John Cage: One¹¹ and 103. A Film by John Cage and Henning Lohner. Henning lohner, producer and director. Van Carlson, camera person. WDr Symphony orchestra. Spoleto Festival orchestra. 2006. mode records 174. The Complete John Cage edition, Volume 36.

John Cage: The Works for Piano 7. Chess Pieces. Sonatas and Interludes. Chess Serenade by Vittorio Rieti. Margaret Leng Tan, piano. liner notes by Margaret Leng Tan and Eric J. Bruskin. 2006. mode records 158. The Complete John Cage edition, Volume 34.

John Cage: From Zero. Four Films on John Cage by Frank Scheffer and Andrew Culver. 19 Questions. Fourteen. Paying Attention. Overpopulation and Art. 2004. mode records 130. The Complete John Cage edition, Volume 30.

"Airports for the lights, shadows, and particles" was John Cage's evocative description of Robert Rauschenberg's infamous "white paintings" of the early 1950s,a series of empty canvases whose impact on the composer—at the time tumbling headlong into the pursuit of artistic nonintention—was apparently of deep and lasting consequence. How else to explain the conceptual leap between Cage's first chance-based compositions of 1951, with their quaint insistence upon, well, content, and the void of 4'33", his 1952 piece for environmental sound? Cage's often-recounted epiphany in a noise-proof chamber may have played a role in that leap, but Rauschenberg's blank canvases likely served as the immediate catalyst for the composition of his iconic ambient work, executed shortly after his exposure to the paintings in August of 1952. (That he speculated about composing a silent piece as early as 1948 matters little; there exists no evidence to suggest that his inchoate vision of that work rested upon the acceptance of ambient sounds in a performance, the very essence of 4'33".) even when the substance of his music came from within rather than from without, from the composer's imagination rather than from the environment, he would demonstrate a lasting preference for material possessing as little allusive or associative power as possible, his occasional compositional embrace of quotation and manipulation of concrète sources notwithstanding. A love for multiplicity and inclusiveness may have formed his common ground with Rauschenberg, but Cage's doctrine of artistic impersonality steered him again and again toward a predominately abstract musical language whose ostensible "purity" he seemed to cherish.