You can go back to the writing and works of John Cage in the 1930's for this sort of exploration, manipulating the sound of the piano with random objects to introduce a dimension of contingency in the sound. Adorno argues that the concept of the 'experiment' within artistic practices shifted from the instrumental reason of the classic enlightenment (Bacon, for instance) to a process of producing the unexpected, the unknown in his posthumous, Aesthetic Theory.
As a side note, long before these various hoaxes, the formalist critic Shklovsky mocked symbolist Andrei Bely (author of the wonderful St. Petersburg) for his obsession with old church uses of language. He argued that unique quality of the language didn't arise from the language itself, but the fact that the strangeness that the once prosaic language took with the shifts in the conventional language had taken over the years (fitting in with his interesting if problematic theory of estrangement.) Carrol, I'd be curious as to your thoughts about old formalist theory. I don't think that it works as a theory of literature, but it's interesting nonetheless. robert
> I vaguely remember 1962? 63? An essay by Kenneth Burke in Poetry
> discussing
> some music that was in some way 'randomly' created. (This is pretty vague
> in
> my mind: haven't thought of it for near half a century.) I think he argued
> that it still could be seen as somehow 'intended,' hence did not undermine
> 'traditionnal' conceptions of the musical work. Do not trust me on this,
> but
> someone might want to look it up.
>
> Carrol
>
>
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