Machines for generating text and sound
I love that this book is just a bunch of machines for generating text, much like Cage's music. I'm thinking of staging a reading of some of these lectures with students (which will involve reading passages of text to meet certain time requirements and sometimes having multiple speakers talking over one another).
Two favorites:
"All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear that I know nothing." (126)
"Any sounds of any qualities and pitches (known or unknown, definite or indefi- nite), any contexts of these, simple or multiple, are natural and conceivable within a rhythmic structure which equally embraces silence. Such a claim is remarkably like the claims to be found in patent specifications for and articles about tech- nological musical means ( see early issues of Modern Music and the …
I love that this book is just a bunch of machines for generating text, much like Cage's music. I'm thinking of staging a reading of some of these lectures with students (which will involve reading passages of text to meet certain time requirements and sometimes having multiple speakers talking over one another).
Two favorites:
"All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear that I know nothing." (126)
"Any sounds of any qualities and pitches (known or unknown, definite or indefi- nite), any contexts of these, simple or multiple, are natural and conceivable within a rhythmic structure which equally embraces silence. Such a claim is remarkably like the claims to be found in patent specifications for and articles about tech- nological musical means ( see early issues of Modern Music and the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America). From differing beginning points, towards possibly different goals, technologists and artists (seemingly by accident) meet by inter- section, becoming aware of the otherwise unknowable ( conjunction of the in and the out), imagining brightly a common goal in the world and in the quietness within each human being." (65)