Through the Looking Glass examines John Cage's interactions and collaborations with avant-garde filmmakers, and in turn seeks out the implications of the audiovisual experience on Cage's career. The examples chosen highlight moments of rupture within Cage's notions of the audiovisual experience and the medium-specific ontology of a work of art.

Richard Brown earned a PhD in musicology from the University of Southern California. He has published articles on John Cage, experimental music, sound art, film music and copyright in The Journal of the Society for American Music, Contemporary Music Review, Leonardo, and American Music Review.

• Introduction: Audiovisual(ity/ology)


• Chapter 1: The Spirit inside Each Object: Oskar Fischinger, Sound Phonography, and the "Inner Eye"


• Chapter 2: "Dreams that Money Can Buy": Trance, Myth, and Expression, 1941-1948.


• Chapter 3: Losing the Ground: Chance, Transparency and Cinematic Space, 1948-1958


• Chapter 4: Cinema Delimina: Post-Cagean Aesthetics, Medium-Specificity, and Expanded Cinema


• Conclusion: "Through the Looking Glass": Poetics and Chance in John Cage's One


• Bibliography


• Index