{"product_id":"ivi-the-charles-eliot-norton-lectures-198889-9780674440074","title":"I-VI (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures  1988-89)","description":"\u003cp\u003eWithout doubt the most influential American composer of the last half century  John Cage has had an enormous impact not only on music but on art  literature  the performing arts  and aesthetic thought in general. His insistent exploration of nonintention and his fruitful merging of Western and Eastern traditions have made him a powerful force in the world of the avant-garde.  There have never been lectures like these: delivered at Harvard in 198889 as the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures  they were more like performances  as the audience heard them. Cage calls them mesostics  a literary form generated by chance (in this case computerized I-Ching chance) operations. Using the computer as an oracle in conjunction with a large source text  he happens upon ideas  which produce more ideas. Chance  and not Cage  makes the choices and central decisions. Such a form is rooted  Cage tells us in his introduction  in the belief that all answers answer all questions.  Acting as a kind of counterpoint to the six texts here are transcripts (edited by Cage) of the provocative question-and-answer seminars that followed each presentation. Included with the book are two audiocassettes  one of Cage reading a mesostic (IV)  allowing the listener to experience it as it was delivered  and one with a lively selection from the question-and-answer seminars that conveys the flavor of the event. The illustrations consist of fifteen different chance-determined prints from a single negative by Robert Mahon of the first autograph page of Cages Sixteen Dances (1951).  IVI is  in short  an experience of John Cage  where silences become words and words become silences  in arrangements that will disconcert and exercise our minds.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45272568823861,"sku":"ByrdShop_0674440072","price":242.92,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780674440074.jpg?v=1780481857","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/ivi-the-charles-eliot-norton-lectures-198889-9780674440074","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}