Imaginary Landscapes #5 for any 42 Phonograph Records by John Cage via Max/MSP
program notes:
This is a programmed interpretation of John Cage’s tape piece Imaginary Landscape #5 for any 42 phonograph records.
I took the original graph-paper score for 8 channels of spliced music tape segments and turned it into sequencing data in a Max/MSP patch. What was once a time-consuming process for realizing each tape product can now be easily performed live in realtime with virtually unlimited capacity for material and other variables (speed, tempo, etc), at least once you have the programming sussed out.
For its sole performance (?) accompanying the dance Portrait of a Lady (by Jean Erdman), the samples used were “exclusively jazz.” The genre of material is not specified in the score, only that it is for “any 42 phonograph records.” I chose this as the starting point for my interpretation, using various Jazz samples from before 1952, the copyright date.
As the piece progresses, the tempo of the score and the speed of the samples are adjusted in realtime in order to explore unattainable limits of Cage’s era. In the end, levels of randomness are introduced following Cage’s affinity for the I Ching, until all variables are randomized and the unpredictable is predictable, a condition Cage certainly explored more than I in my little patch.
LA Times review - Monday February 25, 2002