Abstract
Shortly before his death in 1992, John Cage delivered a lecture-poem at Stanford University entitled Overpopulation & Art. Cages musical, visual and textual forms paralleled forms of his preferred social organisation. In his mesostic lecture, Cage relates various ideas about social change, the role of art (or artlessness), globalization, education, and environmental concerns. Cages position (social/anarchistic/libertarian) is that social revolution is possible at a grass-roots level – that change is bought about through positive individualism not government dictates – that change will also be assisted through an (electronic) democratisation of knowledge – that art, or more specifically creative mind is part of this gradual revolution, a utopian transformation. (A Coda Session).

• Gregg Wagstaff, UK, is an artist working primarily with sound. He is currently Research Resident at the DJCA in Dundee, whilst undertaking part-time doctoral study at the UEA, Norwich in Musicology – entitled “Sound, Art & the Environment”. Gregg is devising site specific and “responsive sound environments” – the most recent of these “Inverurie Soundscape” commissioned by the Scottish Sculpture Workshop & funded by the SAC. His practice draws on the study of Acoustic Ecology and the social/enviromental responsibilty of the artist.
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