Arnold Dreyblatt

While in residence at MIT, Arnold Dreyblatt participated in the 2014 Symposium “Seeing/Sounding/Sensing” hosted by the Center for Art, Science & Technology. The symposium culminated in a concert including Alvin Lucier performing his 1969 work, I Am Sitting in a Room, Evan Ziporyn’s performance of Lucier’s In Memoriam Jon Higgins, and Dreyblatt performing Spin Ensemble.

For the course Dreyblatt taught in fall 2014, “The Harmonic Archive: Music, Sound and Installation Art as Artistic Research,” he drew upon his own artistic practice in addressing three main topics: musical minimalism, instrument building and sound art. With a group of eight undergraduate students from diverse disciplines, Dreyblatt wanted to give his students a foundation in the fundamentals of sound itself and visual aesthetics to inform their final projects. They studied the works of John Cage (Water Walks), Ellen Fullman (Long string instrument), Terry Fox, Christina Kubisch (Electrical Walks), Max Neuhaus (Sound Walks), Gordon Monahan (Swinging Loudspeakers), Rolf Julius, Robin Minard, Steve Reich (Pendulum Music, Four Organs), La Monte Young (Composition No. 7), Alvin Lucier (Music for Snare Drum, Pure Wave Oscillator and Reflective Surfaces; I am sitting in a room) and Janet Cardiff (40 part Motet), to grasp the range of directions composers and sound artists take.

Presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST).

Past Events

Performance at the CAST Symposium “Seeing / Sounding / Sensing”
Saturday, September 27, 2014 / 7:00pm
MIT Media Lab E14-674 (6th floor)
75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA

Alvin Lucier, I Am Sitting in a Room, performed by Alvin Lucier
Alvin Lucier, In Memoriam Jon Higgins, performed by Evan Ziporyn
Arnold Dreyblatt, Turntable History, performed by Arnold Dreyblatt

Arnold Dreyblatt: Artist’s Lecture and Demonstration
Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Evan Ziporyn, CAST Faculty Director and Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music, MIT

Arnold Dreyblatt’s musical and artistic practice ranges from large multi-day performances to permanent installations, digital projections, dynamic textual objects and multi-layered lenticular text panels. His visual artworks are complex textual and spatial visualizations about memory, reflecting upon such themes as recollection and the archive.

A member of the second generation of New York minimal composers, Dreyblatt continues to develop his work in composition and music performance, having invented a new set of original instruments, performance techniques and a system of tuning. He has formed and led numerous ensembles under the title “The Orchestra of Excited Strings” for over thirty years.

Arnold Dreyblatt studied music with Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young and Alvin Lucier. He has been based in Berlin, Germany since 1984. In 2007, Dreyblatt was elected to lifetime membership in the visual arts section at the German Academy of Art (Akademie der Künste, Berlin). He is currently Professor of Media Art at the Muthesius Academy of Art and Design in Kiel, Germany. His work is featured in the exhibition Black Mountain. An Interdisciplinary Experiment 1933 – 1957.

More at the artist’s website: Arnold Dreyblatt.

New York Times: Concentration Can Have Its Rewards

All Music: Review

Jazz Times: Arnold Dreyblatt and the Orchestra of Excited Strings, The Adding Machine