Steve Aufrecht's 4'27" for John Cage

Dr. Laura Koenig on John Cage

Anchorage blogger Steve Aufrecht has compiled a four minute and 27 second video of a presentation four University of Alaska Anchorage faculty gave in honor of the 100th anniversary of composer and inventor John Cage, last Thursday at the UAA bookstore.  Had Steve's video been six seconds longer, its length would have mimicked the length of Cage's most famous work.

Steve's video is accompanied by one of the essays he does so well about arts and cultural events he attends around the greater Anchorage area, and elsewhere.  Aufrecht describes how important it is to actually see Cage's music being rendered, as opposed to merely listening to it:

Watching Cage run from item to item to create the sounds in sequence, I realized that seeing the music performed was far more accessible for an audience than simply listening to what, without the visuals, would be random sounds. 

This realization was reinforced when faculty member Dr. Laura Koenig described watching a performance of ball bearings frozen in a block of ice that melted allowing the ball bearings to drop and make different sounds depending on where they landed followed by a violinist responding to the ball bearing sound.

Here's the video Steve compiled, that includes excerpts of Dr. Koenig's, Dr. Sean Licka's and my presentations on Cage. Steve also mentions Rachel Epstein, the UAA bookstore event coordinator, who produced Thursday's event.  Rachel brings in so many speakers to the cozy lobby upstairs in the bookstore, to discuss so many subjects, and does it so well.  One would do well to keep track of these events.

Here's Steve's video: