Traditionally trained in cello but influenced by Cagean and Fluxus poetics, Adamčiak has created a large body of work that transgresses the conventional definitions of music and art, embracing instead opera aperta, action music, and intermedia. He has experimented with electronic media, created several pieces of electroacoustic music and musique concrète, and found that live electronics fit the principles of his radical poetics, experimental graphics, and happenings.

Milan Adamčiak was born in 1946 in Ružomberok. He studied cello at the School of Music in Žilina from 1962-68, and musicology at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Comenius University in Bratislava from 1968-73. From 1972-1991 he worked at the Institute of Musical Studies of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, doing research on 20th century music and the relationship between music and visual arts. He taught at the Film Academy and also at the Faculty of Philosophy of Comenius University (1977-1989).

At the 1965 edition of the Warsaw Autumn festival for contemporary music, Adamčiak had the opportunity to take part in accompanying happenings, which opened the door to future activities with Fluxus and John Cage. Early on in his career, Adamčiak created abstract drawings as a form of visualizing music. They could be performed, but the fact if it actually happened or it was just a possibility was not important: they represented a potential gesture: music. He went on to create events, visual poems, phonic poetry, conceptual texts, scores, and acoustic books. Since the end of the 1960s he has worked with influential Slovak visual artists (Alex Mlynarčík, Jana Želibská and others) on different group projects and events. He realized unique projects and happenings with Robert Cyprich, Ladislav Kupkovič and Jozef Revall, and established or worked in various intermedia groups, such as SNEH (society for unconventional music) or Transmusic Comp. with Peter Machajdík, Michal Murin, Zbyňěk Prokop and others.