John Cage - Variations VII - 9 Evenings

[Rich Engle]

In 1966 ten New York artists and thirty engineers and scientists from Bell Telephone Laboratories collaborated on a series of innovative dance, music and theater performances, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, held in October at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City.

In the souvenir program for the first performance Cage writes a statement about the piece: "My project is simple to describe. It is a piece of music, Variation VII,indeterminate in form and detail, making use of the sound system which has been devised collectively for this festival, further making use of modulation means organized by David Tudor, using as sound sources only those sounds which are in the air at the moment of performance, picked up via the communication bands, telephone lines, microphones together with, instead of musical isntruments, a variety of household appliances and frequency generators.

The technical problems involved in any single project tend to reduce the impact of the original idea, but in being solved they produce a situation different than anyone could have pre-imagined.

Variations VII, performed at 9 Evenings, was the next to last in John Cage's series of indeterminate works that he had begun in 1958, which made increasing use of electronic equipment and systems.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6JPswEYe70