Mieko Shiomi | Fluxfilm No. 4 : “Disappearing Music for Face”

Mieko Shiomi

Fluxfilm No. 4 : “Disappearing Music for Face”

New York City, USA: ReFlux, 2002

[40] pp., 4 x 6.2 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 79

A work by Mieko (Chieko) Shiomi, performed by Yoko Ono, designed by George Maciunas, published by Fluxus, photographed by Peter Moore and re-published by his wife Barbara Moore (who ran Reflux Editions, and Bound and Unbound, among other things). The date and edition size of the original Fluxus work is unknown, but when Moore acquired the Maciunas estate she discovered enough vintage printed sheets to re-collate 79 copies as the Reflux edition.

In 1966, Maciunas acquired an expensive high-speed 'scientific analysis camera', which recorded film at a rate of 2000 frames a second.  When the resulting films are projecting at the standard speed of 24 frames a second, it produced an extreme sensual slow motion effect. Having access to the camera for only a single day, he set up in photographer Peter Moore’s East 36th Street apartment and invited a number of Fluxus artists to submit projects that could be filmed in the short production session.

Shiomi's contribution was a work that she had originally presented as a performance piece in 1964 (see below).  The original score for the performance simply reads: "Performers begin the piece with a smile and during the duration of the piece, change the smell very gradually to no smile". The eight seconds of footage shot that day of Ono moving from smile to no smile, became an 11 minute, 15 second film (though the duration of the piece changes and in Fluxus newsletters Maciunas advertises it as fifteen minutes in length in 1966 and ten minutes long in 1969).

Maciunas had hoped to turn many of the Fluxfilms into flip books, but only this title and Dick Higgins' Invocation of Canyons and Boulders were ever produced.

Shiomi’s flipbook was typically (but not exclusively) presented in a printed brown envelope. Later, a few copies were sold signed in a plastic case ("I prepared this plastic case to maintain the condition of the work”). 

"The premier was done with Fluxus friends and the audience at Washington Square Gallery in New York in 1964. This was the first day of the Perpetual Flux Fest that George Maciunas organized. To my right is Alison Knowles. As my English was poor at the time (it is still poor even now), she volunteered to conduct the performance instead of me. The photo [below] is from forty-eight years ago. We were both young.

Soon, Maciunas made an 8mm film out of this Disappearing Music for Face, with Yoko Ono as the performer and Peter Moore as cameraman. Along with others’ works, this became part of Fluxfilms. In Japan, it is in the collection of the National Museum of Art in Osaka. Later, Maciunas extracted a few frames from the film, printed them, and turned them into a flip-book. When you see it on the screen now it looks large, but the book’s actual size is four by six centimeters [approx. 1 9/16 x 2 3/8 in.]. It fits into the palm of your hand. There are thirty-nine photographs, and the smile gradually disappears when you flip the pages. It is very clear. Flip-books are fun even now, aren’t they? Your fingers’ actions cause an illusion of moving image. I feel as if I could imagine the pleasure of the person who invented it and made it first. On the last page, there is a history of this flip-book. According to this, it was produced by ReFlux in 2002, in an edition of seventy-nine, from the printed matter left by Maciunas. Five copies were sent to me.

[...]

The original Event piece became an eight-millimeter film, then turned into a flip-book, and then into choral music. Even now, the evolution might not be finished, and there may be a possibility of making a new work in a different medium.”

- Mieko Shiomi, 2013