Week-End
Remove the filter from the mask and adjust it to your face by a rubber band. Insert the tube of the flute airtight into the opening of the mask. Start breathing. After some time while exhaling produce a sound (position of hands: low “c”) using the opening of the flute tube like a trumpet. During this process the breathing sequence will speed up and you will unvoluntarily produce increasingly congested sounds.
Continue until you are physically exhausted.
Material: flute without headpiece, respiratory protection mask
Variations on a classical theme
Choose a dodecaphonic series by Arthur Schönberg. Place the plastic sausage in the opening of the flute. Squeeze it. It will produce a strident, acute sound. Find the correspondent pitch in the dodecaphonic series. Play the entire series. When you reach the tone which corresponds to the pitch of the sausage substitute the flute sound by squeezing the sausage instead. An infinite number of variations of the series can be performed, always respecting the dodecaphonic rules.
Material: flute, plastic squeaky toy sausage
Untitled
Play a classical part of a famous flute concert and repeat it continuously. The assistant slowly and efficiently will wrap you up while playing until you look like a mummy and can play no longer. The assistant has to go on with the action until the flutist has disappeared completely under the masking tape.
Material. flute, chair, masking tape, assistant
Stille Nacht
Stand in the middle of a (cold) room, naked (this is optional). Put on fur mittens. Try to play the Christmas carol “Stille Nacht”, from the beginning to the end. Play slowly and as clearly as possible in spite of the mittens.
Since the position for D (re), e (mi) and F (fa) are especially difficult to play, it helps to change the positions of your hands. Your right hand can reach the keys from the opposite side of the normal position.
Material: flute, fur mittens
Private Piece
Hold the open end of the flute next to your ear. Close the mouth hole with the index finger. Try to relax. Listen to the vibrations of the air through the head piece, just as you would do with a sea shell. Start to open and close the mouth hole with your finger. Your movements can be short and brisk or soft and slow. Stop from time to time and listen to air vibrations. Produce in this manner your own sounds.
Material: Headpiece of the flute
It’s so touchy
Put metal thimbles on all your fingers . Place the flute in playing position. Start to move your fingers slowly, touching and rubbing the flute so as to produce a wide variety of metallic sounds. Move the fingers along the tube and the keys of the flute. Take your fingers off. Pause. Touch again and rub and strike the thimles against each other. As you draw your hands closer together, they will move with increasin difficulty. The fingers start to interfer with each other until they can’t move anymore and your hands remain motionless.
Material: flute, ten metal thimbles, 1976
Erotica
Fasten the condom with an elastic band to the head piece of the flute. Inflate the condom slowly by blowing gently into the mouth hole. Let it deflate a bit every time you take a breath. Touch it erotically. When the condom has been inflated to the maximum, take its end part in your right hand and pull it down vertically, so that the rubber touches the opening of the headpiece. Open the mouth hole and, as the air escapes, slide the condom along the opening of the headpiece. A loud sound, similar to that of a horn, will be produced.
When all the air has escaped, inhale briskly through the mouth hole, so that the condom disappears into the flute itself.
Materials: headpiece of the flute, condom
Break
Put on a pair of boxing gloves. Take the flute and put it in playing position. At the sound of a bell, start the action. Remain motionless for three minutes and think about all the musical instruments that have been destroyed on purpose in concerts. Stop when the bell rings again.
(The action ca be repeated up to 15 times.)
Material: flute, boxing gloves, (small bell)
