It was an idea of a mutual friend that I would write some music that he would use to make an abstract film, and so I worked with him. While we were working together, I was moving bits of colored cardboard hung on wires. I had a long pole with a chicken feather, and I would move it and then have to still it. When I got it perfectly still—he was sitting in an armchair at the camera—he would click it and take one frame. And then I’d move them, following his direction, another inch and so, and then he’d take another frame. In the end it was a beautiful film in which these squares, triangles, and circles and other things moved and changed color. . . .

John Cage