Cage, Acoustic Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

Shortly before his death in 1992, John Cage delivered a lecture-poem at Stanford University entitled Overpopulation & Art. Cages musical, visual and textual forms paralleled forms of his preferred social organisation. In his mesostic lecture, Cage relates various ideas about social change, the role of art (or artlessness), globalization, education, and environmental concerns. Cages position (social/anarchistic/libertarian) is that social revolution is possible at a grass-roots level – that change is bought about through positive individualism not government dictates – that change will also be assisted through an (electronic) democratisation of knowledge – that art, or more specifically creative mind is part of this gradual revolution, a utopian transformation. (A Coda Session).