8 Channel Sound Installation, 7 Text Panels, 2012
Chosen texts from A Year from Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage (1967) which were randomly chosen from a prepared list of all sentences in which either the words text, writing or reading occur have been combined with another source: handwritten inventory cards from the archive collection of the Jewish Musem in Berlin. From these cards I selected texts which speak of the condition and readability of unnamed documents in that collection.
These two, seemingly disparate text lists were further fragmented using a version of the cut-up method invented by Brion Gysin and often utilitized by William S. Burroughs: in which texts from unrelated sources meet each other and create new random associations. This process resulted in a final list of 329 text items, ranging from 1 to 15 words. The list was recorded and spoken by the artists Sam Ashley and Ray Kass, who were recent participants in the TONSPUR Project.
A specially written software sends randomly chosen voice recordings from a database to the various loudspeakers according to pre-determined rules but leaving much to chance. We experience a possible conversation, never repeating and creating unexpected meanings.
During the preparation period, Dreyblatt lived in a studio near to this TONSPUR_passage: 'I often marvelled at the diversity and density of the soundscape, in which the distant sounds of Sam Ashley's installation, Freedom From Happiness, mingled with the sonorites of crowds of people passing under my four windows, and resonating in the plaza and in my living space. Over a weekend, I made numerous recordings of this situation over different times of day, and then created a carpet which lies under the voices, functioning as a kind of memory of this site from a recent, yet now lost time.'
'As my own work has become increasingly text-based both in performance and in installation, I have been re-examining Cage's oevre in textual composition. My own interests in the visual and audio perception of fragmentary layers of textual content are mirrored in his extensive experimentation with printed text layout and vocal readings.'
'In 2011, I was invited by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin to create a work for the exhibition A Room for Cage. It was in the preparation for the works which I created for this exhibition (Writing Cage, 2011) that I made use of texts from my copy of the 1967 paperback edition of A Year from Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage
Exhibited: TONSPUR_passage, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, 2012Voices: Sam Ashley, Ray Kass; Recordings: ORF Studios, Vienna; Technical Supervision Peter Szely; Programming: Norbert Math; Production: TONSPUR für einen öffentlichen raum; Artistic director: Georg Weckwerth
Original Text List
Layout Galerie Installation
Text by Sabine Sanio
Installation: Vitrines, Plexiglass, Projections, Baggage Artifact, 2011
media turntable, data projection, slide projection, sound, 2009
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.
Text and Image
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.
Audio Composition
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..
Research, Collection and Projection
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.
Produced by Carsten Seiffarth
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
Text correction: Gunnar Voss
Archival Sources: Landesarchiv Berlin, Museumsverbund Pankow Archiv
Digital Recordings: "Siemens Magnetom Symphony Maestro Class" Magnet
Resonanz Tomographie (MRT or MRI)
Recorded by: Jörg Hiller
Recording Location: Röntgenpraxis (MRT-Departement), Dr. Anne Sparenberg,
Martin-Luther-Krankenhaus, Berlin
table, chair, data projection, slide projection, 2008
inventar
Text Source: Versteigerung der kompletten Villeneinrichtung, Wien III, Kopfgasse 1. Besichtung 13., 14., und 15. Juni 1938. Versteigerung: 17., 18., 20., 21. und 22. Juni 1938; Dorotheum - Wien Versteigerungsanstalt. (Residence of Berhard Altmann).
Descriptions of individual items from a list of approximately 1400 auctioned objects are projected as black text on a white wall. The white wall defines a possible space, or room, in a real size. The projection begins at the floor, in order to simulate the scale of an actual room. A series of imagined spaces are displayed in sequence. Within each room type, descriptions of objects scroll (i.e. writing letter by letter) in actual positions in which they might be found in such a room. For instance, at the possible height of a table, a series of table descriptions from the list will begin to scroll. Above the height of the table, text descriptions of objects which might be found sitting on a table will simultaneously begin to scroll.
The spaces are defined as group categories based on usage for a particular space (i.e. objects which might appear in a living room, for example), yet no indication is given as to a particular room name. Rather, one has an association to virtual room through percieved relationships between objects. No attempt is made to historically simuate an actual room based on documention. Rather, we are invited to imagine a virtual space, filled with the associations of ownership, yet no distinction is made as to value.
inventur
A selection from a collection of historical artifacts from the postwar Bernhard Altmann American firm (ladieswear, advertisements, publications, etc.) are projected in sequence onto a white table top which has been placed in the space. Each object is referenced in size with a measure stick. From afar, objects seem to be sit on the table, at close-up one percieves them as virtual images.
These postwar objects are represented as color images, while the 'pre-war' auctioned objects are represented as dynamically written black and white text in space.
Exhibited: MAK (Museum of Applied Art), Vienna, 2008
wood, steel, plexiglass, data projection, 2008
In a room one percieves an oversized card catalog in black, as one recognizes from libraries and offices. The catalog contains thirty drawers, each fitted with the shining metal frames and handles which clearly identify their archival function. Within these frames, where normally the little paper cards which mark the contents of that drawer would be, the data is active and continually changing.
The "card catalog" was also shown with other content at the Jewish Museum in Berlin in 2007.
Sources: Hirschfeld, Magnus: Die objektive Diagnose der Homosexualität. In: Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Jahrgang 1, 1899, S. 4 - 35 Hirschfeld, Magnus: Psychobiologischer Fragbogen. Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, VI. Auflage, 1925
Construction: Olf Kreisel; Software: Alexandr Krestovskij
Exhibited: Berlin Medical Museum of the Charite; 2008
wood, pentakta lens, microfiche, 2008
A four meter long reading table with 12 holes from which light is emanating. One peers into the 'peephole' lens which magnifies a small circular image of documents from a statistical analysis by Hirschfeld from 1904 and images of archival objects from the destroyed institute in Berlin which have been printed on Microfiche in miniature. One's eyes gradually focus on an illuminated miniaturized text or an object which has been magnified to the limit of perceptual readability.
The optics have been adapted from the 'Pentakta HL100 microfiche hand reading apparatus' ('Mikrofilm-Handlesegerät im Taschenformat') which were produced by Pentacon Dresden for use in scientific research and by the State Security System (the STASI).
Source: Hirschfeld, Magnus: Das Ergebnis der Statistische Untersuchungen über den Prozentsatz der Homosexuellen, Verlag von Max Spohr, 1904
Construction: Olf Kreisel
Exhibited: Berlin Medical Museum of the Charite; 2008
wood, steel, plexiglass, data projection, 3 flat displays, 2007
In the lower area of this large piece of virtual furniture are three flat LCD screens, mounted vertically and partially disappearing into the black box. Here, an endless row of documents 'march' head-first into the 'machine' as if they being inputed for further data analysis within the catalog drawers above. The 'entry categories' of the series of documents are written dynamically on the face of the drawers, letter by letter in a series of 'chapters', each representing the data structure of a document.
Due to a built-in randomness integrated into the program processes (as to location, order, and time), the display of the data will never be exactly the same when the software program repeats its sequence. These entries are derived from the questionaires and index cards from the recently found archive of the Jewish Community of Vienna during the Third Reich era. The work was commissioned by the Jewish Museum of Vienna for the exhibition, 'Ordunung Muß Sein' ('Order must be'), and is a collaboration with the archive of the Jewish Community of Vienna.
Software Programming: Alexander Krestovsky and Gregor Kö
Production: 'Anlaufstelle der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien' and 'Jüdisches Museum Wien"
Exhibited:
Jüdisches Museum Wien, 2007
digital projection, 2005
One enters a high darkened space in which one percieves a black monolithic
box, approximately 145 cm. high which dominates the space. One is able to move
in a narrow passageway partially on two sides of this block, as one gradually
percieves a rectangular sunken area, 2. x 1.35 meters, from which light emanates.
From specific positions, one might percieve the movement of text on the lower
surface of this depression, but since the 'horizon' of the raised floor is almost
chin-level for most observers, the content and use of this 'secret' area remains
unknown.
One then ascends a nearby stairwell, arriving at a second level which functions
as a viewing platform. From here, one looks directly down upon this sunken area,
with it's associations to graves and archaeological diggings. The surface of
the depression in the floor is now fully visible, revealing an active, dynamic
sea of text below, originating from a rear projection inside the block.
Textual fragments from 'The Old Jewish Cemetary in Frankfurt am Main'
by Michael Brocke have been chosen which contain no specific names or dates,
but rather speak of the fading content and physical condition of the ancient
tombstones. Additional phrases in Hebrew, selected from common expressions used
in grave inscriptions of the period, create a background of floating letters.
The textual fragments seem to appear from a 'sea of texts' only to gradually
deconstruct and disapear again, without end, simulating a palimpsest of broken
stones.
Exhibited:
Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main, 2005
rotating stroboscopic text machine, 2003
Approximately every seven seconds, an extremely intensive 360 degree flash illuminates eleven circular text phrases which are inscribed into the cylinder surface. As the cylinder is slowly turns, one percieves new text fragments with each flash, which are only readable as an afterimage in the brain, white letters on a black background.
The texts are derived from scientific texts based on the phenomena of Flashbulb Memory. Texts from: R. Brown & J. Kulik, Flashbulb Memories, in: Cognition, 5, 1997, S. 73-99; RB Livingston, Reinforcement, in: The Neuro Sciences, A Study Program, Rockefeller Press, New York 1967; U. Neusser, Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Context, W. H. Freeman, New York 1982; etc.
The installation Recovery Rotation was created in cooperation between the Festival Conceptualisms: Contemporary Receptions in Music, Art, and Film, commissioned by the Akademie der Künste Berlin, curated by Christoph Metzger, and made possible by funds from the foundation Hauptstadtkulturfonds) and the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken.
Exhibited:
Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, 2003
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003
plot, black letters on coated canvas, 2003
The positive black of the text gives way into a negative reading, as the white between the letters turn into rivolets, streams and navigations ways. The work addresses quesions of readablity through interruptions created by image as a reflection on the attempts of the mind to access and navigate fragments from the past, where time and visual perspective collide.
The text is an excerpt from the "Preface" to Stages on Life's Way" (1845), Søren Kierkegaard's essay on memory and recollection.
Exhibited:
Galerie Anselm Dreher, Berlin, 2003
stroboscopic text installation, 2002
Text 1: FRAME FREEZE
Text 2: EVENT RECALL
Text 3: NOW PRINT
Exhibited:
Galerie Anselm Dreher, Berlin, 2003
Gallery e/static, Torino, 2007
table, chair, TFT display, computer, 2000
In 1925, Freud wrote a text that compares the faculty of memory to a child's toy known as a Wunderblock. It consists of a wax slab stretched with cellophane, upon which a text may be inscribed, and just as readily erased by lifting the cellophane layer up and away from the wax slab.
In contrast to Freud's model, in which the pressure of the act of inscription onto the cellophane surface continues in the direction of the underlying layer of wax, in 'The Wunderblock', the original selection and entry of data has been concluded in the past. The movement originates from ROM and is held in RAM, before travelling up towards the surface.
Quite independently of our own states of presence or absence, the installation searches and inscribes autonomously. One has the impression that the underlying textual sources can never be perceived in their entirety. Because the many texts fragments are inscribed and erased simultaneously, one can read a given fragment only with difficulty before it vanishes. The model of memory demonstrated here is at once highly unstable, fragmentary, incomplete, perishable and ephemeral.
The sentence fragments appearing and disappearing on the screen describe a process of finding and loss, safeguarding and destruction.
Texts from: Sigmund Freud, Notiz über den `Wunderblock', Wien 1925; A Glossary for Archivists, The Society of American Archivists, Chicago 1992
Software: Alexandr Krestovskij
Exhibited:
Galerie Anselm Dreher, 2000
Art Forum, Berlin, 2000
Gemäldegalerie, 2001
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003
Kunstverein Hannover, 2003
Jewish Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2005
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data projection, database, black plexiglass, 1999
One thousand documents have been entered into a database which reports the life of T., (b. 1879 Paks, Hungary - d. 1943 Shanghai, China), a forgotten Central European historical figure whose multiple identities span three continents (Europe, North America and Asia) and touch on many of the most important events of the pre-war period. The work is derived from a larger collection of over 4,000 intelligence documents from State Archives in Europe and North America from the inter-war period.
The collection contains daily reports and correspondances between 1915 and 1943, forming a vast communication network in which the official traces and observations of the individual are cross-referenced to historical events, international personalities and geographic locations.
In the interactive display of 'T-Mail' new documents are chosen randomly from the database, a scan of the next document gradually slides into view as various thematic categories and cross-links are activated. Text writings are simultaneously emitted sonically as morse code, in five different sine wave frequencies which change with consecutive paragraphs.
Texts from: The Public Record Office and The British Library, London; The National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Bundesarchiv Koblenz; Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Bonn, etc.
Exhibited:
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 1999-2000
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003
Related Web Project: http://www.leuphana.de/tmail
plotted text scroll, vitrine with illumination, 1999
The work is presented in a darkened room which is illuminated by the antique form of an enormous paper scroll, seemingly without a beginning or an end, representing a sacred object with biblical overtones. The scroll is mounted on a wooden base containing florescent tubes, with a glass surface.
Each line of text extends to 18 meters, flowing on to the beginning of the next line. The eye follows this stream of content, until one loses one's horizontal location - resulting in a shifting of one's visual attention as one springs vertically to a new starting position
997 text fragments and thumbnail images from various digital and archival sources, collected 1993 - 1999. All entries are time-stamped from the moment of collection.
Exhibited:
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin,
1999-2000
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003
data projection, circular wire screen, sound, 1998
An automated writing and recitation machine is found in a darkened black space. One enters a three dimensional data architecture where the process of searching, sorting and locating words and the overlapping inter-textual linkages of information are simulated optically by metaphors of transparence and complexity. Projected onto a barely visible cylindrical screen are multiple transparent layers of continually flowing historical data, which appear to be suspended in the center of the space, and which delineate the room contours with textual landscapes.
Two computers randomly search and locate thousands of words within an endless virtual page of biographical information in real time. As each word is found, it is highlighted visually and spoken out loud by a male or female voice. The voices gradually cross each other in time, creating a dialog. The viewer participates in a deconstruction of history through a non-linear and associational reading of forgotten archival fragments.
Texts from: Who's Who in Central & East Europe 1933
Design & Software Development: Luca Ruzza, Architect, Rome
Software Consultant: Alexandr Krestovskij
Sound: Tom Korr
Exhibited:
Felix Meritis Foundation, Amsterdam, 1998
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 1999-2000
Jewish Museum, New York, 2001
Arte in Memoria, Ostia Antica, Rome
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003
In an old cellar in East Berlin, two simulated 'archaeological' finds create moments for a reflection on museal display of the artifacts of history.
Behind a wooden gate, in an individual 'coal cell', forty 'found' handwritten notes, documents, scribbles on printed books from before the Second World War lie haphazardly on the dirt floor. Each fragment is lit and magnified by a hand magnifying glass, and numbered.
On an adjoining wall, a stone vitrine contains 'found' ceramic and glass objects from another century, carefully numbered for display.
Exhibited:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1994
wooden boxes, inscribed plexiglass, illumination, 1993
As one peers into this sea of information, it is as if one stares into a bottomless well filled with multiple levels of floating texts in depth. One focuses one's eyes on any given text fragment on a given level, as the other text levels defocus and blur, becoming illegible. One's attention might wander to a remote or nearby fragment, our eyes continually refocusing as we isolate and connect a related or unrelated name or phrase.
A grain of sand is propelled into our field of vision for a single moment, separating forground from background, only to vanish gradually into the collective ocean of memory. The intention is to realize, in three dimensions, a hypertext as a metaphorical space which contains in compressed form a database of all mankind.
Texts from: Who's Who in Central & East Europe 1933
Exhibited:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel; Marstall, Munich, 1995
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen, 1995
In Medias Res, Istanbul, 1996
Jewish Museum, Vienna, 1997
Veletrzni Palac, National Gallery, Prague, 1997
Jewish Museum, Franfurt am Main, 2005
digital paper plot, 1993
Texts: Who's Who in Central & East Europe 1933
Lists of fragmental details such as addresses and organizations which were sampled from the 'Who's Who in Central & East Europe' database and are printed on large endless text scrolls using an architectural plotter and are mounted on wooden poles. These scrolls represent both an archaic form of writing, seemingly without a beginning and an end, as well as a sacred object with biblical overtones.
Exhibited:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
In Medias Res, Istanbul, 1996
digital prints suspended from a wire track, 1993
Texts on the subject of a robotic mass storage system in which files are ordered and physically moved by a robot monk/librarian and an American church-sect which is pursuing an extensive worldwide archiving project collecting and storing personal data.
Data is presented on a track containing large hanging plastic cards which can be moved back and forth at will, containing information on an international 'high-tech' computer frm and an American church-sect which is pursuing an extensive worldwide archiving project.
'The Church' has been collecting and storing the personal data from over 15 Million persons from around the world for over 50 years in 1.6 million rolls of microfilm which are stored in Utah in the Western United States in a cave safe from nuclear attack. Each year 30,000 new rolls are added and the material is made accessible to the public at Family History Centers worldwide. This project is the largest of its kind ever conceived, and as its goal seeks to collect store, and digitize all genealogically useful information which can be located before eventual disappearance.
Exhibited:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen, 1996
data projection screen, variable size, 1995
An enormous screen fills up with a random writing of material from a historical database, overwriting itself in realtime.
Texts from: Who's Who In Central & East Europe 1933
Exhibited:
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of
Europe, Copenhagen, 1996
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel; Marstall, Munich, 1995
wooden table, six monochrome monitors, 1996
Themes include: decay of archival materials, natural disasters, filing systems, technological advances in record management, the Patron Saint of Archiving, etc.
The discussions are presented as a digital automatic writing. The computer monitors are antique, with an association for an earlier technological era. The texts are fragments of conversations which write themselves as individual voices, simulating a digital conversation.
Exhibited:
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of
Europe, Copenhagen, 1996
sealed steel container, 1995
The "Time Capsule" was first exhbited within the interactive installation work, "Memory Arena" (1995-96).
The contents are not indicated and the work is inscribed with the following text:
TIME CAPSULE
DEDICATED 22, November, 1963 A.D.
TO BE OPENED. 4 Juli, 2776 A.D.
The following text is displayed next to the work:
"Time Capsule, a container storing historical documents and objects that is to be opened at some future date. The contents, which, may include historical documents and artifacts, are intended to reveal something about contemporary civilization to future generations. A capsule is often prepared to commemorate a notable event, such as a World's Fair or the landing on the moon. It is generally buried in the ground."
Exhibited:
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen, 1996
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003










































































