Arthur Køpcke’s Music While You Work (1962) was performed in Festum Fluxorum Fluxus: Musik und Antimusik – Das Instrumentale Theater held at Staatliche Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf in 1963. Køpcke made scratches and put glue on the surface of a record. The record would play normally for the first few minutes, yet the stylus would jump or get caught on certain grooves and eventually be shut off. Each performer carries out a certain act they choose to do, such as sweeping the floor, when the record begins to spin, but stops when the needle is stuck or locked into a groove. Whoever first reaches the record player resets the needle back to the first groove, and the performers resume what they are doing. The whole process is repeated over and over again until the work of any single performer is complete. Nam June Paik called one of his Klavier Intégral (1963) shown in Exposition of Music — Electronic Television, “Piano for Køpcke,” which was modeled after Køpcke’s Shut Books.
