JOHN CAGE

Choosing Abundance

Being the first of a two-part feature which provides the gist of a three-hour conversa
tion with Mr. Cage, tape-recorded in April at Champaign-Urbana while he was in
residence at the University of Illinois. The interviewers?Don Fmegan, Ralph Koppel,
and Ralph Haskell?are members of the Northern Iowa art department; their osten

On the use of space in the University:

You should know Buckminster Fuller's book, Education Automation, in which he

suggests a space that is without partitions, in which a variety of activities is going
on and the attention of the student could be at one or another?rather than
place
being forced to focus on a single thing that often isn't even of his choice. I think sible mission: to collect ideas
this is a good principle which can be stated in many ways. One is: where you see for the department's future
a boundary, remove it (or partition, to remove it). And if you must have them, Central to the com
growth.
then have them movable; and where you have?as Fuller says?a choice between are
poser's responses the
fixity and flexibility, choose flexibility. This is a very good rule. and
principles of flexibility
not
On technology in the University: abundance?expressed

I've often felt it was unnecessary when I didn't have the means to have any tech

nology, but if I can have the technology, I'm perfectly willing to use it. I don't think
one should adopt an attitude against it. On the other hand, I don't think one should
feel that he was dependent upon it and couldn't do anything without it. I think that
it is the technology that has had?at least in art?to do with the changing of our
knowledge, and that as McLuhan has pointed out?I think truthfully?whether we
look at television, for instance, or whether we have access to is of little
computers
consequence. The fact that these things do exist is implanted in our consciousness,
and the result is that we think of things to do, if we're simply drawing on paper?or
if we're whistling, even?that are affected by the fact that television and computers,
et cetera, exist. If the means exist for having them at hand for student and faculty
use, then I think fey all means they should be there. The only thing that would
now would be something that would be of no interest
keep them from being there
to the economic structure. But as as we have it, we
anyone anyway?namely, long
have in some to determine what we do it.
way through

On the possibility that some technologies are faddish, and that machines will not be only in physical terms which
admit the existence cur
used: of
rent technology and the de
So what really is indicated by this is non-ownership?access to things, but not sirab?ity of having access to
owning them, and then coupling that, as Fuller has often suggested, with reuse. it, but in philosophical and

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 That is to say?he's the illustration of copper?finding ways to accomp
always giving
lish more with less copper, so that the copper instead of being thrown goes
away
back into the system and appears again, less of it doing more. So that if you
could is this .... The for
arrange?and already society moving way computers,
instance, are not owned, are
they?

On the of academic
"compartmentalization" departments:

There's a very interesting book by Edgar Anderson, who's an economic botanist. It's
called Plants, Man, and Life, I think, and in it he shows .... Well, as we know,
our ways of are to grow one the result is that each
growing plants only plant;
is separate from the others. But when one mixes the up, and it looks
plant plants
almost as it were not but was wild, then
though agriculture everything regenerates
everything else and it becomes a healthy situation for the plant. I would say in life,
too. The kinds of ideas that interest me in any of the arts are ideas that
only really
also work in lives, or with after all, our problem is that we're individ
plants?where,
uals, that we're members of society, and that inhabits an environment?and
society
that's Nature. And these have to work This business of
things together. organization
which is so inherent in education has many, many it has also many
dangers?-and
usefulnesses, as we know. For instance, if someone a number, dialed a
telephoned
political terms which draw number and got just anybody each time, and the person changed each time, the
distinctions between what's telephone system would be of little use to us. It's there that we need some kind of
necessary and what's not. order. And if I turned on the water, and not water but dust came out, or wine, or
The questions raised by the something else?there might be times when it would be pleasant, but other times
it would be useless. We need to where it is useful, and we
place organization
need to or of elsewhere. And
place disorganization unpredictability interp?n?trations
more and more, whether we it or not, this is happening because of communi
place
cations. You know what I mean.

On reasons the computer:

for using

The computer is in the society ; I arri in the society. If I have access to it, I must
use it in order to see whether it's or not. You must have read Waiden; near
lively
the beginning of the book Thoreau said: "I am going out to the woods to live
in order to face life at its barest essential to discover whether it's
point, something
grand or something trivial, and then publicize that fact." This was his intention, and
I think it's a intention, for almost every circumstance.
perfectly good paraphraseable
As far as how to us, either our them
things happen they happen by instigating
ourselves?or we them?or invited someone in the
thinking instigate by being by
to do that we're not
right then doing. So we're in no danger of
society something
not to do since we can start the ball or someone else
having something rolling,
can suggest that we roll it. I think that two of the most important things to steer
us in what is a and situation are?one I've
obviously changing complex already
mentioned: to choose when one can, as to "fixity;" that's
flexibility opposed extremely
relevant with regard to anything you can think of?it's like a basic principle.
Another basic I think, is: choose abundance rather than Be
principle, scarcity.
wasteful, rather than Get as much as you can out of all that there
pinch-penny.
is to be had. Have it even if you don't use it, or even if you use it badly as a
interviewers are gadget.
necessarily
condensed into one-line prov
On working with what one has:
ocations sorts; all else is
of
verbatim. Consistent with That's all right;
one can, but one must also be aware of why one doesn't have the
other?and that the reason is an economic one. We have a
simply very funny
now; we have?I don't know what the exact are, but we're all aware
society figures
that the nature of the situation is this: in this more new ideas have come into
century
existence, more awarenesses and technological developments, than in all of history
and we in the next ten years to have more ideas than we've
put together, expect
had in this century. Ini other words, we're in the situation Fuller
already grasped,
and we're at the critical point?and as we start going up, it will go up very quickly
and easily. That the society should have functioned, as long as it has, divisively, one

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 part of it against another part and doing its finest efforts in time of war rather than
in time of life, is a curious thing?in that this element of competition should have
been idealized as for what one calls "motivation," and so on,
necessary "impetus,"
and has been imbedded in our educational system and! in much of everything else.
So we know that we have these machines, we know that we have these ideas, but
we also know that we don't have access to them for economic reasons?and those
economic reasons are of that business. And all it was to
part competitive yet begin
with was the human race on earth, and somehow it must be brought to that again,
making use of the things it has been able to think of, rather than dividing the
usefulness of those within so that you have a division of haves and
things society
have-nots. What we need is to have a whole world of haves. Now one way to move
or to checkmate?or to fool's-mate?-the economic structures that now exist is to
break down the boundaries between and other universities the idea of flexibility ap
your University increasingly
?to throw a stone, so to speak, into the economic structure as into a lake and to let pears the idea of free intel
its effects out?so that your usefulness is put with the usefulness of lectual curiosity, unimpeded
spread together
other like institutions. So that if one of you had such-and-such a machine, another by rigid notions of "value'9
of the other one which at the time can't and in So much is new?technologi
you might have present you get,
that way make the effect of this stone so great that there cally?that one is obliged to
you might throwing
wouldn't be that you didn't have access to.
anything

On the directions of art:

I think we had thought in the past that art was going in one direction, and I think
that that is no the case. I think it's in many directions, and that these
longer1 going
directions are not to be evaluated but rather to be experienced; and the fact that

they
are abundant is an example of what I just said about choosing abundance, and
even waste, instead of economy and pinch-penny?or you could say choose
choosing
multiplicity and disorder instead of choosing unity. And give up first of all a sense
of values; yet this is so dear to academic discussions?the notion of value. But
how can we of value in this day and when we are now, for the first time,
speak age
aware of who?if do have values?have values other than
really people they quite
ours? So can we not see from that, that any to our values will continue
clinging only
the divisiveness of the world which has made it so good at killing and so poor at
living? All you have to do is pick up an English book of 100 years ago to see a
cultivated musician's attitude toward Indian music?to see that the world attitude
toward Indian music has changed utterly in a hundred years. The beauties of that
music are now available to in the teen age, where a cultivated musician
people
was absolutely deaf to Indian music in the 19th Century. He thought it was of no call into question the old
whatsoever, and therefore of no interest in relation to 19th century
reasons for doing some
complexity
European music. Now, if we are, you know, connoisseurs and so on, we find Indian things, and the old excuses
music preferable, actually, to the 19th century music?although
we do discover new for not doing others. Music
beauties in the 19th Century that we'd somehow overlooked. I would include the once scorned is now prized;
too, and I think there are scientists scientists at the of once narrow are
sciences, here, University disciplines
Illinois, for instance, teachers from other departments to teach
inviting subjects
which they don't know. The plan is to bring about a fructifying in a situation that
has been stultified. And it can break across boundaries?but we've said this already.
Every boundary you see, I think, you should try to see if it can be removed. Is
it that is necessary in the sense that the is or that the
something really telephone
water faucet is, or is it something that satisfies a I mean, was
simply bureaucracy?
it a necessary or wasn't it? And if it wasn't necessary, then I think
boundary
you can expect that the good it did in the past wheni it was separating things can
be kept when it isn't separating things. I had a curious experience yesterday. I
had an appointment and I wasn't clear as to where the Coordinated Sciences building
was, so I dropped first into the one which has that name on it, which is an old
building. And looking for the room number I practically went through the whole
no one in the knew where the room numbers were, and
building?because building
they were poorly organized. But in the course of that I saw all kinds of things
that I wouldn't see in a music school, or at home, or in a All kinds
supermarket.
of machinery and that were like to a
things strange?almost going foreign country;
and then I finally got into the new building that the room is actually in, and it, too,

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 has many different kinds of things in it that aren't ever connected with music?or
or could be
painting, sculpture?which refreshing.

On whether a teacher should be a catalyst:

You mean that he I think that's marvelous. Don't Because see

inspires? you? you
we are to have more We now have three-and-a-half billion, and the
going people. by
year 2000 we'll have seven billion, and by the year 2060 we'll have 20 billion. So
again, that opening up and interpenetrating of directions is going to be perfectly
feasible in a society that has furthermore solved the of work, and
probably problem
has plenty of time to do anything.

On a crisis:
recognizing

I think we should be very careful to know what a crisis is and what a crisis
isn't. One now, for instance, of as a or leisure as a
speaks privacy problem, problem.
I don't think either one of those is a problem. I think we should recognize that our
technology is bringing us together, and that privacy, after all, is not desirable.
That togetherness is much more desirable. And this will be emphasized by taking down
a wherever you can. To have that don't seem to
partition things together belong
together will be of really?I may be using the wrong term?humanistic value. Not by
now broadening. Since not saying that it is a value, but by living it?by living together, rather than thinking
but popula we have to be separate from one another and that what we really desired in life
only knowledge,
is there was to be alone. Just that we will not be so alarmed what we now
tion, is exploding, having view, by
reason to go on call We don't want, of course, to have a which exceeds
any longing overpopulation. population
the old privacy? Since the balance between what there is to have and all the people who are living?though
for
we now suffer from many not what need. But we would
having people having they
like to solve this, so that everybody in the world will have what he needs to live.
They say we can support 20 billion, and we might be able to support up to 35
billion?but beyond that it's dangerous, so naturally we have to think of what
to do. And then we could have a crisis; that would be a crisis. But it will not be a
crisis that are to be rather than alone. It will not be a crisis
people obliged together,
that people have nothing to do. I have faith that when people sleep and rest, they
wake up in the through metabolism?with energy, and that they
morning?just
will think of something to do. Now, if they think of something to do that seems to
us to be of no value, we must then our values?and broaden them
question perhaps
to include the values of the person who thought of doing what he was doing. Don't
you think?

Might doing nothing be a crisis?

But you see, Zen Buddhism struggles in that direction; it turns out to be very
difficult to do it can have the most spiritual consequences.
nothing?and

On the wider available to modern man:

options

There are so many now, and one's more and more aware of to do.
things things
This,of course, is a problem, I think, that should be solved by each individual, don't
you? What is it he is willing to devote his time to? It's as simple as that. Then
Mead that since we live now we and there's
Margaret suggests longer might change,
no reason?again this is flexibility as opposed to fixity?no reason to think that it's
virtuous to remain one thing throughout one's life; that the dedication could take
some other as from music to a connection
men are is form, moving botany?or maybe finding
living longer, the two. Et cetera. That we used to live to devote ourselves
between long enough
there reason to stick to
any
to one but now we live so we could be devoted to many, up
a single career? Since there thing, longer or?giving
this notion of "mainstream" in history, and seeing that we're going in many
is so much to do, is there
directions?we ourselves could explore. And I think then a reasonable thing to
do?if one also be to do those that no one
gave up competition?would things
else was and informed, of course, at the same time about what was
doing, being
our communications so that we would know what was
being done; improving
going on, and then do something that was not being done. I asked Fuller, for
once when I became interested in his notion of a house that
instance, extremely
was unattached to the earth for its utilities?I said: "Are you on that?"
working

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He said: "I don't need to," and I said, "Well, what do you mean by that?" And
he said: "Well, it in the space In the space program. From
they're doing program."
his of view, one of the values of the exploration in space is that it
point major
is necessary to a contained house for one can live
produce long trips whereby
without attachment to the earth. That would mean that we can live
comfortably
in wilderness, or on of mountains, or in the Arctic or on the oceans?so
tops regions,
that the whole with to the of overpopulation
perspective regard problem disappears.
Because even in the mountains are uninhabited. Then, in a paper
Japan relatively
I had from Fuller just recently, he indicated?as I indicate in the field of music?
that the toward the rainbow, so to not to have any. That
goal?going speak?is
is to say, an architecture which appear doesn't to be an architecture will be a
marvelous to live; and a music which isn't music, and satisfies one's
place yet
musical inclinations, is what I have now: the ambient sounds. I find the
namely,
sounds around me more to my than any music I know of; and I have
enjoyment
that all the time, and it's And that can be had?it's harder for
constantly changing.
us to envision it in the case of shelter, but Fuller envisions it:
apparently Bucky
I've seen it?in his terms. That is to say, two domes one
transparent geodesic
within the other with plants placed between the two so that you would be living, so
to in a garden and have both?as you were "sheltered" and as
speak, though though
you were not.

On the indivisibility of consciousness, and whether it might be called "reverence" :

Yes, and I think it's to us now the Orient?

coming particularly, perhaps, through
because of their in history to have a for the environment which
continuing regard
we for the most We considered it to
really part ignored. greater advantage, you
know, to dig it up and to make something than to just sit still doing nothing.
Whereas they had that other idea ; and now these ideas are
interpenetrating, and any point to doing what
our is moving in the direction of it more and more evident someone else is do
technology making already
to us that the environment has beauties. For instance, two students came
by quite ing? What's suggested here
excited the other to show me laser of three- dimensional seems to be an innocent con
day, offering projections
images?Have you seen them??which I have seen at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, cern
for things-m-they-are,
New Jersey. So I said "We can talk?especially because I have seen them." But
seen them, well, we can of them also as reflections, know, of
having speak you
things that are already here without any technology. And furthermore, in our windows
and so forth, the things that we see are in colors, which is going to be very
difficult for technology to produce. But it's got to, and when it does it will be as
there were no because we have it But the
though technology, already anyway.
makes us excited, you see; whereas we could look at reflections in
technology
windows without "seeing" them, with the technology won't be
they disregarded
any longer.

On symbols:

In Buddhism there is the term Yatha butham, which means "just as it is"?and
this is what appeals
to me,
though I see every now and then that some are
people
interested in symbols. But what they mean by symbols seems to be different from
what I thought they meant. There's a very fine fellow I'm working with on HPSCHD
here in May, and his name is Calvin Sumsion?he's in the design department, and
he used the word "symbol" enthusiastically the other day; it dawned on me that
what he meant was a of visual rather than abstraction, and
representation things,
that all he meant by "symbols" was that. He didn't mean, for instance, that a
dove means He meant that a of the dove was a of the dove.
"peace." picture symbol
And that's very different from what I would have meant, so I'm more
getting
interested in symbols.

On whether a department within the university can choose flexibility without asking
that the whole also make the same choice:
university

You mean
everybody changing
at once. In a sense it's happening, and in another and a peculiar kind of ex
sense it seems not to be happening; that's what makes this present period so consciousness
pansion of

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 interesting and and very coexist
complex stimulating?that contradictory things
everywhere. We have to see, for instance, that what we call "student revolution" is
not confined to one school, or one but is all over the world. And then the
country,
"Free University": I imagine it's cropping up in all universities as a facility for
study and teaching which doesn't fit into the curriculum at all, which doesn't give
any degrees at all. I was at a meeting of a number of the music faculty the other
in which it was a man who well be in the adminis
evening proposed?by may very
tration here?that there be a third program set up in which a student could elect
which consists in recreating all of his studies. This would free him of any curriculum responsibility whatsoever,
Nature?not remaking it, al and he would be given, instead of a degree, a certificate when he left?if he left?
tering it, destroying it, but saying what in fact he did while he was here. Which I think would be more
to read than a
interesting degree.

On whether "education" should be rather than

primarily experiential, productive:

who knew Thoreau; he was a controversial and he was

People complained figure
averse to schools, you know?he was a teacher for a little bit, but he left the
educational system quickly. His neighbors complained that he did nothing, and
even Emerson that all he was worth was as of the
complains captain Huckleberry
Party, but history has proved otherwise. Three instances: India?through Gandhi,
a whole structure; the the
through Thoreau?changed political Danes?through
Essay on Civil Disobedience?successfully fooled Hitler's occupation; and Martin
Luther There you see: all that's needed is re-examination, of our
King. really,
value system with regard to whatpeople do. Poets down the ages, and saints
through
and so forth, have advised And we haven't listened?at least the universities
inactivity.
haven't listened. Yet to teach the It's a very strange situation.
they're willing poetry.

On whether "structures" must vanish:

familiar

We don't need to the as we go into the future. As we make

give up past changes,
we don't have to lose. If we the notion of becoming abundant rather than
keep
scarce. To rich rather than poor. There is no reason to say we won't have
stay
more or or orchestration or etc. We can
any harmony counterpoint bassoon-playing,
keep those things. Perhaps some of the rigor with which they have been taught in
the will have to continue for those into the future or could. One wouldn't
past things
have to the slate clean, so to in order to start. One can add or
wipe speak,
the possibilities. in Connecticut, which is quite wealthy,
multiply Wesleyan University,
had the obvious need for new for theatre, for music, and so
auditoriums?places
forth. In the meantime they had developed a private school of music which taught
oriental music, and with that school of oriental music the students, not at
only
abandoning old habits of ab that but ones around about could come each to what is called a
straction to deal with the university Friday

stu "Curry Concert" which consists of music and then food?Indian food, beautifully
concrete. Let university
then more music and then oriental and all of that
dents be free, Cage suggests; prepared?and dancing, activity
on. Well, with the money and so forth in the to make more halls, instead
goes plans
of what here, ones, a of small ones,
doing they're doing huge they're making village
so that of an could have a choice between
evening you hearing European string
Indian music, music, rock and roll, etc. And it's very very
quartets, Japanese
beautiful, and this kind of richness is what we actually have now with our television.
able to from one station to another. Now as laser beams affect tele
Being change
vision, I understand there will be the possibility of multiplying the broadcasting
stations, since the bands needed will be much thinner?isn't that true? The result
is that the future of television is great. You could have a television station that was

relatively specialized, so that when you tuned to it you would know what it was you
were Rather than now, not more or less what you were to
doing. knowing going
get except a of or other. But you would be able to do as the
potpourri something
Japanese do in Tokyo now when they go to a coffee house. They choose whether
or the one that plays Beethoven, or
they go to the coffee house that plays Debussy
the one that Mozart or the one that music, or whichever one
plays plays Japanese
choose. have a great
they They variety.

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 On finding an audience for art:
I think an important development in the future of communicating together will, be
the adding of the screen to the telephone. And then accompanying it with?oh, each
person would have, say, a thousand sheets of material upon which anything could
be recorded and erased, so that at any instant everyone in the world
subsequently
would have access to one thousand sheets of It could be
something. reproductions
of or or music, or whatever, and he could it up at any let us all have wider and
paintings, books, easily give
moment by erasing it?and have it again the very next moment if he felt "Well, I wider choices to fool around
didn't mean to erase it." It would just be dialed, and he could get what it was he with, and le? s use technol
needed whenever he needed it. Then we could drop out from the society all the ogy to exercise those choices

purveyors of all the middlemen. The publishers?we wouldn't have any need
things;
for them; and if we our means as we do this, seen
improved transportation having
through reproductions, we might get the curiosity to see the original and we could
to it and see and return home, or move to another house. This is an
go quickly it,
application of that notion of flexibility.

Does the computer alter the concept "audience?"

of

I think that not the computer itself, but the ideas which I and others have in
the field of music have done this already, so that we think of the concert more and
more not as that and ends, but a that continues and
something begins process
sometimes very long so that people could come and go; again, flexibility. And one
of the that's so about concerts to who are themselves, let
things annoying people
us say, not music lovers, is this business of sitting in rows in a theatre situation,
and our now is to remove that a space in which can
tendency by having people
move or sit, out, come in .... in the course of the of music.
go performance
What the computer seems to me to be helping with is several things ; one, it's helping
us to know how we think, because if we don't make our thinking very clear to the
machine it doesn't understand us, so we to know more about processes
begin thought
through the computer than we knew before. It's also allowing us to do larger projects
than we would even have set out because we would have foreseen
upon previously
that we wouldn't have had time to do them, but once the is accomp
programming
lished, the computer works very quickly and enables one to think in physically
larger, quantitative terms. And then the difficulty involved in preparing a program
is so not in my but in that of others I talked to, that one
great, only experience
thinks that something has been accomplished by
a
program?and, indeed, something ?with none of our former
has been But it seems to be worth more than to use it for one's own on the economics
accomplished. dependence
purposes. The notion of is, and is undercut in the same or even on the
ownership possessiveness, of ownership,
way that it is undercut by much of our
technology?tape recorders, radios, television, necessity of scheduling our
and so forth, that enable people to have material for which they haven't paid. selves. Technology, it turns

Will there be any future need for concert halls and museums?

No, but this notion of what we need?it seems to me to be laid at the door
having
of the Germans; I think its a false idea that they've buffaloed us into?I think we
can well do that are not necessary, and that it will seem
perfectly things pleasurable
to us to get and have an unnecessary concert.
together

On whether concerts are more

pleasurable experienced by groups of people:

Well, I think there is a great difference between an original painting and a

and between a live of music and a and the
reproduction, performance recording,
general experience as numbers increase will be of recordings as things develop in
and may even learn to them to the but others
technology, people prefer original,
will want to see the original and will realize that there is a difference.

Can one have so much music that he no longer needs it?

Well, I already have that situation, but it doesn't do me any good because I have
a great deal of music. You know* I go, circumstances, to a number of concerts,
through

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 but I certainly don't search them out, I only go through circumstances and I don't
keep any records, I don't have any radio or any TV. So that I don't have any
reliance on music because I have sounds around me.
having always Nevertheless,
I'm a musician and I make music and I am able to listen to other music.
people's

Will it suffice us to read the manuscript of a piece of music?

That's not my point. My point is the reverse. It has been thought in the past that
music was that existed in a person's mind and and that he wrote it
something feelings
down and that he had heard it before it was audible. My point has been that we
don't hear anything until it is audible. At least I don't. And if I did hear something
before it was audible, I would have had to take solf?ge, which would have trained
me to certain and not others. I would then have found the en
accept pitches
vironmental sounds off tune, Therefore I no attention to
lacking tonality. pay
solf?ge. I don't have perfect pitch; I simply keep my ears open, my mind empty
but alert. Period. And the result is that I can hear things that are off tune, on
tune?I suppose it makes a difference, but not one that I in terms of
approach
value. I try to approach each sound as itself. Now I find I can do that better with
sounds that aren't music than sounds that are music; but I try to make my own

music, and I notice that more and more are music that is like the
people making
environment.

Is this a kind of ultimate abstractness?

No, I would say rather an ultimate Wouldn't

reality. you?
We had an after two made a here named
argument playing tapes by composer
out, is offering us such inde Wolf and he was defended done some beautiful
Rosenberg, by Herbert Bruhn, who's
pendence; it isn't an artifi work here with music. Herbert Bruhn was that we do
computer insisting anything
cial invitation unless we re is artificial, and I disagreed and said that I knew well that in my
perfectly
fuse
to make it a part of
our are not artificial. Now what would make sounds artificial would be
experience they
that one wasn't interested in them or attention to them, and that
really paying
what was of concern to one was the to the sound. This notion of
relationship
makes the sound You could have a musical idea
relationship actually unimportant.
and it, let us in or Or some other
express say, lights something. relationships?
maybe apples. I have become interested not in relationships?though I see that things
I think more more
interpenetrate?but they interpenetrate richly, abundantly,
when I don't establish any relationship. So one of the first things I've done, which
it seems to me is what nature has done, too, is not to make a fixed score. When I
have three sounds, I don't think that one must come first, and then the next, and
then the other, but that can go in any way, and that's what
they together exactly
to the birds and the automobiles and so on?At any rate that freedom from
happens
a fixed relation introduces me to the sounds of my environment.

On the interplay between art and music:

I think that this is a realization in music which is different than what music was
at the turn of the It was then that music so influenced the visual arts
century. greatly
lives. We can on to as to be the excuse for the turn toward abstraction ; you recall cubism and so
hang
"value" if we want, but the on. All the manifestos spoke of music as having already accomplished this that
abundance of technology is was now being done in painting. I think that much of what is being done since
1950 in music is a response to this openness you spoke of in the visual arts which
was the response to music, and that the continues because the
dialogue physical
circumstances are different to about So that music's response now to
bring changes.
the visual arts of the first half of the century produces a situation to which the
visual arts must now reply, or may reply. I think it's already involved film, for
in the use of a of screens rather than one. That that is like music
instance, plurality
without a fixed score.

You see this can in many directions. Not one. It can

proceed just, dogmatically,
proceed?there is one film I saw at Montreal; it was called "Labyrinth." Now there
was a case of several screens being used quite dramatically in what I would say

16The North American Review

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 to a 19th orchestration. So that one film related to another
corresponded century
at moments. And that if the films were not fixed
dramatically special synchronized,
that the dramatic effect intended would not be
together, gained.

On whether must be "linear:"

films necessarily

It isn't necessary. We see in the work of Stan Vanderbeek and others that it's
reasonable to have on at the same time that aren't related,
perfectly things going
or as with the Watts group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, during their 16 mm festival. teaching us that even if you
There something else appeared. It appears in my experience
more and more.
They put together a lot of "poor"
discovered with that film festival, that the films could be poor but that the com things, the total result may
bination of them was not poor. Now this is very much like what Bucky Fuller says emerge as "excellent." An

when he or what when we make an of metals so

says "synergy", happens alloy
that a comes about from that don't have that because
strength things strength simply
come So that the whole question of which has been of such
they together. quality
concern to the university?or to the whole question of education?to teach the good
rather than the bad, is put in question because the bad if it enters into an abundant
enough situation is no longer bad. In fact, it's a little spicey. I discovered that
also with the There are 52 and we have to make a
computer piece. tapes, recording
for the Nonesuch which the contracted us to do, so we had
Company university
to go to Chicago to put the tapes together in a special studio where they could do
at a time so we would have few and so not lose the And
eight generations signals.
when we had seventeen it sounded like chamber music; when we had
together
thirty-four together it sounded orchestral; and when we had fifty-two together it
didn't sound like anything we had ever heard before. It rather suggested dimensions?
dimensions of sound that were so thick that it was like a frieze on one of those
Indian you know, where it seems to be
sculptured but it's actually bas-relief.
temples,
It was just marvelous. So I got the notion to do the same thing with typography,
and I've been asked to make a text for Art in America dealing with Marcel Duchamp alloy combining weak metals
whom I knew quite closely in recent years, particularly in Germany; before he may be strong; there may
died we were two weeks So I to do but said even be a virtue in
together. agreed, naturally, something novelty.
I would like to do what I've been wanting to do: to make a text which had no
syntax. And so I subjected the dictionary to chance operations?the / Ching. All
the words, so that I could divide all the pages of this dictionary?1428, including
the boys' and girls' names at the end?I could divide that by 64, producing groups
of pages of 22 or 23. That comes out to 64. Then I subject 22 and 23 to 64, to
get groups of 2 and 3, so that when I get another hexagram I know precisely
which page I'm on. Then I count the words on the page and relate that to 64 and
know immediately what word I'm dealing with. Then I ask how many forms does
the word have?if it's a noun, if it's a verb; is it singular or is it plural. If there's
an illustration, is it the word or the illustration, etc. So that I finally pinpoint what
it is I have to do in the text. Then where on the page does it go ??The page likewise
submitted to the / Ching. And I did it very finely so as to avoid a module. Again, by
means of abundance; not
quantity quality.

You see from Corbusier's point of view, which is quality, a module becomes of
From a of view, which I'm to work with,
great importance. quantitative point trying
a module becomes, if necessary, then too obscure. the
something Anyway, place,
the direction of the word, and then each letter to the chance
submitting operation?is
it present? is it in process of disappearing, as Duchamp himself had disappeared,
you see. Is it disappearing structurally? If it's an E it has four parts, the three
horizontals and the vertical; which one of them is missing, if one is missing? Or is
it being eaten some disease?as the poor man, too, was. Then you have in the
by
end when you many realizations of this process with that instant
superimpose
lettering business, you know, when you have 261 type faces, you then work into a
rich situation. And some of the faces are?from a value of view,
very type point
qualitative point of view? dearly poor type faces, but from an abundant point Perhaps the argument, in the
of view, they are Yatha butham?just as they are. And when they are just as they end, is simply that every
are in this rich configuration of things, they are beautiful. And the Lord must have thing is possible and every
had a similar idea in mind. thing is good.

Fall 1969 17

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