CAGE: A Filmic Circus On Metaphors On Vision

Imusicircus is a threefold realization of John Cage’s Circus On by composer Douglas Cohen and film artist Lawrence Brose. The score to Circus On is a set of directions for creating an audio performance piece based on a text. First, one is instructed to “write through” a book (using mesostic form) to distill a text for recitation (i.e. Cage’s Writing for the Second Time through Finnegans Wake). This mesostic text is then used as a guide to make a “circus of relevant sounds.” The recited text and “circus of sounds” are combined to create a stereo recording (i.e. Cage’s Roaratorio). This project is about translation. It is about the translation of a score for music into a “score” for video and film. It is about translating Cage’s ideas and aesthetics in the world of sound into the visual realm.