{"id":2899,"date":"2009-08-27T18:59:10","date_gmt":"2009-08-27T23:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/?p=2899"},"modified":"2009-08-27T20:47:39","modified_gmt":"2009-08-28T01:47:39","slug":"presenting-the-mushroom-book-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/presenting-the-mushroom-book-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Presenting the Mushroom Book Project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/iah.unc.edu\/news\/newsarchive\/2009\/chat_fallupdate\/image\/image_view_fullscreen\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/iah.unc.edu\/news\/newsarchive\/2009\/chat_fallupdate\/image_mini\" alt=\"Jeff Beam presents John Cage's Mushroom Book\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jeff Beam, Jeffrey Pomerantz and I are there in the picture showing one of the rare copies of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Cage\">John Cage&#8217;s<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/books\/268626\/surprising-literary-ventures.thtml\">Mushroom Book<\/a> which will serve as a jumping off point for our presentation\/project\/happening\/theatre piece at <a href=\"http:\/\/iah.unc.edu\/news\/newsarchive\/2009\/chat_fallupdate\">the CHAT or Collaboration: Humanities, Arts and Technology Festival<\/a> early next year.<\/p>\n<p><em>CHAT, which will take place on the UNC campus February 16-20, 2010, will showcase the possibilities for innovative, collaborative arts and humanities work enabled by technology by drawing together the region\u2019s diverse digital resources in a series of performances, colloquies, demonstrations and training sessions.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We say:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nJohn Cage&#8217;s Mushroom Book captures the experience of mushroom hunting through a collaboration between a noted mycologist (Alexander H. Smith), an extraordinary illustrator (Lois Long), and Renaissance man\/visionary John Cage.  Using scientific illustration and description, poetry, typography, and text the book is essentially an early multimedia event. We will re-capture the experience of their hunt and collaboration through a reinterpretation of the Mushroom Book: an interactive, three-dimensional, technologically-enabled multimedia experience.<\/p>\n<p>This Happening will fulfill the as-yet unfulfilled promise to Dr. John Couch&#8217;s widow, by the UNC-CH John N. Couch Biology-Botany Library to make use of the Mushroom Book in the educational mission of the University. The volume was a gift from Mrs. Couch in memory of her husband&#8217;s and John Cage&#8217;s friendship.  Dr. Couch was a world-renown mycologist for whom the Biology-Botany library at UNC was named.  Couch, Cage, and others made a number of mushroom forays together.  [revised\/expanded JB 7\/14\/2009]<\/p>\n<p>The book is discussed here in Cage&#8217;s biography, Roaring Silence (Amazon preview) page 235-236. also Cage on technology on page 237. (at UNC Music Library ML410.C24 R5 1992 ) In Conversations with Cage, John Cage says 10 lithographs were by Lois Long (the scientifically correct mushroom images) and 10 by Cage, himself ( &#8220;My texts &#8230; handwritten in five different litho crayon intensities (&#8230; superimpositions making much unreadable) &#8230; enabling the reader &#8230; to go hunting in my handwritten page.&#8221; (letter to Smith from Cage)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/docs.google.com\/Doc?docid=0AQZizHK90wlBZGQ3MjlqZHRfMTc3Y3g3NDViaGQ&#038;hl=en\">Read more and help us think about how to do all of this on this Google Doc at http:\/\/tinyURL.com\/18Hn6Pz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Beam, Jeffrey Pomerantz and I are there in the picture showing one of the rare copies of John Cage&#8217;s Mushroom Book which will serve as a jumping off point for our presentation\/project\/happening\/theatre piece at the CHAT or Collaboration: Humanities, Arts and Technology Festival early next year. CHAT, which will take place on the UNC [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2899"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2905,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899\/revisions\/2905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}