Eric Satie who put forward "music of furniture" composed "Vexation" in 1895, which is called the original of the repetition music as well as a mysterious piano piece. The music of a short 1-minute line and chords is repeated 840 times, but in this exhibition, the way of repetition is slightly altered. First, the phrase of the original is played on the piano, which is said to have been brought to Yamaguchi in 1828 by Philip Franz von Siebold and is the oldest piano in Japan (owned by Kumaya Art Museum in Hagi city, Yamaguchi), recorded and reproduced through speakers. Then, the sounds in the whole site including the noise in the surroundings are recorded again, and the overall information gathered is processed by computers; from auto note input to translation into scores. Based on this score, the music is recomposed by the sound data on a piano keyboard stored in a computer, and reproduced. As the visitors’ voices and spontaneous sounds in the environment are collected, "Vexation" gradually undergoes a transformation through the feedback loop on the program.

[Artist]
Yuko Mohri, Soichiro Mihara
[Support]
Masayuki Yasuhara/RITS, Yamaguchi University
[Piano]
Seiko Tokutomi
[Production Support]
YCAM InterLab
[Cooperation]
Hiroichi Sumikawa, Kumaya Museum