[silence] Cage and Oulipo 2

[Rod Stasick]

On Feb 19, 2007, at 7:26 PM, Marjorie Perloff wrote:

> Thanks, everyone, for your prompt and good responses.  But I am not  
> wholly convinced.  True, Oulipo descried chance but what, in  
> practice, is the difference between, say, a mesostic rule (even if  
> the vertical strings are generated by chance operations) and the  
> Oulipo N+7 rule, which is not ‘unchancy” in that different  
> dictionaries would give you a different seventh noun after the N.   
> Besides, Cage admits again and again that he changed the chance  
> products “according to taste.”
>
> The key link may be Duchamp,, who is connected to both camps.  I  
> will try to check more fully.
>
> Marjorie Perloff


I'm sorry, what was the question? - hahahaha!

I think you've just answered your question above concerning the  
differences
between a mesostic rule (with chance) and, for example, a N+7 rule  
(without) -
*that's* the difference...and there's the structural approach  
differences as well
when it comes to Cage's change of a few words here and there  
"according to taste"
and the Oulipo manner of frowning on anything that falls outside of  
it's self-generated axioms
used in this practice of creating compositions of it's own literary  
works.

I think your initial question was whether Cage had contact with the  
Oulipo contemporaries.
He might have, but, if he did, it would seem in a tangential way.
Aside from the ideas of Oulipo being outside of Cage's (and vice-versa),
the actual physical makeup of the group was quite distinctly isolated
before and after Queneau's death.

...and has been stated before, there's the almost cult-like devotion  
to a
rigorous system of strategic hard-edged constraints overriding any  
poetic aspect
that I couldn't imagine Cage finding any interest in it
simply because the results of these forays are so completely dependent
on rules that do not foster renewed interpretation of the results
(except in a few cases of indeterminate performance practices).

If an article is to be written, I think that it may be quite interesting
to posit what Cage *could've* done if he had worked in an Oulipian  
manner
under their rules - or better yet - how a reciprocal relationship may  
have
been an artistic advantage to all involved and passed on to the rest  
of us.

Oulipo, on the strength of it's artistic conception, presents an  
amazing fountain of
creative ideas that would take several lifetimes to exhaust -
which I doubt would happen considering
all of the mathematical areas one could explore and the extrapolations
and lateral thinking proffered by the systems already in use.
Unfortunately, the real problem with many creative artistic movements
is that there are people involved - hahahaha!
Somehow, when people get in the way of flowering ideas,
the whole thing nearly (or surely) collapses.

For decades, I've used the ideas of Oulipo and it's various breakoffs
in my work, and the distinct advantage is that I don't need to be a  
member of their group
whereby I'd be expected to be surrounded by the walls (or cage, if  
you will)
of Oulipian ideological exclusivity.
I think this exclusiveness would've driven John quite mad.


R~~






---
Now playing: Vyacheslav Ganelin - July (For Viola, Wind Quartet &  
Percussions)


  
  
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