Danger music is an experimental form of

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

20th and 21st century

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

and performance art. It is based on the concept that some pieces of music can or will harm either the listener or the performer, understanding that the piece in question may or may not be performed. Kyle Gann describes in his book ''Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice'' how

Takehisa Kosugi was a Japanese composer, violinist and artist associated with the Fluxus movement. Biography Kosugi studied musicology at the Tokyo University of the Arts and graduated in 1962. He first became drawn to music listening to his father play ha ...

's composition ''Music for a Revolution'' directs the performer to " oop out one of your eyes 5 years from now and do the same with the other eye 5 years later". Works such as this are also sometimes referred to as anti-music because they seem to rebel against the concept of music itself. Danger music is often closely associated with the

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

school of composition, especially the work of

Dick Higgins Dick Higgins (15 March 1938 – 25 October 1998) was an American artist, composer, art theorist, poet, publisher, printmaker, and a co-founder of the Fluxus international artistic movement (and community). Inspired by John Cage, Higgins was an ...

who composed a series of works entitled ''Danger Music''.

In performance

As with many forms of concept music and performance art, the lines between "music", "art", "theater", and "social protest" are not always clear or apparent. Danger Music consequently has some things in common with the performance art of artists such as Mark Pauline and Chris Burden. For instance, some extreme examples of danger music direct performers to use sounds so loud that they will deafen the participants, or ask performers to throw antipersonnel bombs into the audience. Yamantaka Eye's

noise Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference aris ...

project Hanatarash was notable for its dangerous live shows, the most famous instance being when the Japanese artist drove an excavator through the venue at the back of the stage. There were also reports of audience members being required to fill out waivers before shows to prevent the band or the venue being sued in case of any potential danger caused to them. Other pieces involve more symbolic forms of "danger", such as

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...

's "Danger Music for Dick Higgins," which directs the performer to "creep into the vagina of a living whale", or a piece may direct that the volume of the music steadily increases causing the audience to fear that it will make them defecate (the hypothetical " brown note"), although it might never reach that point.

In performance

See also

References

Further reading