When I was 16 I decided that it would be my life's journey and purpose to become an advocate for new music. When you're in high school and the most advanced repertoire you'd conquered is the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, there's a lot of room to grow into.

I began my process by searching for books by contemporary composers on Amazon.com and using my parent's credit card to purchase "Silence", by John Cage. I opened the package with glee to find a fresh new perspective on music, and to begin my journey towards being a hyper-educated music snob. I read the first three pages: "Why does this guy use so many spaces? What kind of format is this? This is really like a stream-of-conciousness".

Well, young Alyssa, you didn't know anything about Cage, his music, or perhaps most importantly his influence on music to come. So in the same naive fashion, I recently did a google search in an effort to seek out other art forms that had been inspired, whether directly or indirectly by Cage. To my luck, I stumbled upon the website Art by Chance, in which they host a festival of "ultra short films". These films, usually less than 45 seconds, embrace a central theme; for 2011 it was "Change". I perused several of these films in search of how the "chance" factor influences their ultra short time frame.

I'd like to highlight two of the films that appear highly influenced by Cage's work.
First, Bulgarian director Dimo Petrov Trifonov created the ultra short film "Primitive (Love)" about “Primitive shapes represent the feeling of love with motion.” I felt this strongly correlated with Cage's dedication to Zen Buddhism, as well as his studies of music of eastern cultures (ex. India). This video represents primal looking shapes that appear to fuse with it's opposite shape. I could see this as a genuine melting of eastern and western music, or the eastern influence on Cage's music.

ARTBYCHANCE2011 - Primitive (Love) from ART BY CHANCE on Vimeo.

The Second video, Nina Peter from Germany presents a portrait of a shirt falling out of a tall apartment window, and documents its flight in the film "Breathe In/Out?". The unedited/doctored film shows the shirt breath. What truly made a huge connection to cage was Peter's description “In a dance-like movement, a shirt falls from a 4th-floor window - and, finally lying on the ground, begins to "breathe". There is no sound - the sound of one's own breathing becomes the soundtrack while watching.”
While the audience and viewers essentially become the backdrop of this ultra short film is completely created music of chance and the silence and breathing is very Cage-eqsue to me. You decide for yourself:

ARTBYCHANCE2011 - Breathe In / Out from ART BY CHANCE on Vimeo.