Sound Installation / Performance, January 22, 2022

A collaboration with "Modular Organ System", Phillip Sollmann & Konrad Sprenger:, "Modular Music", CTM/Galerie Singuhr, Berlin, January 2022

"Dispersions' involved a re-staging of Dreyblatt's 2018 automated magnetic string installation "Monochordo" with 7 magnetically driven iconic electric lapsteel, e- and bass guitars tuned in the Dreyblatt scale based on the harmonic series sounding within the pipe organ installation of the "Modular Organ System". Dreyblatt performed live with the "excited strings bass" along with digital processing and a mechanical string vibration exciting system.

Thanks: Sukandar Kartadinata

4K Projection, Stereo Sound, Reading Desk with Light, Hardcover printed musical score, Framed LP Edition

Solo Exhibition, Yellow Solo Project Space, Berlin 2021

In 1947, Edgard Varèse composed five-minutes of unfinished fragments for orchestra titled “Tuning Up”, referring to the tuning and preparatory ritual of every live orchestra performance in which musicians gather on the concert stage before the actual concert program begins. The static yet continually changing dynamic timbre of the orchestra warm-up is often overlooked.

In reflecting on Dreyblatt’s forty-year career in musical minimalism and media art, the classical preparatory ritual of the orchestra “warm-up” is examined in a video and audio installation. Archival recordings of over fifty orchestra warm-up sessions have been edited digitally into a seamless composition in which the short durations of these pre-concert moments are prolonged. The resulting digital recording was then transcribed and notated as a musical score for orchestra. The gaze of the orchestra conductor in performance has been mapped in real-time using eye-tracking software and wearable capture tools.

Conductor, Score Transcription: Paul Brody

Eye-Tracking Realization: Dr. Markus Schönberger, iMotions A/S, Copenhagen Denmark

Camera: Veit Lup – Martin Wolff

The production of “Warm Up” was supported by: Recherchestipendien im Bereich Bildende Kunst Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Abteilung Kultur, Berlin, 2020

Special Thanks to: iMotions A/S, Copenhagen Denmark

Curated by Hajnal Nemeth

>>> Catalogue

A site specific audio-visual exhibition by composer and media artist Arnold Dreyblatt. Curated by Marco Marzuoli and supervised by director Enzo de Leonibus as part of the Lux series at Museolaboratorio Ex Manifattura Tabacchi, Citta’ Sant’Angelo (PE) Italy, September 1 to September 30, 2018. The exhibition, installed in eight spaces within the Museolaboratorio, explored the relationship of Dreyblatt’s early video work from the 1970’s to his research into string vibration and to his emerging career as a composer within an immersive exploration of visual and audio perception.

Video Installation
For the exhibition, Dreyblatt created a new video work “Screen Memory” (2017) to correspond with six of his early video works were produced at State University at Buffalo, Center for Media Study from 1974-76 and Digitized from analog 1/2inch videotape at ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Media), Karlsruhe in 2017. The showing of these works represented a European Premiere and the first showing since a presentation at Anthology Film Archives in New York in 1976.  These analog works explore stroboscopic color non-optical imagery and flickering moire patterning and were dispayed on the cathode-ray monitors for which they were originally created.
Historical videos Displayed: “Burst”, “Uranus, “Fluctuations, “Carbon”, “Lapse”, “Baby Essentials”.

Sound Installation
Accompanying the video works was the premier of the multi-room sound installation “Monochordo”, (2018) in which seven tuned monochord instruments are each fitted with a timed magnetic feedback and driver system which sets the strings into vibration resulting in a rising and falling chorus of harmonic resonance. The installations each had an individual amplifying system. Engineer Magnetic Driver System:  Filippo del Trappeto
The electronic sound tracks of two video works mixed in space with the “Monochordo” installation.

“Turntable History” (2009) a  5.1 Surround Installation produced by Nepenthes Mastering Berlin in 2009 was installed in a circular domed space.  The sounds were produced on the “Siemens Magnetom Maestro Class Magnetic Resonance Imaging System” (MRI) from the Radiology practive of Dr. Anne Sparenberg in Berlin.

Archive
In five glass vitrines which were constructed especially for the exhibition, archival documents and works were displayed from the Dreyblatt Archive (1973 – 2003), referring to his origins in film and video art, his studies with The Vasulkas, La Monte Young, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Lucier, his research into the acoustics of strings and tuning and related ephemera from the time period.
“the magic square tuning system and how i got there”, A unique Box Edition created in 2007 for Jörg Hiller was included in the archival presentation.

„A String When Sounded Makes Many Sounds at Once“, 8mm Film by Edye Weissler from 1982, was screened at the exit from the exhibition.  The film is the only moving image documentation of his early american ensemble in preparation for a concert at Real Art Ways in Hartford in 1982.

 Lux 03. Lux is a research program between contemporary music and visual art. A project to promote a different form of art, in the context of museums/galleries conceived as artistic spaces of knowledge.

Thanks to Rosano P

Media Turntable, Data Projection, Automated Multiple Slide Projection, Mulit-Channel Sound Composition
Galerie Singuhr, Kleiner Wasserspeicher, Berlin; Produced with support of Hauptstadtkulturfonds

This text, image and sound installation was especially concieved for the circular vaulted brick space of the historical water container in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg. Specific information content is derived from archival documentation concerning the history of the site. A media turntable spins animated text content around the inner and outer spaces of the space. Other sound and image sources are located at fixed locations on the peripheral walls. The text/image and sound material is percievable as fragments which appear and disapear throughout the media environment.

A 40 minute five channel sound composition was created for five loudspeakers which are positioned throughout the space. The sound content is derived from recordings which Dreyblatt made of MRI Magnetic Resonance medical scanning. The project considers historical research and the collection of archival documentation an integral aspect of the project preparation. Under the direction of the artist, a research assistant collected historical materials from archives and official agencies.

The central turntable contains two data projectors facing outwards which are connected to a computer. The text content is programmed to scroll out of view at a speed corresponding to the speed of rotation in reverse, giving one the impression that the text is standing still. The texts are projected on both the inner and outer circles of the space, at times hugging the multiple archways. Four stationary carousel slide projectors are controlled by computer software. Enlarged sections of original blueprints of the site are projected in black and white negative on the outer walls. 

Software: White Void, Berlin; Turntable: Andreas Marcksheffel; Slide Projection: AV Optics / Emmanuel S. Boatey; Historical Blueprints: Landesarchiv Berlin; Archive research and text preparation: Birgit Kirchhöfer; Archival Sources: Landesarchiv Berlin, Museumsverbund Pankow Archiv; Digital Recordings: "Siemens Magnetom Symphony Maestro Class" Magnet Resonanz Tomographie (MRT or MRI); Audio Recordings by: Jörg Hiller' Recording Location: Röntgenpraxis (MRT-Departement), Dr. Anne Sparenberg, Martin-Luther-Krankenhaus, Berlin

“the magic square tuning system and how i got there”, 2007

Series of 27 b/w and color prints; size A4; printed on discolored antique paper and enclosed in a black box. Edition of 3.

The first edition was created for for Konrad Sprenger.

The contents, which traces the development of Dreyblatt’s early music theory and research, is based on a lecture given at Wesleyan Univeristy in 1981.

Exhibited:
Solo Exhibition: “Lapse”, Museolaboratorio, Citta’ Sant’Angelo, Italy, 2018
“Selected Works and Documentation / Installation - Music - Performance 1974-2019”, Freehome Artist to Artist, Berlin, 2019

Exhibition, "Gelbe Musik", Berlin

Ursula Block (see text below) invited Dreyblatt to create an exhibition scores and her legendary gallery in Berlin. The exhibition Working Papers presented notes, instructions, charts and documents of early research and compositions, for The Orchestra of Excited Strings and other projects, created in New York between 1976 and 1981. These documents offer a view to the creative process from an inside perspective. The exhibition also included a number of recent drawings related to music composition, including an original score for a specially issued signed CD Edition of 25. (see Discography). The exhibition ran from Deccember 11, 2006 until March, 2007 and included a sound installation which was activited by opening the door to the gallery.

"The first exhibition at my newly established gallery and record store GELBE MUSIK, opening December 11, 1981, was devoted to scores. The show offered a rather broad view to the idea of scores and musical notation. In doing so. I followed John Cage's approach of presenting different forms of musical scores in his book Notations, published in 1969.Cage's collection contains traditional scores as well as examples of "open forms", like graphic notation, verbal scores and performance instructions. A piece of string with knots, which Terry Fox had used in several of his performances, was probably one of the most uncommon scores in that first show. On December 11, 2006, we celebrate our 25th anniversary, and on this occasion, we are happy to present a selection of Arnold Dreyblatt' s Working Papers." - Ursula Block