Choosing John Cage’s 1951 composition Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2) may seem like a diversion from radiophonic art, in the sense of rather than being broadcast on the radio, it utilises radios themselves as instrumental objects to compose with his signature alchemical ‘chance operations’.
In our group discussions, a central pillar of conceptual thought that we gathered around continually was radio’s propensity for randomness. The way we consume media is increasingly granulated and fragmentary, radio’s segmentation and diversity of content can lead to a dissociative, schizoid experience when listening laterally. Just turning the dial once can take you from harrowing news to pop music and gameshows, sometimes on the same station. I see a similarity in Cage’s emotionally detached compositional technique, designed to circumvent conventions of taste and memory.
12 radios are operated, or performed, by 24 performers who follow a score instructing manipulations of volume, kilocycle and amplitude. The nature of performance engenders a total randomisation of content material. It is unpredictable and largely impossible, depending on location and time of performance, to preempt what sounds can emerge from the tuning static. This achieves Cage’s goal of the suppression of the artist’s will, his ‘chance operations’.
This sweeping collation of randomised broadcasts as subject matter is inspirational in our current collaborative work, reflecting our vantage point in a way; avoiding traditional perspectives of taste, we are exploring the volatile mix of the banal and horror in the contemporary, chaotic tapestry of media and radio. The selection of subject matter will be vital, and telling, so Cage’s method is perhaps the purest distillation of ‘chance operations’, and a portrait of radio itself.
As Robert Worby (2009) notes, a poignant aspect of the piece is the fact that it ‘will not be performable at all when analogue radio is switched off in a few years’. Despite the age of the reference, it is interesting to consider the relative short lifespan the composition has due to its dependance on rapidly ageing hardware infrastructure. In a sense, ‘Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2)’ can not only never be performed the same way twice, but evolves in response to the changing availability, accessibility and sonic landscape of FM radio.
Bibliography:
Worby, R. (2009) Turn on, tune in: John Cage’s symphony for 12 radios. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/aug/06/john-cage-symphony-for-radios (Accessed: 24 February 2024)