Piano of Hanoi
Concept sheet and more details http://suzueri.sakura.ne.jp/HanoiPiano/
The work consists of an upright piano and four toy pianos and the aim is to realize a concept of an ‘Air-prepared piano’ to ‘Expand the user interface of the piano’ by adding ‘Recursiveness to the interaction’.
‘Air-prepared piano‘ is an idea to expand the
concept of John Cage’s ‘Prepared Piano’ by extending the physical
movements of pianos into the performance space by connecting the hammers
of an upright piano to the keys of the toy pianos to generate space
between the piano sounds.
To ‘expand the user interface of the piano’
is the idea to try and exaggerate the behaviors of keys as a piano
interface without players. Extending the movements of the piano’s parts
highlights the complicated structures and counter-intuitive mechanisms
of the piano.
‘Recursiveness of the interaction’ means how
the work is defined by the recursiveness of its processes. When a key is
hit its movement turns on a switch, such that a different piano is
played. If this simple condition is continually satisfied, a process of
music generation takes place. That is to say, the interaction takes
place over an arbitrary length of time as defined by its one and only
condition being recursively satisfied.
The five pianos are connected to each other by wires and their keys are
moved by solenoids. When a key moves, wires attached to the keys and
hammers move switches. Circuits of switches move the solenoids, and
these movements transition from piano to piano.
It is a little similar to a ‘Rube Goldberg machine’ , but this work is
much more recursive.
The title of the work echoes the ‘Tower of Hanoi’, which is a
mathematical game that uses a recursive algorithm – as this work plays
with the idea of recursiveness, it is named after the game, especially
as the work was made for the Hanoi New Music Festival in Vietnam in
2018.