Curated by David Toop

A newly commissioned installation by Ryoji Ikeda is presented in this exhibition exploring the legacy of John Cage's ideas on contemporary music, art and sound.

"After a visit to Japan with David Tudor in 1962, John Cage became fascinated by Soami's 15th century Zen dry garden at Ryoanji, in Kyoto. The emptiness of the sand, the placement of the stones, and the illusion created by the five islands of 15 stones, rising out of moss within an ocean of white sand, seemed to confirm certain of his ideas about music. In 1983 he began to produce exquisite graphic works entitled Where R = Ryoanji, using stones, pencils and the chance methods of the I Ching. At the same time, he composed pieces for a variety of solo instruments, also entitled Ryoanji. Playing John Cage will show one of Cage's Ryoanji drawings - R/17 2/88 - and exhibit a newly commissioned composite work based on Ryoanji, created for video and sound by composers Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai, and video maker Takagi Masakatsu.

Playing John Cage:

Revolutionaries must expect to be overturned by new revolutions. As the central revolutionary of experimental sound work and listening, John Cage's impact on the development of music since 1950 is inescapable. To discuss 20th and 21st century music without acknowledging Cage's pivotal influence is impossible. Despite this, he remains a difficult and controversial figure. In the neo-conservative atmosphere now emerging through populist music theory. Cage has become a symbol of 'what went wrong'.

Playing John Cage counters such claims by emphasizing the link between Cage's ideas and contemporary sonic arts practice. Many artists working in the new interzone of electronica, sound installations, audio montage and environmental soundscapes feel that Cage's legacy is the touchstone of their relationship to sound. Chance, accident, quotation, ambient sound and the establishment of both silence and noise as legitimate areas for sonic exploration have proved to be liberating for those who hear sound as a primary material, rather than as a starting point for music. For many of today's sound artists, Cage represents 'what went right'. Their work begins with the open listening and multi-disciplinary approach advocated by Cage.

An exhibition that will include audible mushrooms, sonic furniture, and a new take on Cage's fascination with Kyoto's most famous Zen garden, Ryoanji, Playing John Cage will feature new commissions for installations by Alvin Curran, Ryoji Ikeda, Rolf Julius, Takagi Masakatsu, Kaffe Matthews, Carsten Nicolai, Akio Suzuki and Michael Prime. The exhibition will also show text compositions from the post-Cageian period of Fluxus, the Scratch Orchestra and Experimental Music Catalogue by Gavin Bryars, Michael Parsons, Mieko Shiomi and Christian Wolff, as well as John Cage's drawing: Ryoanji R/17 2/88."

- David Toop, 2005