In 1284, suffering from a rat infestation, the town of Hamlin was approached by a man dressed in pied clothing, who promised the mayor a solution in exchange for a fee.  The man played a musical pipe to lure the rats into the nearby river, where all but one drowned.  Despite his success, the mayor refused to pay the piper, who then promised revenge.  Returning one day while the residents were in church and playing his pipe, he lured all the children of Hamlin out of town and into a cave from whence they were never seen again. Taking its starting point in this myth of music, entrancement, and breach of contract, for his exhibition at Audio Visual Arts Sergei Tcherepnin presented a project that reimagines the violent “revenge” of the Pied Piper.  This installation extended Tcherepnin's usage of performance, composition, and installation to explore the materiality of sound and its physical and psychological effects on the listener. Trained as a composer under Maryanne Amacher, Tcherepnin works between music, sculpture, and performance.  Using surface transducers — small devices which convert electrical signals into vibrations — wired to synthesizers and computers, he stages complex multi-channel compositions in which various objects, images, and materials (e.g. sheets of aluminum, cardboard, wood, vinyl, photographs) are made to transmit sound. Listening by touching, listening by opening, listening by moving or listening by walking, the audience is often asked to manipulate Tcherepnin’s objects, which cultivate various forms of “active” listening by compelling the viewer to develop a “score” for interacting with them. _ Tables become doors opening into difference tone melodies from a synthetic piper. Doors become tables where you can sit and play or think. The caves become recordings which become caves again. Recordings fall into boxes whose tongues invite physical conversation. The walls speak out. These boxes are mixing devices. They each contain a material narrative which you can navigate with your ears and change with your body. For the duration of the show, you will develop a score for listening to these boxes. Some possibilities are: open the lid; close the lid; move the tongue; shake the tongue; press the bottom, push your ear to the box – or any combination of these with any pacing interspersed with just staying still. There are probably many other ways of listening – but these instructions are possibilities that lay the groundwork for a flexible listening situation. The resonant space of the box contains a material narrative which moves between different material relationships – box inside box, cave inside box, box as instrument (noise), box as horn (tone). Each of these states suggest different ways of listening and moving. The story of the Pied Piper runs as a current throughout this show. A Synthetic Piper appears in the box as a distant meanderer. At times he also interrupts these activities, singing out through two doors. He brings a new layer to the unfolding of sonic spaces – sound produced by your ear (difference tones). He enters you through your ears, and gives you no choice but to be taken by sound. Still, you can play with the relationships – left ear to box, right ear to room. Here is a possibility to hear two distinct spaces simultaneously. The revenge of the Pied Piper isn’t so much violent, but more an opening to a possibility for a different sort of community. The Synthetic Pied Piper returns through inverse furniture music to facilitate sonic intimacies.” Sergei Tcherepnin, 2012