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Eccentric Japanese multimedia artist and pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama is known for her avant-garde pieces and her use of audience participation.

Her latest exhibition, “wasted,” which is currently being held at Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta, requires even more intimate assistance from the audience than usual.

The exhibition is built around an aesthetically beautiful display of countless white silk dresses that cover the art space’s walls and create a kind of labyrinth.

Mukaiyama says that “the adventurous routing through the soft silk walls embraces you and overwhelms you with an incredible aesthetic power.”

But there’s more to it than that. Female participants are invited to take a silk dress, provided by Mukaiyama for free, on the condition that they wear the dresses during their menstrual cycle and send the results back to the artist for her to use as part of her next multimedia exhibition.

The involvement of her audience or external sources has become something of a calling card for Mukaiyama. She says that she needs to capture and examine the energy of the audience or an external factor before turning it into a new creation or thought.

Her works are also often related to her classical music background, and her current exhibition involves a musical performance along with the dresses.

In one of her most well-known collaborative projects, titled “For You,” Mukaiyama performed a piano recital for an audience, one person at a time. “For You” took her to the Netherlands and Canada in 2003, where she performed 96 of these recitals in eight days.

Mukaiyama’s current exhibition, which is constantly evolving, has taken her to Japan, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Czech Republic and Belgium, as part of a planned five-year tour.

Aditya Permana, who designed the display of white silk dresses for the exhibition in Yogyakarta, said: “When I was first approached about doing the installation, I thought it was going to be just like the art pieces which we’ve done numerous times before. But when it was explained to us that the dresses were to form a labyrinth and a web that covered almost all of the gallery, we knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task.

“To be involved in ‘wasted’ is an amazing experience. This project has certainly broadened our knowledge about visual art, music and audience perception. Tomoko has a wonderful ability to combine all those factors.”

The women who borrow the dresses are also encouraged to create artistic statements to describe their feelings about menstruation during their menstrual cycles, and then send these statements to the artist along with the dresses. These statements can take whatever form the women choose — recordings, poetry, texts, photos, video.

Not to exclude the male members of the audience, Mukaiyama invites men to send in any art they choose to create relating to the female menstrual cycle.

According to the event’s press release, ‘wasted’ is an internationally based art project that “challenges the transience of the feminine virtue to give birth to ideas, creations and, not the least, to children.”

Curious? “Everybody is welcome to find out by attending the concert and exhibition,” Mukaiyama says.

To participate in the exhibition, sign up through the Web site www.wasted.n l or at the venue.