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The performance was conceived to be a tribute to the eleventh day of the
eleventh month of the eleventh year of the Hei Sei period in Japanese history.
Using a digital cellular phone and an Internet connection, people in various
locations around Japan and The United States were contacted during the
afternoon of the performance day. Often answering machines were the only
contact. Using the Internet to conect to my computer in the US, a windowgram
messaging service was used to contact the research and development team and
administrators of the LAN to which the machine is connected. Email was sent to
Suellen Marling, a third grade teacher in the West Virginia Public School
System who had expressed interest in involving her class in multi-cultural
exchanges via the internet. Each person was simply asked to turn around three
times at eleven minutes after eleven o'clock. International participants in The
US were asked to synchronize thier performance in relation to eastern-standard-
time. Accurate synchronization was not a critical factor in the performance,
however.
The act of turning sends slight vibrations through the atmosphere. For example
the sound of an electric motor or musical instruments are all the result of
vibrations that affect tiny bones in the inner ear of humans and other animals
which our brains later perceive as music, noise, language, etc. The fact that
each participant's turning was not accurately synchronized had the effect of
creating what is known in music as vibrato. This effect might be more easily
recognized as an out of tune piano. Afterwards I recieved calls, and messages
from several participants in Japan. Jon Lin and Kinetosope Inc.'s Comet Way
development team made a digital movie to commemorate the event and posted it
on the Comet Way web site. Suellen Marling and her class of third grade
students all turned together. Another teacher captured still images of the
performance to disk and later sent them to me via email. Everyone who was
contacted was encouraged to record their performance, but I also made clear
that the recording of the performance was not critical. Turning without
recording was more valuable than not turning at all.
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