Mieko Shiomi performed her score Direction Music for Fingers in New York as part of a solo presentation in October 1964, at Washington Square Gallery, which coincided with a yearlong Perpetual Fluxfest. The piece was not only a response to her growing concerns about spatiotemporal limitations on creative activity; it anticipated her discovery of a broader solution to this problem, in Spatial Poem. The score invites participants to write a real or imagined location on a card and then attach it to a string, one end of which is tied to the performer’s fingers. The participant then affixes the string’s loose end to a point reaching toward the chosen direction.
Used by permission of Mieko Shiomi.
