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Front sleeve of Cybernetic Serendipity Music, featuring Peter Zinovieff’s graph-paper score Four Sacred April Rounds, 1968.

01 / 06LP Cover Art by Peter Zinovieff, Four Sacred April Rounds (1968)

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LP or sound recording

Cybernetic Serendipity Music

1968
John Cage ↗Computer Technique Group (CTG) ↗Lejaren Hiller ↗

The sound counterpart to Cybernetic Serendipity, this 1968 LP captures computer music at its emergence as an artistic field. It brings together the first computer-composed music (Illiac Suite), Cagean indeterminacy, Xenakis's computer-assisted stochastic methods, early direct digital synthesis, and CTG's extraordinary Bit Music: the sound produced by a plotter while executing a computer graphic.

Author / editor
Peter Schmidt, editor. Peter Zinovieff, cover artist.
Publisher
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)
London
Format
LP Vinyl Record
Reference
Cybernetic Serendipity

Side 1

  1. Lejaren Hiller & Leonard Isaacson – Illiac Suite (Experiment 4) (1957) [Mono]
    • Performed by the Illinois Composition String Quartet. One of the earliest landmarks in computer-assisted composition using the ILLIAC I computer at the University of Illinois.
  2. John Cage – Cartridge Music (excerpt) (1960) [Stereo]
    • Performed by John Cage and David Tudor using phonograph cartridges and amplified contact microphones across textured surfaces to explore indeterminacy.
  3. Iannis Xenakis – Stratégie (excerpt) (1962) [Stereo]
    • Conducted by Seiji Ozawa and Hiroshi Wakasugi; performed by the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. Uses game theory and matrix probabilities calculated on an IBM 7090.
  4. Wilhelm Fucks – Experiment Quatro-Due (1963) [Mono]
    • Technische Hochschule, Aachen. Performed on piano by Margot Pinter (played back at double speed).
  5. J. K. Randall – Mudgett (excerpt) (1965) [Stereo]
    • Princeton University; Melinda Kessler (vocalist). Early computer-synthesized tape work realized using an IBM 7094 and digital-to-analogue conversion at Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Side 2

  1. Gerald Strang – Compusition 3 (1966) [Mono]
    • UCLA. Direct digital synthesis exploring Fourier synthesis, envelope controls, and algorithmically programmed instrument subroutines.
  2. Haruki Tsuchiya (Computer Technique Group, Tokyo) – Bit Music (excerpt) (1967/68) [Stereo]
    • Audio directly recorded onto tape from the movements of a digital plotter executing the code for the computer graphic The Individualisation Age.
  3. T. H. O'Beirne – Enneadic Selections (1968) [Mono]
    • Algorithmic variations in the scale and style of Highland bagpipe music, computed and performed on a Solidac computer (1K store of 20-bit words).
  4. Peter Zinovieff – January Tensions (1968) [Stereo]
    • Composed and realized in real-time using an 8K DEC PDP-8/S minicomputer and custom electronic peripherals.
  5. Herbert Brün – Infraudibles (1967) [Stereo]
    • University of Illinois. Live recording from the August 29, 1968 ICA concert featuring legendary avant-garde/free improvisers: Evan Parker (saxophone), Derek Bailey (electric guitar), Gavin Bryars (double bass), Richard Howe (french horn), and Bernard Rands (cimbalom).

Related in the collection

Computer Music from the University of Illinois (Heliodor, 1967): front sleeve with overlapping red, blue, yellow and white IBM punch cards, featuring music by Hiller, Isaacson and Baker.
Computer Music from the University of Illinois
Lejaren Hiller, Leonard Isaacson, Robert Baker, 1967
Front cover of Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts (1968), combining plotter works by Charles Csuri and Lloyd Sumner in Franciszka Themerson’s design.
Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts
Jasia Reichardt, editor. Franciszka Themerson, design & layout., 1968