Mieko Shiomi (composer) facts for kids

Mieko Shiomi (born 1938) is a Japanese artist, composer, and performer. She was very important in the art movement called Fluxus. She also helped start a group called Group Ongaku in Japan after World War II. This group explored new kinds of experimental music.

Shiomi is famous for looking into what sound, music, and listening really are. Her art has been shared widely through Fluxus projects. It has been shown in concert halls, museums, galleries, and other unusual places. Many other artists and musicians have also performed her works. She is best known for her art from the 1960s and early 1970s. These include Spatial Poem, Water Music, Endless Box, and the instructions in Events & Games. All these were made as Fluxus editions. Even now, in her eighties, she continues to create new art.

Mieko Shiomi's Life Story

Early Training and Group Ongaku

Mieko Shiomi was born in Okayama, Japan. She started music lessons when she was a child. In 1957, she went to Tokyo University of the Arts to study music. Her teachers were composers Yoshio Hasegawa and Minao Shibata. She graduated in 1961.

While still a student in 1960, she helped create Group Ongaku (which means "Group Music"). This group wanted to explore new ways of making music, like improvisation and performance. Other members included Takehisa Kosugi and Yasunao Tone.

After finishing her studies in 1962, Shiomi returned to Okayama. There, she performed her own new music. She also played pieces by American composers John Cage and Morton Feldman. Between 1963 and 1964, she started writing "action poems." These were not traditional music scores. Instead, they were written instructions for performers to follow.

Joining Fluxus in New York

Several events led to Mieko Shiomi joining Fluxus. Fluxus was a group of artists who created experimental art. George Maciunas, a key figure in Fluxus, invited her to New York in 1964. Other artists like Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono had told Maciunas about Shiomi's work.

Shiomi also met Nam June Paik, another famous artist, in Tokyo in 1963. She showed him her "action poems." Paik promised to send her work to Maciunas. Maciunas liked her work so much that he used it to fund her flight to New York.

From 1964 to 1965, Shiomi lived in New York City. She worked closely with George Maciunas and other Fluxus artists. She helped with Fluxus events, art projects, and even shared meals. Maciunas included many of her works, like Water Music (1965) and Disappearing Music for Face (1965), in Fluxus collections. This made her an important member of the group. Many artists still perform her works today.

In New York, Shiomi took part in several live performances. At the Perpetual Fluxfest in 1964, she performed six pieces. These included Water Music and Disappearing Music for Face. All of them involved the audience, making them part of the art. She also started to see everyday actions as performances. For example, Maciunas once helped her move furniture. She saw this as a "carrying event." She realized that she could turn daily life into art.

Art in the Late 1960s

Mieko Shiomi went back to Japan in 1965 because her visa ran out. But she stayed connected with Fluxus artists through "mail art." This meant sending art and instructions through the postal service. She started her Spatial Poem series while still in New York. For this project, she sent instructions to Fluxus artists around the world. Their responses became part of the artwork. The nine Spatial Poems were later published together in a book in 1975.

From 1965 to 1970, Shiomi lived in Tokyo and taught piano. Around 1967-1969, she changed her first name from Chieko to Mieko. This was based on a Japanese tradition called onomancy, which is about the meaning of names. This change is seen in some of her later Fluxus works. After returning to Japan, Shiomi also reconnected with other Japanese avant-garde artists. She was active in the Tokyo art scene until she got married in 1970. Her work was very important for a new art style called "intermedia" in the late 1960s.

From the 1970s to Today

After getting married in 1970, it became harder for Shiomi to travel for performances. So, she focused on creating art from her home in Minoh, Osaka. She finished much of her Spatial Poem series between 1970 and 1975. Some art historians say that Shiomi used everyday things, like the postal system, to make art. This was a clever way for her to keep creating, even when she had to stay home more. She used her daily life to continue her art experiments.

After 1977, she went back to composing her own music. She also kept her ties with Fluxus. For example, she organized the Fluxus Media Opera in Kobe in 1995. She also took part in events that looked back at the history of Fluxus. Once her children grew up in the 1990s, she became even more active. She started a new mail art project called Fluxus Balance. She also began experimenting with electronic technology. She used telephones and computer-made voices in her Fluxus Media Operas from 1992 to 2001. Shiomi is still active today. She performs her older works and creates new art and performances. She lives and works in Minoo, Osaka.

Mieko Shiomi's Artistic Journey

Group Ongaku's Influence

Group Ongaku started in 1961. The artists in the group wanted to bring back improvisation to music. They felt that modern Western music had lost this freedom. They wanted to "rediscover the meaning of music." To do this, Group Ongaku invited artists like John Cage to perform. They also explored "sound objects" (objets sonore), which are important in Musique concrète. This meant using non-musical sounds, like a vacuum cleaner, radio, or kitchen items. They also experimented with magnetic audiotape.

During this time, Shiomi became more interested in listening itself, rather than just playing instruments. Her 1961 works, Mobile I, II, III, took performances off the stage. Performers were placed behind curtains or in the lobby. This made people pay attention to where sounds came from. It helped them understand that music could happen anywhere. Shiomi also realized that sounds could be made by accident. This idea became very important in her later work.

Creating Action Poems

In 1962, Shiomi returned to her family home in Okayama. She found a new way to create art. She was inspired by the countryside around her. She started making art that could be performed in unusual places, even outdoors. She called these new works "action poems." They were made of words that told people what actions to do.

Shiomi began to doubt what music truly was. She started to believe that music wasn't just about sound waves. Instead, it was about the feeling of time, and it could include physical actions. Many of her "action poems" were written instructions. But she also made objects that suggested actions. For example, Boundary Music told performers to "make the faintest possible sounds of a boundary condition." Endless Box was a series of boxes nested inside each other. Shiomi called it a "visual diminuendo" (a musical term for getting softer). Performers could open and play with these boxes.

In 1963, Shiomi learned about "event scores" by George Brecht. She realized her "action poems" were similar. So, she started calling her works "events." When she shared her instructional scores with Maciunas, the name "event" stuck. One of the first Fluxus works Maciunas published was Shiomi's Events and Games in 1964. It was a box of cards with her instructions in both English and Japanese.

The Water Music Project

Mieko Shiomi created Water Music in 1964, just before she moved to New York. It was first performed there. This work shows how Shiomi started to focus more on audience participation. It also highlights her idea that everyday actions can be performances. She first performed it privately with Maciunas, by offering and accepting cups of water. Maciunas then made special bottles with the instructions printed on them.

Shiomi used these bottles to perform Water Music at the Perpetual Fluxfest in New York in 1964. She passed the bottles to audience members and asked them to follow the instructions. She performed it again in Tokyo in 1965. In this version, she used syringes to draw water from a small pool. She also dripped water onto a record covered in glue. As the record spun, the water dissolved the glue, allowing parts of the music to play. She performed it again in 1992, hitting the surface of water in basins with upside-down cups. Shiomi's different ways of performing Water Music show how open her instructions are. Many other artists have performed it in their own ways.

Art historian Sally Kawamura believes Water Music helps people see everyday experiences in a new, playful way. This makes daily life more exciting. Kawamura sees this as a way to value exploring your surroundings, rather than just buying and using things. Shiomi herself now sees the bottled Water Music as an example of "transmedia." She describes this as an artwork that "continues its creative evolution by transferring from one medium to the next."

The Spatial Poem Series

Shiomi started her most famous and ambitious work, Spatial Poem, just before leaving New York in July 1965. She sent instructions to a list of Fluxus artists around the world. Unlike most mail art, she wasn't sending a finished piece. Instead, she was asking for responses. With this simple idea, Shiomi created performances that spread across distances and time. This was important to her because she wanted to move beyond traditional events where everyone had to be in the same place at the same time.

The first four events in the series were made into Fluxus art objects. These included a map with pins for Word Event, a printed map for Direction Event, a calendar for Falling Event, and a microfilm for Shadow Event. Shiomi later collected all the responses into a book in 1976. This book gave a complete view of the Spatial Poem performances.

Art historians have different ideas about Spatial Poem. Jessica Lynne Santone sees it as a way to understand the Fluxus community. Kristine Styles believes it's a perfect example of Fluxus art. It shows how people interact, from personal actions to global connections. However, music historian Miki Kaneda focuses on how Spatial Poem helped Shiomi. As a mother of two young children in the early 1970s, she couldn't travel much. Kaneda says that Spatial Poem allowed Shiomi to stay active in Fluxus. She used everyday tools like the postal system to redefine what a performance could be. This allowed her daily life to become part of her art.

Exploring Technology in Art

Mieko Shiomi began experimenting with electronic media in the 1960s. She used a theremin-like instrument in 1961. She also used electronic synthesizers in performances for the Intermedia festival in 1969. In the 1960s, she used these technologies to explore the connections between different art forms. She used the term "intermedia" to describe this.

In the 1990s, her Fluxus Media Operas used technology in new ways. She combined spoken instructions with music made by electronic sensors. She played with how clear voices sounded in performances using international phone calls and synthesizers. She also created texts for performers to react to, which criticized computer-made voices.

Selected Artworks

Mieko Shiomi creates art that combines music and actions in the environment. Some of her works include:

• Mirror, 1963
• Boundary Music, 1963
• Event for the Midday in the Sunlight, 1963
• Endless Box, 1963–64
• Events and Games, 1964
• Shadow Piece II, 1964
• Air Event, 1964
• Water Music, 1964
• Disappearing Music for Face, flipbook, 1965
• Disappearing Music for Face, 1966 (Film, 16mm black and white, 11:41)
• Compound View no. 1, 1966
• Spatial Poems no. 1-no. 9, 1965–1975
• Flying Poem no. 2, 1989
• Balance Poem no. 1-no. 24, 1966–95

Notable Performances, Events, and Exhibitions

• Presentation of works by Ichiyanagi Toshi, sogetsu contemporary series/10, Sōgetsu Art Center, Tokyo, 30 November 1961
• Sweet 16, Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo, 3-5 December 1963
• Fluxus Symphony Orchestra Concert, Carnegie Concert Hall, 27 June 1963
• Perpetual Fluxfest, Washington Square Gallery, 30 October 1964
• Monday Night Letter, Café au go go, NY, 30 November 1964
• Flux Week, Gallery Crystal, Tokyo, 1965
• From Space to Environment—Happening, Sōgetsu Art Center, Tokyo, 14 November 1966
• Happening for Sightseeing Bus, various locations in Tokyo, 18 December 1966
• Intermedia Art Festival, 18, 19 and 21 January, Killer Joe's Discotheque and Nikkei Hall, Tokyo, 1969 (co-organizer along with Takehisa Kosugi and Yasunao Tone)
• Cross Talk/Intermedia, Yoyogi National Stadium, Tokyo, 5-7 February 1969
• Deutsch-Japanische Woche: Notation of Contemporary Music, Osaka Goethe-Institute, Osaka, 1977
• Festival Franco-Japonais de musique Contemporaine, l’Institute Franco-Japonais du Kansai, Kyoto, 1978
• Japanese Composers ’79, Iino Hall, Tokyo, 1979
• Concert & Marathon Sonic Environment: Pauline Oliveros & Deep Listening Band, Tokyo Pan, Tokyo, 1992
• Fluxus Media Opera - Balance Poems, Xebec Hall, Kobe/Art Vivant, Tokyo, 10-11 July 1992
• SeOUL- NymAX, The Courthouse Theater, New York, 13 October 1994
• Fluxus Media Opera, Xebec Hall, Kobe, 24 July 1994
• Neue Musik aus Japan, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Hall, Leipzig, 2000
• Media Opera part 3: Fluxus Trial, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2001
• Music Today on Fluxus, National Museum of Art, Osaka, 7 July 2013
• Fluxus in Japan 2014, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2014
• Fluxus wo kataru (On Fluxus, Talk, Symposium and Concert), Kyoto City University of Arts, Kyoto, 19 January 2019

Selected Group Exhibitions

• Flux-Show, Gallery A, Amsterdam, 1976
• Fluxus – Selections from The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988
• FluxAttitudes, The New Museum, New York, 1992
• Yin & Yan, Fluxeum, Wiesbaden, 1992
• In the Spirit of Fluxus, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus. Ohio; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Barcelona, 1993–94
• Fluxus Media Pre-Exhibition, Xebec Hall, Kobe, 1994 (organizer)
• Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, Guggenheim Museum, Soho, NY; Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1994
• Fluxus Show, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 1994
• L’INVENTION DU MONDE, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2003
• Japanese Women Artists in Avant-Garde Movements, 1950–1975, Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Utsunomiya, 2005
• Between Art and Life: Performativity in Japanese Art, Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, 2008
• DISSONANCES – Six Japanese Artists, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Japan, 2008
• Fluxus East, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania; Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, Poland; Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary; Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia; Kunsthallen Nikolaj, Copenhagen, Denmark; Henie Onstad Art Center, Høvikodden, Norway, 2007–2010
• Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010
• Fluxus at 50, Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2012
• Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012
• The House of Dust, James Gallery, Center for the Humanities, NY, 2016
• JAPANORAMA, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France, 2017
• ... Streaming - Organic Gardening - Electroculture, Chelsea Space, London, 2018
• EXODUS I: A Colossal World: Japanese Artists and New York, 1950s – Present, WhiteBox, NY, 2018
• Fluxus ABC, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, 2019
• Body. Gaze. Power. A Cultural History of the Bath, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany, 2020
• Humor Has It, Nam June Paik Art Center, Gyeongju, South Korea, 2021

Selected Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions

• Fluxus Balance & Balance Poems, Galerie J & J Donguy, Paris, 1995
• Collagen und Multiples, Galerie & Edition Hundertmark, Cologne, 1998
• New Works of Visual Poetry, Xebec Hall, Kobe, 2004
• An Exhibition – An Event [Une exposition – un événement), Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2013
• Mieko Shiomi & Fluxus, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2013
• Mieko Shiomi & Takuma Uematsu: Exploring The Stars, Yumiko Chiba Associates, Tokyo, 2019

Discography

Her work has been recorded and released on cassettes and CDs, including:

• Requiem for George Maciunas (1990)
• An Incidental Story On The Day Of A Solar Eclipse #1#2#3 (1998, Edition Hundertmark)
• Fluxus Suite (A Musical Dictionary Of 80 People Around Fluxus) (2002, ? Records)
• Satoko Plays Mieko Shiomi—Fractal Freaks (2005, ? Records) *piano performed by Satoko Inoue
• The World Of Sounds And Words (2010, FONTEC)

Collections

• Archiv Sohm Staatgalerie Stuttgart, Germany
• Centre Pompidou, France
• Fondazione Bonotto, Vincenza, Italy
• Fondazione Mudima, Italy
• The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
• Kurashiki City Art Museum, Okayama, Japan
• Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
• Museo Vostell Malpartida, Spain
• Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA
• Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan
• Nam June Paik Art Center, Korea
• The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan
• The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Japan
• Queensland Art Gallery, Australia
• Urawa Art Museum, Saitama, Japan
• Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
• Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA