Chance Encounter

The latest exhibition at UK gallery BALTIC is being curated by a computer program that generates random numbers based upon the I-Ching. It’s an apt, if odd, approach given that this is a showcase of works by the late John Cage. Remembered as the 20th century’s most gleefully experimental composer, Cage's works include the notorious 4’33" (four minutes and 33 seconds of silence) and As Slow As Possible, an organ piece currently being performed in Halberstadt, Germany, with a scheduled duration of 639 years (ending in 2640). But the enfant terrible of modern music was also a gifted visual artist and printmaker, whose aquatint, watercolors and etchings were, like his compositions, frequently composed according to divinations from the I-Ching, which dictated everything from the color and medium to the width of brush strokes. The new retrospective of Cage’s visual art at Gateshead's BALTIC, Every Day Is A Good Day (opening in June), was conceived by artist Jeremy Millar (a longtime admirer of Cage) and features highlights of Cage’s oeuvre from the 1960s until his death in 1992. The position of each work within the gallery space was determined by numbers thrown up by the I-Ching-inspired software, which were then mapped to coordinates on an imaginary grid. This “disinterested” approach to the exhibition is an act of respect towards Cage’s personal philosophies. “The arts are always talked about as a form of self-expression,” says Millar, “but I think Cage was interested in what else could be expressed, other than the self, which is perhaps more important, and less limiting.”