Delivered at Harvard in 1988–89 as the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 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.”

You can hear an audio recording of the lecture here.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and may have some traces of previous ownership.

John Cage (1912–1992) is routinely hailed as one of the most influential and generative artists of the 20th century, a creator of groundbreaking music compositions, artworks, and works of literature.

Includes two texts by John Cage and the text On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and may have some traces of previous ownership.

Fanal – a recondite word for lighthouse or torch, and a cognate in German and English – began as Kai Althoff’s solo step outside of his long running and in certain spheres abundantly cherished (and in certain spheres perfectly uncomprehended) duo with Stephan Abry. The first Fanal album is a primarily instrumental collection bolstered and upholstered with muscular synthesizer arpeggiations and martial drum machines. After Workshop’s intimacies, Fanal’s relative coldness made the project seem as distant and magisterial as the secluded castle pictured on the album cover (not to mention the sublimity of the castle’s manicured grounds).

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

One Million Years is originally a 20-volume collection, each volume contains 200 pages and each page holds 500 typed years. Created in 1969, One Million Years [Past] contains the years 998,031 B.C. through 1969 A.D., and One Million Years [Future], created in 1981, contains the years 1981 A.D. to 1,001,980 A.D. The first audio presentation of the reading of One Million Years occurred in 1993 during Kawara’s year-long solo exhibition One Thousand Days One Million Years at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York.

This edition of 4 audio CDs in a wooden case comprises the reading of On Kawara’s One Million Years [Past and Future], covering 969 611 BC to 967 811 BC & 33 411 AD to 34 450 AD.

Writings is the first collection to widely survey this singular polymath’s prolific activity as a writer. The book spans the years 1961–2012 and includes fifty-seven pieces: essays originally published in small press magazines, exhibition catalogs, anthologies, and album liner notes, along with other previously unpublished texts. Conrad writes about his own work, with substantial contributions on The Flicker, Loose Connection, Four Violins, Articulation of Boolean Algebra for Film Opticals, Early Minimalism, Yellow Movies, Slapping Pythagoras, and Music and the Mind of the World, as well as that of his peers: Tony Oursler, Jack Smith, Rhys Chatham, and Henry Flynt, among others. He devotes critical essays both to grand subjects—horology, neurolinguistics, and the historical development of Western music—and more quotidian topics, such as television advertising and camouflage. Designed by Scott Ponik.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition, Für Augen und Ohren: von der Spieluhr zum akustischen Environment: Objekte, Installation, Performances in der Akademie der Künste. 20 January–2 March, 1980.

Including the following artists; Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, KP Brehmer, John Cage, Richard Hamilton, Dick Higgins, Joe Jones, Mauricio Kagel, Allan Kaprow, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Jannis Kounellis, Christina Kubisch, Walter Marchetti, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Erik Satie, Keith Sonnier, Laurie Spiegel, Takis and others.