…quick question from today’s guest lecturer– does anyone remember the name of the electronic artist he mentioned who created his notes by literally mapping out star constellations? i was really fascinated by the idea and wanted to look it up, but annoyingly forgot his name!
The artist is John Cage, and the album is Atlas Eclipticalis (I see it on the waffles.fm torrent site, don’t know if its easy to find elsewhere)
I randomly read some quotes by John Cage the other day in McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage
“One must be disinterested, accept that a sound is a sound and a man is a man, give up illusions about ideas of order, expressions of sentiment, and all the rest of our inherited claptrap
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all”
thanks george… that helped a lot! i found a site that plays samples of the song from it (not that 5 seconds from a 74 minute song can REALLY do it justice, but better than nothing!)
here… you can download the album here too:
http://www.emusic.com/album/Orchestra-Of-The-S-E-M-Ensemble-With-David-Tudor-Cage-Atlas-Eclipticalis-And-Winter-Music-103-MP3-Download/10602014.html
the theme of his album really reminds me of the Disintegration Loops I-IV from William Basinski… crazy avant garde lo-fi electronic music imitating something else (in his case, a slowly disintegrating set of tape reels). either way, this stuff is really awesome.