Dick Higgins(1938-1998) was an American artist, composer, art theorist, poet, publisher, printmaker, and a co-founder of the Fluxus international artistic movement and community. He attended the New School of Social Research(1958-1959) taught by John Cage was born in 1938 and Henry Cowell, and inspired by Cage, Higgins was an early pioneer of using electronic correspondence. In 1963, Higgins founded Something Else Press in turn contributing greatly to the medium now widely known as "artist books." From 1963 to 1974, Higgins and his collaborators designed and produced over sixty publications including seminal works by Fluxus artists and projects by other influential twentieth-century artists. Higgins coined the term intermedia to describe his own artistic activities, defining it in a 1965 essay by the same name, which was published in the first issue of the Something Else Newsletter. His most notable audio contribution remains to this day, the Danger Music scores.
Again, by Primary Information, this is now available to read in full here.
Intermedia was a term coined by Dick Higgins to encompass the variations in his own practice and eventually came to stand for interdisciplinarity that occurw within artworks existing between artistic genres.
‘Higgins had a firm vision that radical art could be housed in book form and distributed throughout the world and he worked endlessly to cultivate new works that challenged conventional notions of both contemporary art and books’ — Primary Information.
John Cage was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde.
A classroom setting at the New School of Social Research with John Cage pictured. The class taken by Dick Higgins alongside which also included Jackson Mac Low, George Brecht, Allan Kaprow and Al Hansen.
1981 Fluxus diagram by Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins performing Danger Music Number Seventeen
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Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles performing Danger Music Number Two The event card for Danger Music Number Fifteen Dick Higgins and Harry Ruhé performing Danger Music Number Twenty-Two The handwritten score for Danger Music Number Twenty-Three
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Emmett Williams and Geoffrey Hendricks performing Danger Music Number Two The event card for Danger Music Number Twenty-Four Dick Higgins performing Danger Music Number Two
Dick Higgins performing Danger Music Number Fifteen (For the Dance)