John Cage's Solo Piano As Form

John Cage’s Solo Piano as Form (94” W x 66” H x 10” D)

John Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and artist. He would often connect the notes on his sheet music creating flat forms.

I created a 3D version of Cage’s Page 18, Solo for Piano, from Concert for Piano and Orchestra (ink and pencil drawing, 17 1/8" W x 10 7/8” H - 1958). Cage was particularly interested in giving control of his music over to the interpreter thus each performance would be different from one another. In this spirit I created human scale sculptures which could be arranged into umpteen configurations.

Step 1: Instructions

I traced Cage’s drawing in Illustrator – created a vector. I then created a CAD file in Rino3D -- with a maximum height of 66” for the structures. Once the dimensions were configured I cut 3/16” steel rod and welded together each of the 8 structures. I created a pattern in a white elastic polyester fabric for each structure and then cut and sewed each casing onto each form.

Step 2: Materials Needed

reference image

Illustrator

Rino3D

3/16” steel rod

steel cutter

MIG welder

welding angle magnets

white elastic polyester fabric

scissors

pins

fabric pen

sewing machine