One could describe the edition “5'05" – 3 Notations of 1 Act of Cleaning a Piano” by Franziska Koch as a stroke of genius or as an affront to the establishment of the fine arts. The artist has let press a 7-inch single on which you can hear how she cleans a piano. As the title already indicates, the act lasts 5 minutes and 5 seconds. For this edition two musicians and an artist were invited to each develop a renotation of this piece, which in turn could be the starting point for an interpretation.
Once a year – recurring like spring-cleaning – Franziska Koch has the cleaning of the piano in her house. In her home environment, young and old play the piano with spontaneity and passion. In the resulting recording you can hear how the piano is cleaned, rubbed and wiped. Knocking noises and occasional bumping against the body of the instrument give the piece its own rhythm, just as the wiping of the keys combines sounds into an abstract melody.
The recording was carefully transcribed to the score by Sebastian Gottschick as a classical notation on two sound levels and appears as a leporello. Marlon Schumacher’s contribution developed into a notation animated as a video file via a (re)translation process using a computer program and the use of a sound database. A cursor running over the digital sheet of music guides two players to interpret the piece. Finally, in Romy Rüegger’s set of cards, a meandering flow of text that incorporates the context of piano cleaning forms the translation of “5'05"”. Her typeface, which clings to sound phenomena, gives rise to a dense description that relates the working conditions in art and household to one another.