vexations: c.i.p. (composition in progress)

vexations: c.i.p. (composition in progress) is a sound installation that was produced by the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) in 2005.
Taking as her motif the 1895 composition of the same name vexations by French musician Erik Satie, Mohri expanded on Satie’s original instructions to perform the same phrase 840 times: when the first phrase is sounded, a computer produces feedback according to each environmental sound and parses it, regurgitating a new musical composition for the piano. In Mohri’s work, this process is repeated 840 times and performed accordingly. Each time the performance is repeated, the environmental sounds are gradually amplified, producing a different kind of music depending on the exhibition venue. Mohri make this sound feedback system with Soichiro Mihara.
The theme of work harmonizes in the concept of “musique d’ameublement (Furniture Music)” on which Satie worked in later years, or John Cage’s slogan to “find a way to let sounds be themselves,” who first published the score of vexations. Their theories and concerns that were not restricted by existing forms have been a big inspiration to Mohri for a long time. In her work, melodies metamorphose themselves by listening to the sounds including soundscape.
Mohri and Mihara received an honorary mention at Ars Electronica, and second prize at transmediale.06.

vexations: c.i.p. (composition in progress)
2005
Artist Yuko Mohri, Soichiro Mihara
Materials: Computer, Printer, Speakers etc.
Size: Dimension variable