Shawn Huelle

indeterminate Cage lecture

I have created a project called “Indeterminate Cage Lecture.” It is a lecture-generating machine.

Like most lectures or papers on a specific subject, the project uses one primary source as a departure point and several secondary sources as support. In this case, the primary source is John Cage's 1961 book Silence. The secondary sources are Kay Larson's 2012 biography of John Cage Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, Luc Sante's 2007 translation of Nouvelles en trois lignes by Félix Fénéon, the final book from David Markson's note card tetralogy The Last Novel, the libretto from Robert Ashley's television opera Perfect Lives, and Kenneth Goldsmith's 2016 long essay Wasting Time on the Internet. The secondary texts were chosen for their formal and content-related affinities to Cage's writings in Silence.

To make the lecture-generating machine, I took each bit of text I marked during my reading(s) of each source and turned it into its own index card. Additionally, I included all of the stage directions from Cage's own, somewhat similar lecture “45' for a Speaker.” I also created a few of my own stage directions. I then numbered the cards. There are 360. The cards are color-coded for visual effect.

To generate a lecture, one must first decide how long the lecture will be: 10 cards? 50 cards? 200 cards? One then rolls various dice to generate a random number between 1 and 360. The card with that number is removed from the file. The dice are rolled until the predetermined number of cards have been pulled from the file. If a rolled number corresponds to a card which has already been removed, a coin is flipped to decide if the card before or after that space should be pulled. Finally, another die is rolled to decide how many times the new lecture should be shuffled. The pulled cards are then shuffled and read aloud.

Each lecture is perforce different. Each lecture is interconnected with every previously-generated lecture and every possible future lecture. Each lecture is given a title from the language on the first card of the lecture.

On Saturday, 21 May, 2022, I will deliver the lecture three times, twice as a 60-card lecture, and once as a 180-card lecture. During the 180-card lecture, I will be accompanied by Lee Ferguson, who will perform Cage’s piece 27”10.554 for a percussionist. The evening should have something for everyone. There will also be, for example, two performances of Ricefall by Michael Pisaro.

Come check it out!