Project No. 6 - John Cage Research Report

    John Cage's approached everything he did with a Zen sensibility that went through every aspect of his process and performances. From his earlier works making an assortment of household sounds, to his grander more tech-based works involving large amounts of interaction between performers and technology, to his edible drawings and other physical works, it all is with this idea that every resource and interaction is equal and that his only role in it is to set it up. He compared composing music or any form of art to a camera, and any performance of it is the act of taking a picture. All you can do is set up what you want and natural probability and chance will take the rest. 

    In the context of new media and McLuhan, the philosophy he brought to his scene in art and composing lines up with McLuhan's description of technology's disruption of media and life as "allatonceness", just that Cage's philosophy (Zen-Buddhism) already dealt with that on a universal scale thousands of years ago. His approach to composing allowed pure probability and the resources (sound) he could harness to act and interact in their most natural way, which Cage saw as the purest approach to music and art.