Installation: folding tables, 8,400 sugar cubes, 6' x 6' digital print, audio recording of Erik Satie's Vexations and video loop

Vexations was presented in an industrial space in Madison, Wisconsin that once housed a candy factory. The work took its title from an 1893 composition by Erik Satie. Satie's Vexations is a simple two-minute piano solo, but at the top of his score he suggests that the pianist repeat the piece 840 times in succession.

The space occupied by Vexations was bisected lengthwise: one half of the space was theatrically lit, the other half was darkened. A recording of Vexations (recorded on a Korg synthesizer and looped) filled the space. The sound equipment was not concealed.

On entering, a viewer was in the darkened half of the room, and was prevented from approaching the lit half of the space by a white plastic chain. This inaccessible area housed twelve tables, each covered with light blue paper and supporting a grid of sugar cubes, and a six by six foot digital enlargement of a photographic contact sheet picturing waves on the ocean. After being in the space for a short time, the viewer became aware of a low clattering sound. This sound came from a looped videotape in the far corner of the darkened half of the room: the video pictured a man rattling a teacup on a saucer.