Experimentations John Cage in Music, Art, and Architecture [Hardcover]

Experimentationsprovides a detailed historical and theoretical analysis of the first three decades of experimental composer John Cage's aesthetic production (ca. 1940-1972). Paying particular attention to Cage's inter- and cross-disciplinary engagements with the visual arts and architecture during this period, the book sheds new light on some of Cage's most controversial and influential innovations, such as the use of noise, chance techniques, indeterminacy, electronic technologies, and computerization, as well as upon lesser known but important ideas and strategies such as transparency, multiplicity, virtuality, and actualization. Ultimately, it traces the development of Cage's avant-garde aesthetic and political project as it transformed from the emulation of historical avant-garde precedents such as futurism and the Bauhaus, to the development of important precedents for the post-World War II movements of happenings and Fluxus, to its ultimate abandonment in the aftermath of problems encountered in the vast, multimedia composition HPSCHD (1967-69).

I. Introduction
II. A Therapeutic Value for City Dwellers
III. Hitchhiker in an Omnidirectional Transport
IV. The Architecture of Silence
V. Chance/Indeterminacy/Multiplicity
VI. Ghost or Monster?
Bibliography
Index

Experimentations: John Cage in Music, Art, and Architectureis a brilliant and vital critical contribution to the growing body of art historical scholarship on John Cages multidisciplinary legacy. The readymade Cage of chance and silence is replaced by a rich and nuanced narrative of a compositional practice nourished by its evolving and often conflicted exchanges with the artistic, architectural and political avant-gardes. -Ina Blom, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, Norway

With great musical and historical sensitivity Joseph unpacks John Cages struggles, on the one hand, with Beethoven, Sl.