ABSTRACT
Motivated further by broadcasts of musique concrete from France and the early recordings of Les Pauland Mary Ford, making circuits and exploring electronic music became a “non-stop activity”. The collaboration between Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma led to the creation of the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music in 1958. The “studio” consisted of rooms set aside for electronic music equipment in each of their two homes. Mumma and Ashley, along with Cage, represented a kind of publicly accessible electronic music that was created and could be heard outside the walls of academia. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ashley and Mumma’s successful weekly stagings of live electronic music performances and avant-garde theater in the Space Theater of Milton Cohen led a burgeoning community of performing artists. Ashley established an electronic music studio at Mills College and continued to compose in electronic music and mixed media.
