The sound (and silence) of music filled the Center for the Arts (CFA) Cinema on Tuesday, Nov. 13 at the Actual Music Series show “Internal Combustion.” Featuring works by Earle Brown, John Cage, and Katherine Young, the show was a multimedia presentation that counted cardboard boxes among the many instruments on stage.

The concert opened with a touch of whimsy, featuring a 1948 Looney Tunes cartoon short, “Long-Haired Hare.” Directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese, the short depicted an opera singer named Giovanni Jones, who a banjo, harp and tuba-playing Bugs Bunny relentlessly interrupts in a desperate attempt to disrupt Giovanni’s practices. Aside from Bugs’ antics, “Long-Haired Hare” presents music from several well-known operas, as well as an original score by Carl Stalling.

With an almost entirely plaid-clad ensemble, Brown’s “Available Forms” featured two vocalists and a unique style of conducting. An innovative American composer, Brown was the creator of open form, a style of musical construction in which some element of the music is left to chance. He was known for his graphical scores and the varying performances of his works, and for his method of dividing scores into “Events” on a continuing series of “Pages.”

The final piece, “Etcetera” by Cage, involved cardboard boxes as instruments and the placement of members of the orchestra throughout the audience and in the back of the theater. A recording played throughout the performance with the sounds of birdcalls and what came across as white noise or the sounds of everyday life.

Cage, a renowned experimental musician, composer, and writer, is no stranger to Wesleyan. Aside from the John Cage Papers that are housed in the Special Collections and Archives, Wesleyan University Press published his writing in several volumes—“Silence” (1961), “A Year From Monday” (1968), “M” (1973), and “X” (1983). Cage was the long-term partner and collaborator of famous New York choreographer Merce Cunningham and was a pioneer of experimental music.

One of his most well-known pieces is 4’33” — an experimental piece which consists of a pianist performing three movements while sitting at the piano for four and a half minutes of silence. Cage derived his inspiration for the piece from his work in an anechoic chamber at Harvard University, where he experimented with the absorption of sound and lack of echoes inside the chamber.

Aside from his contribution to music, Cage was also a talented philosopher, printmaker, and mushroom enthusiast. He was an amateur mycologist and one of the three co-founders of the New York Mycological Society.

Orchestra members included Nate Ash Morgan ’08, Rachel Berkowitz ’09, Joanna Dicke ’10, Ted Feldman ’09, Dane Jackson ’11, Caley Monahon-Ward ’07, Sarah-Jane Ripa ’02, Anne Rhodes ’06, Eric Sherman ’10, Carl Testa ’06, and graduate students Jennifer Caputo, Andrew Dewar, Max Heath, Andre Marquetti, Chris Miller, Sally Norris, Ivan Naranjo, Brian Parks, Maria Stankova, and Katherine Young.