Cage, Reich, Eno, and Danto

I am actually quite fond of the John Cage material that is part of this class. I love the Cagean indeterminate sound piece we have them do. It is a nice quick way for them to see (and hear) how these ideas work in action. Essentially they are broken up into groups, given the chart with 10-second blocks of sound and asked to figure out what to do in about five minutes. I am always surprised by the sounds, by how each group sounds somewhat the same and yet very different. Once they have executed the assignment getting them to talk about his Imaginary Landscape piece for radios or the prepared piano or Williams Mix is easy – they already have a vocabulary and experience to filter them through.

Reich and Eno are really a continuation of the Cage conversation. Bob and I decided to make the room a bit more interactive. To that end we set up four stations – Reich’s pendulum music, a selection of Bob’s master’s thesis metal rods with motion activation, Bob’s frozen pebbles and xylophone installation piece, and Eno’s 77 Million Paintings. Moving from station to station we had an opportunity to talk with the students about the structure of each of these works, referencing the Cage when it made sense to. Along the way we had them listen to Reich’s “Come Out” – such a wonderful piece – and you can completely hear the two tape loops pulling apart from each other. We compared this to some of Eno’s generative ambient work. Eno’s essay on generative music that compares generative art to classical art is a key element in the discussion. It is about this point in the term when they have enough information that we can begin to lean toward defining the genre a bit more.

It had been a few days since we shook them up – and we had dealt a bit with text, image, and sound, but no movement yet. To get them ready for their first projects – due on Tuesday – we created a simple system with input from the class and then had them execute the system using bodies and movement as a base. Lots of fun to watch. It always amazes me when some really beautiful pieces emerge from such a simple process.  This lead us into a discussion of the Danto article – which brought us back to the Dadaists and leaned a bit more on Duchamp. This was essentially a theory day in which we asked the students to reflect back on where we have come from. As Bob often points out, approaching the Danto article this way makes the information stick a bit better – it now has an understanding and experiences to grab on to.

In both classes it was a good conversation. But, we have noticed differences between sections. The first section is a bit livelier, ready to jump into a conversation or exercise a bit quicker than section 2. But section 2 seems to get into the material a bit deeper faster. The end result is that we get to the same place but just take a different route to get there. The second section also has our vantage point of having just been through the same conversations the hour before. We do try and weave material back in when we meet with sections one again, but it is often hard to recreate the conversation.

So – Tuesday and Thursday of this week are the first major project presentations. The last time we taught the class we had smaller projects more often. This time around there are only three, but they work as the culmination of each of the course units. That means there is a bit more riding on each project. We understand that, but don’t know if the students do. Project days are always exciting and a bit terrifying. My fear is what if all the projects suck, or we have nothing to talk about, or our intention was completely misconstrued. All possible, but I have yet to see that combination across a whole class. But – we shall see.