethinking music, sound and education.In 'John Cage and the 'Freshening' of Education' (2018), Peters reviews what could be learnt from twentieth century avant-garde pedagogical practices such as Cage and Schonberg's.Specifically, exploring how their 'revolutionary' and 'innovative' methods of musical composition gave them reputable status as teachers, therefore, presenting some 'reflections' on the position and role of the music teacher (Peters, 2018).Similarly, in 'A "Sound" Approach: John Cage and Music Education' (2018), Chapman Hill explores the curricular and practical merits of Cage's wider embrace and play of sound, and how it encourages students to become more musically experimental in the classroom.It is contended that by promoting a diverse range of musical genres and styles, he not only develops the relationship that students have with music education, but also brings the opportunity to expand the musical curriculum (Chapman Hill, 2018).Both illustrate the far reaching practical and pedagogical value of Cage's work, and how it can inform music education, arts education and curriculum reform.
Peters' article is a useful starting point when thinking about the aesthetic pedagogical qualities of Cage's work.He initially draws parallels between Nietzsche and Cage in reference to Nietzsche's On the Future of Our Educational Institutions (1909), which 'is above all else concerned with listening, not to what is said but, rather, to what remains unsaid in the said (sotto voce) and then what is yet beyond (or other than) that' (Peters, 2018, p. 2).Peters notes that Nietzsche's claim of Listening to what is 'unsaid in the said' , is applicable to Cage's approach to sound: the self-appointed task of Cage […] was to teach people how to listen: not to his "teachings" (he didn't have a "teaching" as such) and certainly not to his music or even music in general, for that matter.No, for him music (as it is normally heard) is precisely what gets in the way of listening (Peters on Cage, 2018, p. 3).
Whilst Peters acknowledges that Cage expanded the 'zone of listening' , eroding away the mastery dynamic between teacher/student, his description of Cage's method as a 'process' goes no further in explaining what that process consists of.In what follows, this article does not consider Cage's pedagogy in terms of 'teaching' , but rather, the process of how his approach embodies an aesthetic pedagogical dimension found in his utility of silence and chance.Demonstrated by Cage's 4'33" (1952), it is shown how an exposition of 'what remains unsaid in the said' , pedagogically resolves the inability to truly listen.
It is worth noting that the status of 4'33" as a musical composition is not without contention.As Forrest (2013) highlights, there is debate to 'whether 4'33" is considered a musical composition or an example of 'sound art'' (Forrest, 2013, p. 614).Scholars such as Kania (2010) maintain that it is better understood as 'sound art' , because it is the production of 'sounds for what we might call artistic or aesthetic appreciation' (Kania, 2010, p. 348).This aesthetic dimension is not to be overlooked, and will contribute to the pedagogical implications of the piece.However, for the majority of this paper, 4'33" is understood as a composition for the reason of it being widely recognized as such and having its own score.In examining how Cage's main influences inspired his approach to sound, his synthesis of Schonberg's teachings on compositional discipline, with the spiritual discipline found in both Zen Buddhism and I Ching, or 'Book of Changes' , cultivated a spiritually-informed, compositional framework.It is maintained that Cage's use, and philosophy of chance and silence within this framework was motivated by his ambition of eroding the boundaries between art and life, pedagogically presenting sound(s) as individual auditory moments in time.In 'Changing Cage' , from Blom's essay 'Boredom and Oblivion' (1998), the erosion of boundaries between art and life is theoretically framed as 'immersion' .Considering Cage strived for immersion, Blom demonstrates how his spiritual framework operated in his approach.Drawing on Cage's key texts, accompanied by Dewey's Art as Experience (1934), and Shusterman's Somaesthetics from Thinking Through the Body (2012); it is shown how the immersive bearing of chance and silence, cultivates an aesthetic engagement with the world.Experience in this sense, comes to be understood as what Higgins (2002) calls, continuity with the world.As Cage turns aesthetic focus to the musicalizing of everyday sounds, he pedagogically propagates an approach to truly listen.Lastly however, Blom (1998) again, uncovers the problems of approaching Cage, exposing the ambiguity of immersion and its complex relationship with subjectivity.Nonetheless, it is observed that many Fluxus artists reworked and developed approaches by negotiating Cage's terms.Therefore, recognising the negotiability of Cage's approach, 'opens up' possibility for exploring the aesthetic pedagogical dimension of his work.

Compositional influences: Cage's education in spiritual discipline
During his studentship with Schonberg in the 1930s, Cage was fascinated by the 'strict style' Schonberg developed in his 12-tone method.As a result, although Cage emphasized a 'none-lawlike' approach, discipline is recognized as an underlying principle to his compositions (Peters, 2018).This is most visible in the relationship Cage cultivated between discipline and listening, as 'much of his own teaching was concerned with exposing and rectifying this inability to 'hear'' (Peters, 2018, p. 5).Cage's concern towards attention and discipline was notably affirmed by his engagement with Zen Buddhism.Following an introduction to Zen Master D.T. Suzuki, Cage's life changed; as Larson puts it, 'the turning was not the acoustic.It was a whole body-and-mind transformation' (Larson, 1999).Cage learnt that through Zen the ego 'could free itself from its likes and dislikes, taste and memory, and flow with Mind' (Cage, 1986, p. 177).This disciplining of the mind (or ego) was philosophically instrumental to Cage's approach to sound.In 'Aspects of Zen Buddhism as an Analytical Context for John Cage's Chance Music' Haskins notes that 'John Cage often stated that he wanted to listen to sounds in themselves, disregarding their possible relationships to each other.This position manifested his particular interest in Zen Buddhism, which claims that each individual phenomenon in the universe is equally important' (Haskins on Cage, 2014, p. 616).
Zen characterised Cage's belief that the removal of subjective assumptions the ego brought with it would allow for the possibility to reconceptualize sound as non-relational.Each sound's intrinsic value and continuity could then be experienced.
A similar doctrine is found in chance operations; an experimental technique where 'the very idea of a 'mistake' would quickly become anathema to Cage once acceptance of everything that chance offered became his guiding principle' (Peters, 2018, p. 4).Chance came to Cage from yet another encounter with a spiritual philosophy deriving from the ancient Chinese I Ching, translating as Book of Changes, which held forms of sortition by divination.As with Zen, Cage discovered in the I Ching 'a discipline of the ego.It facilitates self-alteration and self-expression' (Cage, 1986, p.178).This manifested musically for Cage in the development of 'a complicated composing means using I Ching chance operations, making my responsibility that of asking questions instead of making choices' (Cage, 1989, p. 242).Chance, for Cage, was as much about self-alteration as it was about sound, exercising discipline to depart from choice-making was his methodology for surrendering to what unfolded by chance.Attention was therefore placed on asking questions of what could be instead of choosing what can be.

Taking a moment; Cage's framework for a pedagogical 'aesthetic of silence'
Cage's turn to a spiritual discipline grounded in Zen and I Ching projected his philosophy from not just doing, but being; an embodied approach to sound.Because of this embodiment, it compelled Cage to make it his task to reorientate normative assumptions of sound and pedagogically bring attention to the act of listening.He promoted 'listening to music as momentary events in a constantly changing flux; [as]… concentrating too much on the relations obtained between sounds or combinations of sounds seems bound up with his fear that such intellection blunts the volatile nature of individual sounds' (Haskins on Cage, 2014, p. 618).
Whilst music is conventionally made of sounds bound in relation by harmony, tempo and tone, Cage resisted this logic.In his thinking, it degraded the value of each sound as it would become 'drowned out' by its timely counterpart.Cage's undertaking of chance and Zen prioritized attention to individual sounds as 'momentary events' , moving away from what music conventionally was and is.To this end, he 'imposed as a framework a measure of time and declared that whatever incidental sound occurs within this framework is a piece of music.With Cage came the notion that duration, sound and silence, rather than harmony, rhythm and melody, are the foundation blocks upon which musical experience is structured' (Doris, 1998, p. 96).This framework pedagogically orchestrated the listener's attention to individual sounds, attempting to reconcile Cage's concern of the inability to truly listen.
Cage employed this framework to his work on Silence.Silence spiritually, educationally and philosophically is considered rather profound, as 'throughout the history of civilization, great thinkers, artists and writers have paid particular attention to the subject of silence, deliberating the entanglements between language, action and thought' (Li, 2020, p.759).Consequently, silence has come to be understood as either 'the complete absence of sound or as the state or period of being quiet or not speaking, implying the two major types of silence-the natural and the intentional' (Li, 2020, p. 759).Predominantly, the intentional has remained at the forefront of philosophical enquiry; Forrest (2013), for instance, observes that 'tradition has it that silence alludes to wisdom and is the path to it.The search for wisdom or enlightenment has been connected with practices of silence believed to help one withdraw from worldly concerns' (Forrest, 2013, p. 607).Similarly, Caranfa (2006) specifically frames an 'aesthetic of silence' in pedagogical terms.Affirming the idea of silence being the path to wisdom, he states 'an aesthetic of silence teaches to listen in a way that makes possible the integration of the moral, the intellectual and the spiritual dimensions of our life' (Caranfa, 2006, p. 98).As listening is the imperative of an 'aesthetic of silence' , this notion articulates well what Cage wanted from his spiritual-informed framework.Whilst traditionally, 'the primary reason for admitting the existence of musical silence is that silences, in the form of rests, are integral parts of musical items such as melodies and movements' (Kania, 2010, p. 343); in Cage's view, 'musical silence' was something more profound, it was 'opening the doors of the music to the sounds that happen to be in the environment' (Cage, 1961, p. 8).Cage presents intentional silence as a form of wisdom; it teaches a way to listen to the world; a turning away from musical convention and turning to the musicalizing of the surroundings.
This was fundamental, as by distorting the boundary between listener and environment exposed the idea that 'there is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time.There is always something to see, something to hear' (Cage, 1961, p. 8).For Cage, silence held the proposition of what music could be, he believed that music was everywhere as sound was everywhere.Therefore 'in musical terms, any sounds may occur in any combination and in any continuity' (Cage, 1961, p.8). Silence was the condition that allowed chance to happen, as 'silence is associated with unknown consequences' (Forrest, 2013, p. 608).The unknown is full of infinite possibility, and Cage 'had learned by using chance operations […], given a set of sounds and a structure built on lengths of time, any arrangement of the sounds and silences would be valid and interesting' (Pritchett et al., 2012, p. 5).This was the premise of Cage's spiritually-informed, compositional framework, it was his means of pedagogically presenting what Caranfa calls an 'aesthetic of silence' .

4'33": Teaching the immersion of silence
4'33" was the manifestation of such endeavour.Though part of his inspiration for the piece came from Rauschenberg's White Paintings (1951), a series of blank canvases, much followed from his experience in the anechoic chamber at Harvard university in 1951.It was here, where Cage described he 'heard that silence was not the absence of sound but was the unintended operation of my nervous system and the circulation of my blood' (Cage, 1989, p. 243).At the premier of the composition, David Tudor walked onto the stage at the Maverick Concert Hall, Woodstock, New york and performed Cage's 'silent' piece.Sitting at the piano, he opened and closed the key lid to indicate the beginning and end of each three parts (or movements), without playing a single key or sound.It was the replication of the anechoic chamber, as by conducting silence in the concert hall, occupied attention to the unintended operations in the surroundings.Cage observed, 'you could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement.During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out' (Cage in Ross, 2010).These three movements were the 'measure of time' to Cage's framework, the 'incidental' , chance sounds that occurred within the duration of 4 min and 33 s were what Cage declared as music.Sounds from the environment were the focus point of Cage's aesthetic of silence, by making these sounds the subject of attention, was his attempt to break down the boundaries between art and life.
The deep-rooted practice of Cage's framework can philosophically be understood by Blom's (1998) conception of 'immersion' .Blom frames Cage's erosion of the boundaries between art and life, in terms of what Dick Higgins' called an 'immersive ideal of art' , from his essay 'Boredom and Danger' (1966).For Higgins, immersion was a way to describe his work, like many artists from Fluxus that had been taught by Cage (Blom, 1998).Immersion is where the 'cognitive boundaries dividing self and work or work and surroundings might, temporarily, fade out or be displaced' (Blom on Higgins, 1968, p. 63).In his aesthetic of silence, Cage strived for immersion; the fading of boundaries between audience and the surroundings was 'an attempt to formulate the possibility of, in one sense or another, getting "lost"' (Blom, 1998, p. 63).In theory, this getting 'lost' made the 'divide between subject and object as uncertain or shifting, deframing the subject's 'outlook' on to the world' (Blom, 1998, p. 63).For Cage, immersion was the full integration of the listener within experience.Instead of there being artwork and spectator, sound and listener, immersion shifted this dualism, unifying them as one.This was all set on the terms of Cage's spiritual discipline; 'of a universal letting go of ego, a fundamental state of 'zero' that will allow all points of experience to enter into a free play of multiplicities' (Blom, 1998, pp. 63-64).As the disciplining of mind came into play, it would cultivate a 'zero' state of mind, what Blom calls 'oblivion' .
This notion of oblivion aligned with what Haskins (2014) states as 'one of Cage's foundational Zen ideas is emptiness, or Śūnyatā, which he variously described as silence and nothing' (Haskins, 2014, p. 617).A state of 'zero' was clearing the mind of egoistic tendencies; 'self-reflexive moments such as those produced by memory, knowledge, repetition, and so on, must be avoided at all costs' (Blom, 1998, p. 63).By doing so harboured a state of readiness, to accept sound for however it unfolded.Cage's work on silence was his closest testament to the immersive ideal; in Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961), a state of 'zero' is understood as a 'giving up of everything that belongs to humanity-for a musician, the giving up of music' (Cage, 1961, p. 8).By the 'giving up' of subjective assumptions of music, experience opens to the multiplicity of sound found in silence.From then, 'it is realized that sounds occur whether intended or not, one turns in the direction of those he does not intend' (Cage, 1961, p. 8).This turning to silence and its unintentional operations, 'leads to the world of nature, where, gradually or suddenly, one sees that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together; that nothing was lost when everything was given away' (Cage, 1961, p. 8).In its immersion, Cage's aesthetic of silence was to unite human/world duality, where the free play of the unintentional curated by chance and silence, pedagogically brings attention to the immediate world as it is.In this unified moment, not only the boundaries between art and life are distorted, but also what exists as music, and what exists as sound.

An acoustic rethinking: The aesthetic education of silence, bringing 'continuity with the world'
With all that 4'33" might philosophically achieve, its general reception is summarised by Grove Music as 'Cage's most famous and controversial creation' (Pritchett et al., 2012, p. 5).Its controversy may be the reason as to why it is easy to distinguish its pedagogical appeal.Afterall, the aesthetic of silence that 4'33" maintains, renounced conventional, musical sensibility and demonstrated how normative assumptions of music, 'get in the way' of listening.Given that Cage's engagement with Zen directed part of his compositional output, his aspiration for 4'33" to hold attention is Zen-like practice itself.It compels a contemplation, which, at the beginning, may be familiar to what Regelski (2005) calls, a 'theory of appreciation based on connoisseurship as aesthetic or otherwise disinterested contemplation for its own sake' (Regelski, 2005, p. 22).In describing 4'33" as 'sound art' , Kania (2010) holds similar sentiment; 'Cage's point in writing the piece was to draw our attention to the ambient sounds of our environment […] partly as a reminder that they are ever present, despite our usual attitude of ignoring them, and partly as a case for their aesthetic interest' (Kania, 2010, p.347).Though 4'33" might be maintained as an aesthetic spectacle because of its tendency to instigate a form of aesthetic contemplation, its bearing towards an aesthetic of silence, makes this contemplation more pedagogically rooted.as Forrest (2013) states; 'the contemplative practice of silence has much to commend' (Forrest, 2013, p.612).4'33" galvanizes a contemplation that succeeds aesthetic connoisseurship.Recounting from the BBC Symphony Orchestra's performance of 4 '33" in 2004'33" in , Larson (2012) ) illustrates such contemplation; 'The hall is one body, one mind.Everyone is awake and full of questions.What is this silence?Why is it so riveting?And what do we make of it?'(Larson, 2012, p. XV).In her analysis of 4'33", Forrest (2013) presents possible answers to such Socratic questioning, contending it 'provokes one to ask if it is music at all, which requires a consideration of how music is defined and what kinds of sound belongs in that category.One may dismiss 4′33" as sheer gimmickry; or, one may wonder why so-called 'musical' sound is prized above the ambient sound around it' (Forrest, 2013, p. 614).As 4'33" arguably achieves a form of the immersive ideal in unifying experience as 'one body, one mind' , its controversial approach brings 'what remains unsaid' into focus.4'33" achieved what Cage wanted in silence; a turn away from normative assumptions of sound and a turn to the infinite possibilities found in the aesthetic of ambient sounds, an educational rethinking, in silence.
This turning to the infinite possibilities of ambient sounds, is experience in its authenticity.In Art as Experience (Dewey, 1934), the most authentic aesthetic experiences are one's closest to the real world.Dewey frames this as 'the actual world, that in which we live, is a combination of movement and culmination, of breaks and re-unions, the experience of a living creature is capable of esthetic quality' (Dewey, 1934, p. 16).Through silence, Cage made the authenticity of the world his subject matter; the continuity of chance sounds and their unintentional operations, mirrors the 'movement' , 'breaks and re-unions' that happen in the world and everyday life.Experience in this sense, becomes one of 'heightened vitality […] Instead of signifying being shut up within one's own private feelings and sensations, it signifies active and alert commerce with the world; at its height it signifies complete interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events' (Dewey, 1934, p. 18).This kind of interpenetration arrives from what Haskins calls, Cage's 'Buddhist-informed esthetics' (Haskins, 2014, p. 618).Suzuki himself connected the Zen term 'Dharmadhatu' to unobstructedness and interpenetration (Haskins, 2014).By the workings of Cage's spiritually-informed compositional framework, his strive to the immersive 'free play of multiplicity' marks the interpenetration of the unobstructed union of sounds, audience, and everyday life existing 'in this world together' .It constitutes an experience that permeates what Higgins (2002) calls, 'continuity with the world' , which 'refers specifically to this transactional, interpenetrative framework […] In this sense, experience is neither ahistorical nor uncontextual; rather, experience is simultaneously embedded in human consciousness' (Higgins, 2002, p. xiiii).As 4'33" engages the audience with the world around them, the auditory breaking of boundaries between art and life brings continuity with the world.Experience in this sense, is simultaneously embedded by making real life, art.

4'33": Composing an aesthetic pedagogy of chance & silence
Whilst Dewey's framing of the authentic demonstrates Cage's interpenetrative engagement of continuity with the world, Shusterman's Somaesthetics illustrates the process to how 4'33" pedagogically engages the listener.As somaesthetics is the reception of information concerning the sensations of the body (Shusterman, 2012), Reed in The Necessity of Experience (1996), describes such sensations as 'ecological information' .Information concerned with 'looking, listening, feeling, sniffing, and tasting-the information, in other words, that allows us to experience things for ourselves' (Reed, 1996, p. 2).Given that ecological information is central to somaesthetics, by making sensations of the body the essence of experience, means bringing 'aesthetics closer to the realm of life and practice' (Shusterman, 2012, p. 140).Specifically, it 'entails bringing the body more centrally into aesthetic focus, as all life and practice-all perception, cognition, and action-is crucially performed through the body' (Shusterman, 2012, p. 140).4'33" is not just the performance of ambient chance sounds; it is also the educational performance of the listener.Whilst the continual auditory unfolding of the world is the subject, it is the bodily performance of listening that becomes the aesthetic focus.This makes tangible a means to 'explore the world for ourselves' (Reed, 1996, p. 3).By placing the aesthetic focus on listening, 'there is no limit to the possibilities of exploration and discovery' (Reed, 1996, p. 3).Cage's exposition of chance and silence pedagogically illustrated this limitless possibility, as he showed no limit to sound, as sound is found everywhere in the world.
'Limit' is the subject here, and 4'33" arguably exemplifies what Shusterman calls 'limit-experiences' .Expressed in having value 'not simply in their experiential intensity that seems related to the intense sublimities of aesthetic experience but in their power to transform us by showing us the limits of our conventional experience and subjectivity and introducing us to something fascinatingly powerful beyond those limits' (Shusterman, 2012, p. 143).The 'experiential intensity' of Cage's immersive silence forgoes conventional experience and subjectivity, it yields a fascination where there was not before; 'Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise.When we ignore it, it disturbs us.When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.The sound of a truck at fifty miles per hour.Static between the stations.Rain.We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sound effects but as musical instruments' (emphasis added : Cage, 1961, p. 3).By the fascinating sublimities of Cage's 'Buddhist-informed aesthetics' , 4'33" presents the continuous unfolding of everyday life and the authenticity of the world.In doing so, it erodes away any boundary existing between sound and listener, making what it means to truly listen the aesthetic focus.
It might be said then, that silence is the pedagogical path to the authentic; as Caranfa ( 2006) states, 'the silent educational moment is not only transitive, authentic, and free, but also ecstatic' (Caranfa, 2006, p. 99).Because of the sublime, transformative aesthetic moment that 4'33" possesses, its intentional silence means that 'though no words are spoken, no teaching is taking place, and no understanding is revealed in our silent encounter with the world, we still learn many things.We learn, for example, to contemplate or to listen to its wonders, and to participate creatively in its continuous unfolding' (Caranfa, 2006, p. 100).This invitation to participate by listening to the worlds 'continuous unfolding' is exactly why Cage's aesthetic of silence is inherently educational, as 'learning based on an aesthetic of silence is intensely practical and is ecstatic.It is ecstatic not because its method is one of detachment but rather because it is one of involvement' (Caranfa, 2006, p. 100).Given that Cage's compositional framework of chance and silence derives from a spiritual discipline, 4'33" interpenetrative nature exhibits an involvement from both the listener and the world.By the somaesthetic performance of listening, the audience participate in the world's immersive, auditory unfolding; contemplating what is heard, as their own 'private feelings and sensations' (or subjectivities), are met with the infinite continuity of ambient sounds.In this pedagogical, (to take Carantha's word) 'ecstatic' moment, subject and object, art and life, listener and sound, all merge, authentically existing as one phenomenon.

Limitless possibility or limited possibility?
As Cage devoted his approach to sound from an education of eastern spiritual practices, for Blom, it is because of such devotion 'to the transcendental universality and maybe also formalism of a certain strain of modern art that his principle of free play 'automatically' extends from theory of art to a general social philosophy, without excess and without resistance' (Blom, 1998, p. 64).Though this might be the case, in addressing 'Changing Cage' , Blom (1998) highlights the pragmatic ambiguity and prescriptive tendencies found in his spiritual-informed discipline, which makes approaching his notion of immersion problematic.Revealing the question of whether one can really experience an infinite musicality of sound, or whether such aspiration is too limited to the possibility of immersion itself.Foremost in Cage's world, the life-art question is the one fundamental question of immersion.And because subjectivity is, from the outset, the category that must be transcended in this notion of immersion, the life-art boundary must disappear universally, without regard for how or on what terms different kinds of 'memories' or subjectivities may even come to formulate such a division or its eventual upheaval.(Blom, 1998, p. 64) The problem is, that since immersion relies on the transcendence, or 'letting go' of subjectivity, it is subjectivity itself; one's memories, knowledge, or perceptions, that essentially determines immersion's possibility.But the issue of subjectivity is complex, as if 'the musicalising of any sound can only happen through a mind that is -on principle and in universal terms -set to the measure of zero' (Blom, 1998, p. 64), then there is risk of becoming completely lost, because there are no boundaries or subjective points of reference to guide the educational experience.As Chapman Hill (2018) expresses, in completely 'clearing' the mind of music 'and focusing only on music's sonic properties […] limits the musical experience as much as failing to attend to them does' (Chapman Hill, 2018, pp. 49-50).Though a 'zero' mindset is necessary for Cage, it limits focus exclusively to the sonic spectacle of music or sound, rather than its interplay with subjectivity, which, as a whole, consolidates experience.But where does this leave the possibility of immersion?The precariousness of 'zero' raises questions of where one's subjectivity stands in relation to immersion.
Although Cage was claimed to be 'central' to many ideas of Fluxus (Higgins, 2002), many Fluxus artists encountered similar problems in his approach.Consequently, they strayed 'far behind the structured confines of Cage's multiplicity' (Blom, 1998, p. 64), often lacking the 'quality which Cage emphasised most of all -notably spiritual discipline or virtuosity, as expressed by the zero 'a priori'' (Blom, 1998, p. 64).An education in spiritual discipline like Cage's would never be so universally operative to Fluxus, as they themselves struggled to find much consensus on what they did (Higgins, 2002).Therefore when approaching ways of composing immersive practices, Fluxus artists 'seem to reformulate, rework or reappropriate some of the most central but also most difficult and problematic assumptions underpinning the music of John Cage' (Blom, 1998, p. 63).In consideration of this 'reworking' , many artists 'were working out practices of immersion precisely by realising the necessity of negotiating its terms' (Blom, 1998, p. 65).Negotiating the terms of immersion, or even, negotiating the terms of Cage is the main concern here, as Bloms states, 'what is the space, situation, context, possibility of immersion?'Changing Cage' might have been a way of dealing with the fact that the space of immersion could not be formulated without an engagement with, and through, borders and limits-cages-of all sort' (Blom, 1998, p. 65).There is a lot to consider when approaching the educational implications of Cage's work, though he attempted to keep immersion in line with a spiritual discipline, the conditions are not fixed tangibles.A zero mindset cannot be left to chance in an educational moment.Nonetheless, just as Fluxus artists negotiated Cage's terms, the engagement with these boundaries and limits, is what makes possible the theoretical inquiry to the roots of his work.

Conclusion
Whether describing 4'33" as an aesthetic spectacle, or 'sound art' , it demonstrates Cage's provocative challenge to conventional nuances surrounding music and sound.As Cage embodied a spiritual discipline, informing his framework for practice, such challenge pedagogically conducted an acoustic rethinking.4'33" is illustrative of such praxis, it shows the scope that silence and chance have in transcending conventional experience and reaching as Reed (1996) alludes to, an infinite reign of exploration.The propositions of Dewey's aesthetic and Shusterman's Somaesthetics, both demonstrate this possibility.Through somatic processing, attention to ambient sounds engages a performance from the body; listening is put into aesthetic focus and the listener turns to a continuity with the world.Continuity with the world assumes an 'active and alert' , interpenetration of experience; as art and life acoustically merge, the 'doors' open to the infinite exploration of sound in the world.What becomes clear is because of such aesthetic authenticity, 4'33" presents a similarity to Shusterman's 'limit experiences' .Through the 'experiential intensity' of silence, limits to subjective and conventional assumptions between music and sound are revealed, and simultaneously replaced by the 'fascinatingly powerful' spectacle of everyday life.This may well have been the pedagogical remedy to the 'inability' to hear; Cage's utility of silence and chance was a compositional synthesis for attuning his listeners to sound.However, Cage's spiritual-informed approach does not come without scrutiny.The principle of a 'zero' mindset presents a tug and pull between the immersive educational possibility and one's subjectivity, and as Blom illustrates, this is problematic.It is true when it comes to any encounter with art, confrontation will no doubt exist between one's subjectivity and the artform itself, as they both hold their own alterity.Though the erosion of the boundaries between art and life were important to Cage, the 'deframing' of the boundaries between spectacle and spectator/object and subject, do not seem as certain as the rigor of his spiritual discipline.Just as many Fluxus artists reworked and negotiated their own paths, in avoiding the risk of 'getting lost' , the same can theoretically be done here.As long as engagement with Cage's ideas remain rooted in his foundational principles, if anything, he affords the opportunity to take a 'chance' in the educational exploration of his approach to sound.