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Cage, which in turn can be understood as an artistic response to
the threat of nuclear destruction. He offered a kind of artistic matrix
through which future technological developments could be under-
stood, and, perhaps, be recuperated from their Cold War origins.
performance and multimedia
Paradoxically
"
also presaged another aspect of digital media
upon which Cage can claim an influence, that which later became
known as multimedia. The paradox is that a work of silence and
emptiness could possibly suggest the artistic use of multiple media
forms. But it is by being totally silent, and allowing the surrounding
environment to supply the music, that the silent piece suggests
the possibility of anything and everything becoming part of the
performance. Historically multimedia can be traced back to any
number of beginnings, including Greek tragedy, to various other
practices involving combining sounds, words and images, or to
Richard Wagner's concept of the total artwork, the
Gesamtkunstwerk
.
But again it was Cage who most brilliantly articulated it as an artistic
strategy for the post-war era. This was demonstrated in his
Untitled
Event
, a collaboration with Merce Cunningham and others that was
performed in
4
'
33
"
, and took place at Black
Mountain College in Colorado, a small arts institution, founded in
the
1952
, the same year as
4
'
33
s, which had attracted a number of exiles from the disbanded
German Bauhaus as teachers. Cage and Cunningham had already
visited the College in
1930
for the Summer School, joining, among
others, the artist Willem de Kooning and the architect Buckminster
Fuller. For their return visit they produced an extraordinary
spectacle.
Untitled Event
was set in a square arena, in which the spec-
tator's seats were arranged in four triangles, dissected by diagonal
walkways. On each chair was a white paper cup, which those
watching were expected to hold. Overhead there were all-white
paintings by Robert Rauschenberg, presumably similar to the works
1948
