Work

Capturing the World with Performance: John Cage's Probabilistic Aesthetics for the Digital Age

Year: 2019

Type: article

Abstract: In one of his most influential lectures on indeterminacy, “Composition as Process,” John Cage compared musical composition to a camera, implying that performance can be thought of as an act of making photos. The idea of composition-as-camera suggests a certain understanding of the materiality of sound. Cage's theory of composition and indeterminate performance responded to the emergence of a new epistemology of information and conveyed a probabilistic agenda: a way of apprehending reality that only became possible after the first computers were up and running.

Source: TDR/The Drama Review

DOI: 10.1162/dram_a_00873

Author: Konrad Wojnowski

Institutions: Jagiellonian University, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Language: English

Topic: Musicology and Musical Analysis

Subfield: Music

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W2991473532

FWCI: 7.57

Cites: 40

Cited by: 3

Related to: 10