Word: randomed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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John Cage, Harvard's Norton Lecturer this year, however, makes it a point to say nothing in his lectures. Relying on chance combinations determined by the I Ching principle, Cage arranges words and letters in a random fashion to create a speech that indicates, as he says, his "nonintention...
...most recently Cage has been composing his Norton lectures. He says that he has incorporated the principles of I Ching into a computer program that simulates the "binary probability function" produced by tossing the sticks. Computers can perform the random operations and interpret the results much faster than humans, Cage says. "It is the most ancient and very modern mechanism and is in relation to all numbers," he says...
Because his lectures are presented as they are written, with the composer reciting the words which the computer produces in a completely random order, Cage is offering seminars at Harvard this year to explain what his style and compositions mean...
...BRIGHT SHINING LIE by Neil Sheehan (Random House; $24.95). In a riveting portrait, John Paul Vann, a top U.S. adviser in Viet Nam, emerges as a man who embodied the contradictions of his ill-fated mission: a courageous do-gooder with a dark streak of amorality...
BERNARD SHAW: THE SEARCH FOR LOVE by Michael Holroyd (Random House; $24.95). The first of a projected three-volume life takes its brilliant, cantankerous subject to age 42, through journalism -- and love affairs -- to playwriting and toward his towering reputation...