posted on 2019-01-14, 00:00authored byTiffany Funk
In 1956, Lejaren A. Hiller, Jr., and Leonard Isaacson debuted the Illiac Suite, the first score composed with a computer. Its reception anticipated Hiller’s embattled career as an experimental composer. Though the Suite is an influential work of modern electronic music, Hiller’s accomplishment in computational experimentation is above all an impressive feat of postwar conceptual performance art. A reexamination of theoretical and methodological processes resulting in the Illiac Suite reveals a conceptual and performative emphasis reflecting larger trends in the experimental visual arts of the 1950s and 1960s, illuminating his eventual collaborations with John Cage and establishing his legacy in digital art practices.
History
Publisher Statement
Copyright @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (MIT Press)
Citation
Funk, T. (2018). A musical suite composed by an electronic brain: Reexamining the Illiac suite and the Legacy of Lejaren A. Hiller Jr. Leonardo Music Journal, 28, 19-24. doi:10.1162/lmj_a_01037
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (MIT Press)