ouzounian uncertainty of experience

journal of visual culture

journal of visual culture [http://vcu.sagepub.com]SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC)Copyright The Author(s), 2011. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalspermissions.nav Vol 10(2): 114 DOI 10.1177/1470412911402894

AbstractGeorge Brecht, an artist best known for his associations with Fluxus, is considered to have made significant contributions to emerging traditions of conceptual art and experimental music in the early 1960s. His Event scores, brief verbal scores that comprised lists of terms or open-ended instructions, provided a signature model for indeterminate composition and were used extensively by virtually every Fluxus artist. This article revisits Brechts early writings and research to argue that, while Event scores were adopted within Fluxus performance, they were intended as much more than performance devices. Specifically, Brecht conceived of his works as structures of experience that, by revealing the underlying connections between chanced forms, could enable a kind of enlightenment rooted within an experience of a unified reality.

KeywordsEvent scores Fluxus George Brecht indeterminacy John Cage

Structures of Experience: On George Brechts Event Scores

Gascia Ouzounian

No Words

In a personal statement submitted as part of a collaborative project proposal, Project in Multiple Dimensions (19578), George Brecht describes his art as a deeply personal, infinitely complex, and essentially mysterious, exploration of experience. No words can ever touch it (Kaprow et al., 1999[19578]: 159).1 The profound irony of this statement is not lost on anyone familiar with Brechts most enduring works, his Event scores of 19602, which gave shape, using words, and often only words, to this exploration.

2 journal of visual culture 10(2)

Brechts Event scores were brief, elemental texts that typically took the form of lists or instructions. Many comprised only a few terms or phrases: names of common objects or phenomena (chair; house number), descriptions of states of being (on/off, between two sounds), actions (assembling; dripping) and open-ended instructions (When the telephone rings, it is answered). Over the period of a few years, Brecht produced over 100 Event scores, usually handwriting or typing these on small cards he variously exhibited, mailed to friends, or published.2 Lucy R. Lippard (1973) opens her landmark history of Conceptual Art Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 by citing one of the scores (p. 11):

Three Aqueous Events (Summer, 1961) ice water steam

This Event score is notable for its brevity, although others were even more concise. Two Vehicle Events (Summer, 1961) contains only two terms (start/stop), while Word Event (Spring, 1961) contains only one: Exit.

Ideally, words (even one or two) would not interfere with the total experience that Brecht sought to manifest in his Events (Nyman, 1978[1976]: 117). Art unites us with the whole, Brecht wrote. Words only permit us to handle a unified reality by maneuvering arbitrarily excised chunks (Brecht, 2004[1966]: 4). Still, words articulate, even as they fragment and delimit experience, and it is through words Brechts and others, words written, spoken and scored that it can become possible to approach the personal, complex and mysterious realms of experience that sometimes evade language.

The Field of New Music

Dieter Daniels [DD]: [Did you] also consider making a career as a musician, or as a composer, parallel to your work in the visual arts?

George Brecht [GB]: No ... not as a composer. I ended up composing events rather than musical pieces.

DD: But the first pieces were still published in the context of new music.

GB: Yes, that is right ...

DD: But you never wanted to enter the field of new music more deeply?

GB: No, its too disgusting.

DD: In which way?

GB: Oh, in almost every way.3

Ouzounian Structures of Experience: On George Brechts Event Scores 3

Brechts Event scores feature prominently within histories of experimental music and sound art (see Kahn, 1999; LaBelle, 2006; Nyman, 1974); they stemmed, in large part, from the music Brecht composed while studying experimental composition with John Cage at the New School for Social Research in 19589. However, Brechts dissatisfaction with words (more precisely, his dissatisfaction with any material that fragmented the total experience of a unified reality) was matched by his skepticism towards music, both as a field of production and as a concept within a field. The limited scope of music, even in its expanded, Cagean sense, was contrary to Brechts sensibilities in the same way that words, in their fragmented and fragmenting nature, were something Brecht effectively resorted to, a means to an altogether different end.

However, both the means and ends of Brechts work are worth re-examining, as a wealth of recent scholarship and cultural interest attests. The significance of Brechts contribution is acknowledged in studies by Blom (1998), Doris (1998), Fischer (2005), Friedman (1998), Hendricks (2003), Higgins (1998, 2002), Joseph (2007), Kaprow (1993), Kim-Cohen (2009), Kotz (2001, 2005, 2007), Martin (1978), Smith (1998), and Robinson (2002, 2005, 2009), among others. It is also reflected in exhibits that trace Brechts artistic evolution, notably the comprehensive George Brecht Events: A Heterospective curated by Julia Robinson at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne (17 September 2005 to 8 January 2006).

According to Hannah Higgins (2002), The most durable innovation to emerge from [Cages classroom] was George Brechts Event score, a performance technique that has been used extensively by virtually every Fluxus artist (p. 2). Higgins describes the Event as it was realized in the context of Fluxus performance: In the Event, everyday actions are framed as minimalistic performances, or, occasionally, as imaginary and impossible experiments with everyday situations (p. 2).

This article revisits Brechts early research and writings to suggest a reading of the Event score as a model that emerges from music and art, but also extends beyond these, drawing upon science and philosophy in confronting larger questions of experience and reality. As Kotz (2001) suggests, when Brechts role is historically acknowledged it is almost always in the context of Fluxus a critical approach, however, which unfortunately tends to homogenize Fluxus production [and] flatten Brechts work into a preconceived notion of performance (p. 63). The Event score was certainly used as a performance device within Fluxus, and to radical effect. It was arguably also conceived as a device that enabled a kind of enlightenment, one that was rooted within an experience of the unified reality that underlies the relationships between chanced forms.

It Is Silent

Cages 433 (1952) is commonly regarded as a verbal score because each of its three movements comprises a single word: tacet. This particular word, however,


holds special value for musicians, one that extends beyond the linguistic or textual: it is a musical word, a kind of notation, a word that doubles as a musical instruction, like forte, or diminuendo, or staccato.

Translated from the Latin, tacet means it is silent. Within Western art music traditions, this instruction is conventionally interpreted as remain silent, which is qualitatively different from perform silence. Musicians who encounter this word do not typically perform anything, including silence. Instead, they are silent, meaning they will not do anything that might result in sound, meaning they do nothing. Thus, even as 433 propels musical composition towards textual models (see Kotz, 2001; Pepper, 1997; Nyman, 1974), it is not a verbal score in the sense of being a primarily textual enterprise; it is still, first and foremost, a musical score. It comprises an utterly conventional musical notation, albeit one that is applied in a radically unconventional way.

By contrast, Event scores might be considered an alternate poetics of deeply prosaic everyday statements, comprised of short, simple, vernacular words (Kotz, 2001: 61); the structures of these words operate within a paradoxical model, embracing more of the unified whole of the universe as they become more focused.

All Things that Take Place in Time

Through his studies with Cage and through his own research, Brecht became familiar with the pressures placed upon Western art music through experimental practices, including those that interrogated conventions of notation and subverted musical paradigms. Brechts notebooks from 195860, which document these studies, contain copious notes on music and dozens of original compositions that make use of unconventional notations. This material betrays Brechts fascination with a field that may have also repulsed him, and offers a perspective on ideas about music that reflected and clashed with those of the period.

Many of Brechts notebook entries, like his later Event scores, take the form of lists. In one, Brecht indicates a number of musical works under the heading Study Material: Anton Weberns Symphony Op. 21 (1928), Karlheinz Stockhausens Klavierstcke XI (1956), an unnamed composition by Christian Wolff for prepared piano (probably Duo II for Pianists), and Music of Changes (1951), Cages first fully indeterminate work for an acoustic instrument (Brecht, 19912005, Vol. II: 10). There is one non-musical element in the list, Huang Po doctrine, which refers to the teachings of a 9th-century Chinese Zen Buddhist master who was known, among other things, for his disdain of the written word.

Another list indicates compositions and names of composers ranging from Bach to Brahms to Boulez, whose music Brecht singles out for analysis (p. 47). Analysis here bears little relation to traditional models of musical analysis, and instead means calculating the number of pitch classes that occur within a given work. According to Brechts calculations, Beethovens String Quartet No. 11 Op. 95 in


F Minor, for example, contains 61 events, meaning that the number of absolute pitches that occur within the composition total 61 (p. 11). Brecht notes that he plans to analyse a number of compositions with regard to frequency, amplitude and duration, ostensibly extending the calculation of events from pitch to encompass other musical parameters (p. 47).

Another entry compares sound variables to their light analogs (p. 33). Here, Brecht equates frequency in sound with wavelength in light, amplitude with brightness, and so on. A single term is shared between the two categories: duration. This feature, one that belongs equally to sound and light, would come to shape Brechts understanding of music, which he would eventually describe as anything that takes place in time, i.e. as anything that endures. In a 1967 interview with Henry Martin for Art International, Brecht says:

Suppose that music isnt just sound. Then what could it be? And thinking this, I made a series of propositions. For example, a string quartet where the players simply shake hands. They have their musical instruments and they sit as they would to play a quartet, but they just shake hands. I also wrote a score for a symphony that simply says turning. This can be realized either by turning or by observing something turning. If the essential part of music is time, then all things that take place in time could be music. (Martin, 1978[1967]: 81)

Pressed to clarify this idea (Martin asks: And what about sounds? Even though music may not be just sound, isnt sound one of its essential parts?), Brecht reveals somewhat more uncertainty about the subject. He replies: I dont think we know now whether or not music has to have sound whether or not music necessarily involves sound. And if it doesnt, a possible direction of research is to see what it can be (p. 81).

Uncertainty Principle

Among the most enduring features of Brechts research is its embrace of uncertainty as an underlying principle. Uncertainty would have been familiar to Brecht in his work as a scientist (he was a professional chemist for 15 years, and worked full time as a researcher for the Johnson & Johnson laboratories in New Jersey while he attended Cages course). As he did with other scientific concepts, Brecht sought to find parallels to the concept of uncertainty in music and art.4 In a more general sense, uncertainty also underscored Brechts understanding of his own role within these fields.

Brecht lists Uncertainty Principle in his December 1958 notes on an unfinished essay, John Cage and the Modern World-View: Space, Time and Causality (Brecht, 19912005, Vol. II: 645). This essay would have collected thoughts on a number of topics that Brecht felt were critical in shaping contemporary cultural perspectives:


The Unity of ExperienceOriental ThoughtOpen Systems (Homeostasis + Change)Present State of Causality and ChanceThe Universe as a SpaceTime Continuum (a Consequence of Relativity)

RelativitySpaceTime RelativityMatterEnergy Equivalence(Gravitation Inertia equivalence) > FieldChanging Structure of the Universe

Unified Field Theory {Relativity; Quantum Physics}Quantum Physics

Uncertainty PrincipleProbabilityObserverObservedParadox as a reflection of our inability to imagine a simple model of the universe

PsychologyGestaltPsychoanalysis and the UnconsciousPerception (Rorschach; Structure)Field

In retrospect, it is questionable how much Brecht felt these topics were genuinely relevant to Cages work (which was arguably not concerned with a majority of the terms on the list), and how much he imagined them as framing his own potential contributions to art and knowledge. Brecht was the son of a professional musician (his father was a flautist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra), and he was self-taught as an artist. His earliest works were chance-based paintings made with ink on crumpled bed sheets. They owed an acknowledged debt to Jackson Pollock, whom Brecht regarded as a focal point of development within the history of chance-based art (Brecht, 2004[1966]: 4).

Brechts encounters with Cage propelled him away from painting and towards composition, at least for a time in the late 1950s. In Brechts notebooks, compositions variously take shape as lists, charts, graphs, diagrams, games, paradoxes, poems, experiments and propositions. These works easily traverse disciplinary boundaries and modalities; ultimately, they posit music as operating within frames of reference that were entirely foreign to the usual ones.

An early work, Elements (June 1958), is composed for cellophane, voice and mallet, and resembles a periodic table more than it does a conventional musical score (Brecht, 19912005, Vol. I: 5). Burette Music (April 1959), is similarly inspired by chemistry, and sets liquid dripping into burettes at different, precisely calculated rates (Vol. III: 25). The score for Confetti Music (July 1958)


is distributed on cards, and comprises a complex set of instructions for actions with instruments that include Japanese gongs, prepared guitar, tom-toms and gamelan. Here, Brecht notes that: The sound becomes a projection of the record of a state (like an abstract-expressionist painting). The cards represent a record of a more or less momentary state (Vol. I: 201). Like many of the notebook compositions, Checker-Music (July 1959) explores the relationship between choice and chance methods; it instructs performers to produce sounds according to the sequence of plays in a checkers game played by members of the audience (Vol. III: 97).

Numerous scores tease out correspondences between sound and light, like Three Colored Lights (July 1958), in which sound events are contingent upon a dense matrix of visual cues (Vol. I: 2934). Others exploit relationships between time and space. Room Piece (for a garage) (August 1958) collects receiving elements, transmuting elements and originating elements in a room where words are hung. The notes refer to light and sound elements [that originate from] random point centers in the room, but the nature of these elements is not at all specified (Vol. I: 601).

Brecht was familiar with Cages 1958 lecture Composition as Process: Indeterminacy, which teased out the tensions between determinate and indeterminate structures, methods and materials in music by Stockhausen, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, and others. Cage claimed of Browns 4 Systems, for example, that Structure ... is indeterminate. Form, the morphology of the continuity, is also indeterminate. In given interpretations ... method is determinate and so too are the amplitude, timbre and frequency characteristics of the material (p. 38). Brecht picks up on a number of threads from this lecture in his notes, inflecting Cages discussion with scientific and mathematical references. He analyses the same work by Brown in terms of relativity and probability, for example, and proposes relationships with the composition to analytic geometry:

each score-fragment [in 4 Systems] is a microstructure in the macrostructure of the piece (as an electron is a microstructure in the macrostructure of the atom, and the atom is a microstructure in the macrostructure of a table) ... The freedom of the performer to turn the page side-to-side is analogous to the rotation of axes in analytic geometry, where, for example, the same point P can be described as (x, y) in terms of axes 0X and 0Y (or x, y) in terms of 0X and when the axis is rotated. Then x and y can be expressed in terms of x and y (that is, are necessarily related, according to the axioms of geometry) ... This, of course, is just another way of expressing the correlation of structure between performers (inversions, retrogressions, etc.). (Vol. I: 639)

Brechts conception of chance-based processes is specifically rooted in scientific discourses (see Brecht, 2004[1966]). Where Cage highlights chance-based processes that serve to undermine the composers ego-sense of separation from other beings and things (p. 39), Brecht is interested in the probabilistic


dimension of ObserverObserved relationships that draw attention to the interconnectedness of seemingly distinct elements.

Cage and Brecht independently discovered the teachings of D.T. Suzuki and conceptions of chance within Zen Buddhism, and both were drawn to propositions of non-intentionality and indifference therein; however, where Cage was more specifically interested in the implications of non-intentionality in relation to European musical conventions, Brechts interest was located more generally in terms of its contribution to a contemporary world-view.

Brechts compositions for the New School class both reflect and diverge from Cagean models of musical indeterminacy. Some relay instructions for indeterminate actions with objects/instruments that result in the production of sounds (i.e. a chance-based music); others set into motion indeterminate systems without necessarily specifying any temporal structures or frameworks, leaving the performer or audience to determine structure through navigation and observation. The role of the performer shifts considerably in this music: at times it is central (i.e. a score transmits instructions for a soloist or a group of performers); at other times the performer occupies a more distant place in relation to the score and the concept of performer shifts from that of musician/actor to that of observer.

The most significant change is that the aural element begins to fade in these compositions, which at various stages are concerned with articulating musical sounds (sounds with specific characteristics made on specific instruments, etc.), less specific sound elements or events and, finally, more generalized structures in which sound is one element among many, with none ranking in any particular order. These shifts underscore the more fundamental change underway in Brechts thought, which was becoming less interested in organizing sounds, and more overtly concerned with structuring experiences. Brechts proposition of a new model, the Event, framed this paradigmatic shift; as Julia Robinson (2009: 86) suggests, it signaled Brechts move away from Cage and, in a more general sense, from music.5

Structures of Experience

My life is devoted to research into the structure of experience (George Brecht, Notebook entry, January 1959 [Brecht, 19912005, Vol. II: 107])

I conceive of the individual as part of an infinite space and time: in constant interaction with that continuum (nature), and giving order (physically or conceptually) to a part of the continuum with which he interacts. (George Brecht, Project in Multiple Dimensions [Kaprow et al., 1999[19578]: 159])

The term event appears in Brechts research from its earliest stages. It is initially linked to Cages proposition of music as Events in sound-space (an idea that Brecht quotes verbatim in his first notebook entry) (Brecht, 19912005, Vol. I: 4). This concept is reflected in Brechts early musical analyses, which count the


number of discrete events that occur in a given composition. It is then expanded to a more general one that might be described as events in spacetime. Here, event still retains the meaning of occurrence, although the occurrence is not necessarily limited to sound.

Dieter Daniels: the concept of event takes a very interesting development in [your notebooks]. It is mentioned the first time in a quotation of John Cage Events in soundsspace and you use the word event according to its sense in the dictionary, and then slowly and almost unremarked the word event gets more and more specific until it is finally the word Event with a big E.

George Brecht: Yes, like in Toward Events, the title for the show at the Reuben Gallery. (Brecht, 19912005, Vol. I: unnumbered endnotes)

Brechts first public exhibit of works, Toward Events: An Arrangement, was held at the Reuben Gallery in New York City, from 16 October to 5 November 1959. On display in this exhibit were not events in the traditional sense, but instead objects accompanied by the instruction to be performed. One Event, The Case, featured a suitcase containing common objects like a spool of yarn, a plate and stamps. Brechts instructions indicated that The Case should be opened, its contents removed and used in ways appropriate to their nature; he wrote that the Event comprises all sensible occurrences between approach and abandonment of the case (see Fischer, 2005: 42). Sensible here refers to anything that can be sensed, pointing to the total, multi-sensorial perceptual experience (Kotz, 2001: 83) that Brecht aimed to manifest in the Event.

Following this exhibit, Brecht composed his first Event score, Motor Vehicle Sundown (Event) (Spring/Summer 1960), which he dedicated to Cage. In this work, an unspecified number of performers are each given a set of cards that contain instructions for actions with parked cars. The performers shuffle the cards, randomizing the arrangement of the work, but are permitted to choose the duration of their actions. This Event score is atypical in its complexity, and resembles earlier musical compositions like Confetti Music. However, it hints at a conception of the Event as something that emerges from observation and is rooted in experience. Brecht describes his inspiration for Motor Vehicle Sundown (Event) as follows:

Standing in the woods of East Brunswick, New Jersey, where I lived at the time, waiting for my wife to come from the house, standing behind my English Ford station wagon, the motor running and the left-turn signal blinking, it occurred to me that a truly event piece could be drawn from the situation. (Brecht, 1970)

In July 1960, Brecht began to describe a new model of Events as psycho-physical structures, once again referencing topics that appeared in his earlier writings:


uncertainty principle, relativity, open systems, psychology, etc. (Brecht, 19912005, Vol. V: 165). By 1961, he was composing the famously succinct Event scores that were arguably much closer to approaching the conceptual models laid out in his earlier research.

In 1957, having only recently met Cage, Brecht wrote Chance-Imagery, an essay in which he explored the concept of chance within art and science. Brechts genealogy of chance-based art included the improvised paintings of Wassily Kandinsky, the automatic art practices of the Dadaists and Surrealists, and the mechanical chance processes employed by Marcel Duchamp. Brecht attributed the presence of chance in art to an apparent lack of consciousness in design, and suggested that automatic/unconscious actions were one way of achieving this lack. In terms of contemporary art practices, Brecht felt that Pollocks paintings were the most important work being done in area of chance. Citing Pollocks interest in the unconscious, Brecht examined the technical features of Pollocks work through the lens of indeterminacy:

Aside from the lack of conscious control of paint application in [Pollocks] paintings, there are technical reasons for looking at this complex of interdependent forms as predominantly chance events. For one thing, the infinite number of variables involved in determining the flow of fluid paint from a source not in contact with the canvas cannot possibly be simultaneously taken into account with sufficient omniscience that the exact configuration of the paint when it hits the canvas can be predicted. Some of these variables, for example, are the paint viscosity, density, rate of flow at any instant; and direction, speed and configuration of the applicator, to say nothing of non-uniformity in the paint. (Brecht, 2004[1966]: 11)

Brecht goes on to suggest that chance methods afford not only technical or aesthetic opportunities to the artist but metaphysical ones as well, by allowing the artist to transcend personality, culture and, ultimately, self (p. 23). In exploring the contours of this transcendence, Brecht refers to the writings of D.T. Suzuki, who is commonly credited with having introduced Zen Buddhism to Western audiences in the 1950s. He cites the following passage from Suzukis Zen Buddhism:

There is something divine in being spontaneous and not being hampered by human conventionalities and their artificial hypocrisies. There is something direct and fresh in this lack of restraint by anything human, which suggests a divine freedom and creativity. Nature never deliberates; it acts directly out of its own heart, whatever this may mean. In this respect Nature is divine. Its irrationality transcends human doubts or ambiguities, and in our submitting to it, or rather accepting it, we transcend ourselves. (p. 12)

In Suzukis conception, nature is divine because it does not think but merely acts; nature is therefore free. Similarly, within Zen Buddhist doctrines, a self that achieves freedom from itself (which realizes the non-existence of self) is


enlightened. Brechts model of the Event was arguably an attempt to realize such an enlightenment by pointing to the chanced form as an arbitrary subdivision of the unified whole of the universe. An arrangement of an object or objects is a performance of this whole in that it frames moments or subdivisions within it, i.e. [gives] order (physically or conceptually) to a part of the continuum with which [a person] interacts.

Some Event scores illustrate this concept quite explicitly. Three Aqueous Events, for example, lists three momentary states that an aqueous object may occupy over time: ice, water, steam.6 A realization of this score entails performing (arranging, observing, ordering) these objects/states and, through this performance, revealing their condition as arbitrary points within a continuous field, and indeed their existence within a continuous state of flux between these points. In making this observation, the performer ideally realizes, and more precisely experiences, his or her own place within this continuum. Such an experience entails a kind of transcendence in which any stable sense of self is at least momentarily undermined through its connection to this larger system of flux.

In this way, an Event score not only structures occurrences, but also experiences ones that are ultimately transformative in nature. The first words in Brechts preliminary notes for an article, Objects/Events/Situations (the original title to the Toward Events exhibit) are Changing. Mutual transaction (Brecht, 19912005, Vol. V: 239). The change that is figured in the Event is intended to take place in both directions, i.e. not only is an object acted upon or observed, etc., but the observer/performer is also changed. This change is not one that can be measured or determined; it belongs more fundamentally to metaphysical realms, developing as what Brecht (1970) would designate little enlightenments.7

Wider and Wider Vistas

In a notebook entry from January 1959, Brecht likens his lifes work, what he called his research into the structure of experience, to climbing a series of progressively higher plateaus, while at the same time ones sight becomes proportionately keener (Brecht, 19912005, Vol. II: 107). He writes, As one climbs, one becomes aware of the wider and wider vistas (relationships), while at the same time not losing sight of details, or at least, not of the critical ones (p. 107).

In a remarkable way, Brechts artistic evolution during the 19581962 period follows a parallel route. The Event score emerges, on one hand, from experiments that draw connections between musical indeterminacy and indeterminacy within other systems. Brechts early compositions aim to illustrate these connections using scoring methods whose complexities, while fascinating, arguably limit the performer or listeners ability to perceive those wider relationships.8 His conception and refinement of the minimal Event score, however, paradoxically open the expression to a more general field of occurrences, while it simultaneously becomes keener in content, and in focusing the critical aspect of experience within a conception of indeterminacy.


The Event is typically understood as a genre of performance or composition, but it is perhaps more fundamentally a genre of experience, one that can negotiate the personal, complex and mysterious by connecting the incidental occurrence to the unified whole of the universe. Brecht (2004[1966]) writes that:

Science tells us that the universe is what we conceive it to be, and chance enables us to determine what we conceive it to be ... The receptacle of forms available to the artist thus becomes open-ended, and eventually embraces all of nature, for the recognition of significant form becomes limited only by the observers self. (p. 4).

An experience of the Event connects the observers self to this open-ended receptacle of forms and, as such, removes this limit from the equation, extending the possibilities for connection and change into infinitely wider, more uncertain realms.

Notes

1. Project in Multiple Dimensions was a grant proposal put forward by Allan Kaprow, Robert Watts and George Brecht. The proposal, which outlined an ambitious project to establish a new institute for experimental art rooted in science and other disciplines, was first published in full in Marter (1999).

2. Event scores were notably published in Young (1963) and the Water Yam edition (Brecht, 1963), a box collection designed by George Maciunas that collected about 50 scores printed on small cards. Photographic reproductions of scores appear in Martin (1978[1967]) and the exhibit catalogue edited by Fischer (2005); numerous scores by Brecht and artists associated with Fluxus are reprinted in Friedman et al. (2002).

3. From a conversation between George Brecht, Herman Braun, Dieter Daniels and Kasper Knig in Cologne on 22 August 1991. This conversation is printed in the unnumbered endnotes to the first volume of George Brechts notebooks, which have been published in several facsimile editions, see Brecht (19912005): Vol. I (JuneSeptember 1958), Vol. II (October 1958April 1959), Vol. III (April 1959August 1959) were published in 1991; Vol. IV (September 1959March 1960) and Vol. V (March 1960November 1960) in 1998; Vol. VI (March 1961June 1961) and Vol. VII (June 1961September 1962) in 2005.

4. In Project in Multiple Dimensions, Brecht writes that his organizational methods

stem largely from other parts of my experience: randomness and chance from statistics, multi-dimensionality from scientific method, continuity of nature from oriental thought, etc. This might be emphasized: the basic structure of my art comes primarily from aspects of experience unrelated to the history of art; only secondarily, and through subsequent study, do I trace artistic precursors of some aspects of my present approach. (Kaprow et al., 1999[19578]: 159)

5. In a 1973 interview with Irmeline Leeber (1978[1973]) for Art Vivant, Brecht says:

[Cage] was the great liberator for me. But at the same time, he remained a musician, a composer I tried to develop the ideas that Id had during Cages course and thats where my events come from. I wanted to make music that wouldnt only be for the ears. Music isnt just what you hear or what you listen to, but everything that happens Events are an extension of music.


6. Brecht understands objects as time-based phenomena; he writes in a notebook entry dating from SeptemberOctober 1960 that Objects are processes which we choose to conceive of as having a zero (or near-zero) rate of change (Brecht, 19912005, Vol. V: 239).

7. In Origin of Events, Brecht (1970) describes his later Event scores as becoming very private, like little enlightenments I wanted to communicate to my friends who would know what to do with them.

8. In an interview with Michael Nyman (1978[1976]), Brecht discusses performances of his earlier, heavily notated compositions in Cages course at the New School; he recalls that, everybody was to give their thoughts about [the performance] and Cage ... said I never felt so controlled before or Nobodys ever tried to control me so much. So I learned that lesson there, I realized that I was being dictatorial.

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Gascia Ouzounian is Lecturer in the School of Music & Sonic Arts at Queens University Belfast. Her writing has appeared in such journals as Journal of the Society for American Music, Organised Sound, Computer Music Journal, Contemporary Music Review and RADIO Journal, and the recently published monograph Paul DeMarinis/Buried in Noise (Kehrer Verlag, 2010).

Address: School of Music & Sonic Arts, Music Building, Queens University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland. [email: [email protected]]

ouzounian uncertainty of experience

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