John Cage meets Ant & Dec in the sitcom in my mind | Stewart Lee At the moment, I am trying to avoid thinking about John Cage. And instead, I find myself thinking about Ant & Dec. In 2009, the musicians Steve Beresford and Tania Chen asked me to supply the spoken part for a performance of Indeterminacy, by the postwar avant-garde giant John Cage. My shelves creak with music, but I didn't know any Cage, beyond Sonic Youth's interpretation of his piece Six on their Goodbye 20th Century album. Highbrow musicologists would scoff at this lowbrow lead in to Cage's oeuvre. Cage's Indeterminacy is currently available as a cardboard box of 90 cards of 90 stories of different lengths, and a leaflet of instructions: "Read the stories aloud, with or without accompaniment, paced so that each takes one minute. Indeterminacy's instructions advise reading "conversationally, naturally, and neutrally. None of this was remotely helpful. Indeterminacy is at London's Battersea Arts Centre on 23 September, Kings Place on 24 September and Café Oto on 25 September.
Duck Sex, Aesthetic Evolution, and the Origin of Beauty For example, if we think about a plant and the parts of the plant, trying to explain why they are the way they are, if we examine the roots we could come up with a complete description of the roots and their function and their form in terms of their physical function in the soil. They're grabbing into the substrate, they're absorbing water and minerals, they're helping the plant anchor itself. They might even be interacting with fungus and bacteria in the soil. We come up with a complete description of the plants and we have a theory for this, and that theory is natural selection. However, if we think about the flower, many parts of the flower, including its color, the shape of its petals, its fragrance, function through the perceptions of other animals. That is, the bee or the hummingbird comes along and regards the flower, asks itself, "Do I want to forage at that flower now or today?" We will never be able to nail it down exactly as we do many scientific questions.
John Cage :: An Autobiographical Statement What follows is John Cage's "Autobiographical Statement"(1990), which, in time, will transform into a fully animated multimedia version. Hyperlinked words will take you to a wealth of materials across media -- some drawn from the archives of the John Cage Trust, some discovered within the folds of the World Wide Web, some newly created. While we work to create these links (both content and access), we ask that you consider submitting for consideration your own contributions, which may take the form of text, video, music, and/or images (files or links). Like our "Folksonomy," this aspect of the website means to infinitely expand. I once asked Aragon, the historian, how history was written. My father was an inventor. My mother had a sense of society. Neither of my parents went to college. Later when I returned to California, in the Pacific Palisades, I wrote songs with texts by Gertrude Stein and choruses from The Persians of Aeschylus. I don't know when it began.
The Holy Mountain (1973 film) La montaña sagrada (The Holy Mountain, reissued as The Sacred Mountain) is a 1973 Mexican-American avant-garde drama film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, who also participated as an actor, composer, set designer and costume designer on the film.[1] The film was produced by Beatles manager Allen Klein of ABKCO Music and Records, after Jodorowsky scored an underground phenomenon with El Topo and the acclaim of both John Lennon and George Harrison (Lennon and Yoko Ono put up production money). It was shown at various international film festivals in 1973, including Cannes,[2] and limited screenings in New York and San Francisco. After a confrontation with the alchemist, the thief defecates into a container. The excrement is transformed into gold by the alchemist, who proclaims: "You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold". The thief is introduced to seven people who will accompany him on his journey; they are said to be the most powerful but mortal, like himself.
A guide to John Cage's music John Cage. A wolf in sheep's clothing. Not my aphorism, but the epithet of Michael Finnissy, a composer who worked with Cage and who deeply admires him, but who suggests that the Cageian legacy is something that needs deconstruction as well as celebration. Behind that beatifically smiling visage, the charming prophet of (apparent) freedom, egolessness and openness, there could lurk a more conventionally controlling figure, a creative spirit just as fiercely rigorous and as conscious of his own significance as any of the other titans of the 20th century. What's worth remembering and genuinely celebrating in Cage's centenary year (yes, he – just! It's easy to be seduced by that line of thinking. But that's to forget about something really rather important: Cage's music. Guthrie caught the thrill of the new that Cage's prepared piano music still makes you feel, and the new musical terrain it opens up. But what about the lupine elements of the Cage legacy? Reading on mobile?
10 "Masked" Musicians and Why They Hide Several musicians have been known to take on an alternate persona as part of their art. David Bowie became Ziggy Stardust. Garth Brooks became Chris Gaines. Heck, Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan when he was trying to be Woody Guthrie. But other musicians have gone farther as to conceal their true identity by physically masking themselves whether it be with make-up or even an actual mask. Here’s a list of some of the biggest, the story of how they came to be and the reasons behind their facade. 1. 2. 3. Real Identity: Joel Thomas ZimmermanOrigin: Zimmerman’s moniker was inspired a dead mouse (surprise) that he found in his computer one day. 4. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. John Cage’s Silence and Noise On August 29, 1952, David Tudor walked onto the stage of the Maverick Concert Hall, near Woodstock, New York, sat down at the piano, and, for four and a half minutes, made no sound. He was performing “4'33",’’ a conceptual work by John Cage. It has been called the “silent piece,” but its purpose is to make people listen. “There’s no such thing as silence,” Cage said, recalling the première. This past July, the pianist Pedja Muzijevic included “4'33" ” in a recital at Maverick, which is in a patch of woods a couple of miles outside Woodstock. Cage’s mute manifesto has inspired reams of commentary. On a simpler level, Cage had an itch to try new things. Many people, of course, won’t hear of it. The simplest explanation for the resistance to avant-garde music is that human ears have a catlike vulnerability to unfamiliar sounds, and that when people feel trapped, as in a concert hall, they panic. Cage’s high-school yearbook said of him, “Noted for: being radical.” Did Cage love noise?
The Andromeda Strain The Andromeda Strain (1969), by Michael Crichton, is a techno-thriller novel documenting the efforts of a team of scientists investigating the outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism in Arizona. The Andromeda Strain appeared in the New York Times Best Seller list, establishing Michael Crichton as a genre writer. Plot summary[edit] A military satellite returns to Earth. The scientists believe the satellite, which was intentionally designed to capture upper-atmosphere microorganisms for bio-weapon exploitation, returned with a deadly microorganism that kills by nearly instantaneous disseminated intravascular coagulation (lethal blood clotting). The man, infant, and satellite are taken to the secret underground Wildfire laboratory, a secure facility equipped with every known capacity for protection against a biological element escaping into the atmosphere, including a nuclear weapon to incinerate the facility if necessary. To halt the detonation, Dr. Main characters[edit] Dr.
Works for prepared piano by John Cage American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992) started composing for prepared piano in 1940.[1] The majority of early works for this instrument were created to accompany dances by Cage's various collaborators, most frequently Merce Cunningham. In response to frequent criticisms of prepared piano, Cage cited numerous predecessors (such as Henry Cowell). In the liner notes for the very first recording of his most highly acclaimed work for prepared piano, Sonatas and Interludes, Cage wrote: "Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical. Solo[edit] Bacchanale[edit] Composed in 1940[1] for a choreography by the American dancer Syvilla Fort, this was the first piece Cage composed for prepared piano. Totem Ancestor[edit] Composed in 1942 for a dance by Merce Cunningham. And the Earth Shall Bear Again[edit] Composed in 1942 for a dance by Valerie Bettis. Primitive[edit] Composed in 1942 for a dance by Wilson Williams. Our Spring Will Come[edit]
The Andromeda Strain (1971) Sonatas and Interludes A piano prepared for a performance of Sonatas and Interludes Sonatas and Interludes is a collection of twenty pieces for prepared piano by American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1946–1948, shortly after Cage's introduction to Indian philosophy and the teachings of art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, both of which became major influences on the composer's later work. History of composition[edit] Cage underwent an artistic crisis in the early 1940s.[6] His compositions were rarely accepted by the public,[7] and he grew more and more disillusioned with the idea of art as communication. listen .[14]) Cage also stated that Sonata XVI, the last of the cycle ( listen ), is "clearly European. John Cage with the pianist Maro Ajemian, to whom he dedicated Sonatas and Interludes Cage dedicated Sonatas and Interludes to Maro Ajemian, a pianist and friend. Analysis[edit] Piano preparation[edit] Part of the table of preparations of Sonatas and Interludes Example 1. E.S.
The Storm of Creativity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life): Kyna Leski, John Maeda: 9780262029940: Amazon.com: Books