The Digital Avant-garde - Digital Culture - page 63

forms of popular music, exemplified by groups such as The Velvet
Underground and Kraftwerk. These groups in turn influenced devel-
opments such as Techno and other electronic dance music forms.
Thus the widespread practice of sampling and the concomitant sonic
experimentation to be found in much contemporary pop music may
be greatly facilitated by digital technology, but its roots are in the
cybernetic culture of the s. Cage was also an important

influence on a later generation of composers, including Philip Glass,
Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and LaMonte Young, who took their princi-
pal inspiration from 'Minimalist' or, as it was sometimes also known,
'ABC' art, a movement derived from the methodologies of painters
such as Kasimir Malevich, whose work reduced visual expression
to its essential components. Donald Judd, Carl André and others
found in this approach a way of expressing their dissatisfaction
with Abstract Expressionism. Minimalism offered instead a form
of expression in which the personal and subjective was omitted and
in which the artwork referred to nothing but itself. It similarly
offered composers a way of creating music in a simple, literal style
that eschewed the complexity and sophistication of much contem-
porary work. Though Minimalism in both its visual and musical
forms does not refer overtly to questions of information and com-
munication, its use of the simplest possible elements and its interest
in combination and repetition is, arguably, a reflection of such issues.
Interestingly most of the Minimalist composers eschewed the use
of technology, at least to begin with, preferring to use as simple
means as possible. Nevertheless Minimalist music was to be a great
influence on various forms of electronic and computer-generated
music, both classical and popular.
Like the work of the Minimalist composers he influenced, Cage's
work often engaged with the relation between the visual and the
audial. This was true of the work he started to develop in the late
1940

1940 s and 50

s that also engaged further with issues of commu-
nication, order, noise and interaction. Most famous among these is

s and early ' 50