Some people are deathly afraid of thunderstorms, some get a thrill from the sounds of their terror and some make art inspired by the natural phenomena. The Institute for the Humanities, in its celebration of the ONCE Festival, an Ann Arbor music festival that had six runs between the '60s and '70s, is housing multiple exhibits paying tribute to the avant-garde mindsets of the musicians and artists who contributed to the festivals. “Lecture on the Weather,” an installation by the late iconic composer John Cage, is one such tribute.

The ONCE Festival consisted of a group of talented composers and performers who shared their non-traditional tastes for music with Ann Arbor. Cage attended half a century ago, and found shared insights in these musicians. A fusion of their work has become the ONCE. MORE. Festival., which began its run on Sept. 20 and runs through Nov. 5.

Cage’s “Lecture on the Weather,” originally created in 1975 and inspired by the American bicentennial, is his account of the misdirection of politics and society, and his appreciation for the role of natural sounds in producing music. Amanda Krugliak, curator for the Institute for the Humanities and School of Art & Design professor, evolved this account into a multimedia exhibit that includes loud sounds, lighting and film, at its climax reproducing an entire thunderstorm.

“He was mostly interested in sound for the sake of sound, he thought pure sound was music,” Krugliak said. “There’s certainly plenty of scholars who talk about Cage and how sophisticated his methods were, but at the end of the day Cage was just about the sound of the street and the sound of a mixer and the sound of water.”

Cage was heavily influenced by Henry David Thoreau and their similar appreciation for the natural world. Drawings from Thoreau’s sketchbook are included in the exhibit.

“In some ways they are both naturalists, they care about something pure,” Krugliak explained. “In a time when we have so much technology, that really these basic ways of working and imaging with sounds and speakers has such impact.”

The audio used for the exhibition is from a 2007 recording of “Lecture on the Weather,” which is directed by Kuhn.

“I don’t know if it’s just me, but I get excited at the fact that I’m hearing these people that otherwise you think about being in a textbook or something you’re studying,” Krugliak said. “You’re in this room with their voices — it’s as if you’ve conjured up ghosts or something. It’s really cool.”

Cage was also fascinated by the concept of time. Visitors to the exhibit may lose their sense of time as they are enveloped in the closed-off room.

“One quote I love … spoke about how time wasn’t vertical — it was horizontal, meaning there isn’t a really clear beginning and end, and the past is just this big open space where a lot has happened,” Krugliak said. “In the recording we used ("4:33"), there were four minutes and 33 seconds where you only heard the sound of the audience and no one played ... he based everything on that little measurement of time.”

Krugliak hopes that this exhibit can serve as a forum for discussion.

“This is really rare — the trust doesn’t give permission for this to be done very often and it’s only been shown a few places,” Krugliak said. “I would love for a group of students to use this as a class, and talk about politics, music and anything else.”

In Krugliak’s perspective, this work can be incorporated into modern student life at the University.

“To hear Cage’s voice fill a room in 2010 is sublime. It reignites the past,” Krugliak said. “To recreate ‘Lecture on the Weather’ inspires the present, and adds to it the sounds of students bustling in the hallways, jackhammers completing last-minute repairs and conversations about new ideas.