Sound by Chance Shortly after tape technology emerged from Europe as post-war booty, John Cage set to work conforming the tape to meet his musical vision, including his past use of the phonograph. It was 1951, and Cage had begun researching Buddhism, around the same time he renounced self-expression in composition in favor of the random implementation of sound—which he entitled Indeterminacy. His first work employing this radical new technique—Imaginary Landscape No. 4—involved the performance of 24 variable speed record players and 12 radios guided by readings from the I Ching or Book of Changes. Part oracle and part book, the I Ching is composed of 64 hexagrams resulting from the possible pairings of eight hexagrams comprised of the different combinations of Yin and Yang; and, is used to track the macrocosmic and microcosmic cycles of life in the Universe. Imaginary Landscape No. 4 stands as a testament to the chaotic sounds of modern society and more generally represents the random manifestation of sound or existence itself. Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 5 and Williams Mix followed a year later and were his first uses of tape in composition. While others such as Les Paul were diligently searching for a way to control and structure their tape compositions, Cage relinquished control to chance and the medium itself—a stroke of pure genius. Allowing the medium to propagate itself revealed the influence of Marshall McLuhan in Cage’s work, an influence Cage himself referred to often. Essentially Cage had created a random mixtape, and, rather than let the performer define the piece, the recordings themselves take command. Williams Mix, takes the same process a step further, as the I Ching guides not only the selection of sound sources, but also the splicing of the tape itself. Cage proved he could incorporate the newest sound instrument into his theoretical framework. The tape recorder and phonograph fit seamlessly with his idea of random sound composition—a miraculous blending of Western technology and Western and Eastern Philosophies. Beyond maintaining the phonograph and tape recorder’s viability as instruments, Cage elevated the recording medium to take center stage in performance, truly demonstrating the power residing in the most dense medium of communication known to man. Cage’s works were hardly dance floor material, but they foretold much of the future of disc spinning. It was the use of commercial recordings by many different artists as the means to an end by another artist, rather than being the end in themselves. Cage had taken the experiments of Vertov and Hindemith a step further, forging important new ground for music, and he continues to be a lasting influence on the art of sound data manipulation.