Unprepared Piano

Thomson & Craighead have been working together since 1993, using sound, video, and the internet in their works to explore how technology changes the world around us. They are based in London. Currently, Thomson lectures at the Slade School of Fine Arts and Craighead is a senior researcher at the University of Westminster and lectures at the University of London.

Unprepared Piano is a grand piano connected to a database of MIDI files appropriated from the internet. The piano then performs each piece by randomly selecting different parts, so it might play drum parts along with strings, brass and woodwind parts. Each time the piano replays a piece, it randomly reselects the parts it plays. No performance is ever the same, although traces of the original score can be heard in the performance. This results in the performance sounding like a little kid is playing around on the piano.

The artists didn't specify what their goal was in this piece, perhaps to force people to reexamine their views on music. If that is the case, they definitely accomplished their goals. The grand piano is traditionally revered as a strong and authoritative instrument, and because in this piece no one is playing the piano, the piano becomes even more powerful to the viewer. However, because the music is just so random sounding, it doesn't really sound like anything other than a cat walking across it. This urges the viewer to reexamine their views on music, that perhaps there is a certain formula to composing, and not just throwing random notes together. It is also possible that it is urging the viewer to look at the parts of a musical whole, and notice that each individual part is important to the whole, not matter how random it sounds.

Via Eyebeam.