"Das Instrument I and II" are two Lenticular works which were originally created for installation together with "The Wunderblock" (2000). The texts and diagrams are excerpts from "Traumdeutung" ("Interpretation of Dreams") in which Freud proposes spatial metaphors for perception and memory. Most importantly, Freud footnotes a reference to his later essay "Notiz über den Wunderblock" (1925) in the second edition. The works include diagram drawings by Freud which originally appeared in the first and second editions.

Lenticular technology was chosen for this work as an interactive means of display. Each panel contains five text and image layers, which are viewable from varying viewing positions, forming a "palimpsest" of fragmentary concepts.

Text and Images from: Sigmund Freud, "Traumdeutung; VII, Zur Psychologie der Traumvorgänge (B) Die Regression", 1900

Originally created for the Exhibition: "Images of the Mind", German Hygiene Museum, Dresden, 2011. "Das Instrument I" was bought for the collection of the German Hygiene Museum. "Das Instrument II" was exhibited at Galerie Oqbo, Berlin in 2012.

Dreyblatt has used lenticular technology as a perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragmentas from varying viewing positions, and which "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest". As the viewer moves about the room, varying text content appears and disapears.

The individual shapes of these seven works have been chosen from an archeological database of antique potsherds originating from ancient Greece and Rome, north and central America, the Near East and China. These shapes are the result of the "chance operations" of physical decay, a gradual historical process dating hundreds or thousands of years.

The texts are derived from Dreyblatt's original copy of the 1967 paperback edition of "A Year from Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage". The text fragments used in the work have been randomly chosen from a prepared list of all sentences in which either the words "text", "writing" or "reading" occur.

Commissioned by the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2011

"As my own work has become increasingly text-based both in performance and in installation, I have re-examined Cage's oevre in textual composition. In "A Year from Monday" he writes, "The thought has sometimes occurred to me that my pleasure in composition, renounced as it has been in the field of music, continues in the field of writing words, and that explains why, recently, I write so much." My own interests in the visual and audio perception of fragmentary layers of textual content are mirrored in seminal Cage works as "Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel (1969)" and in his extensive experimentation in printed text layout and vocal readings." - Arnold Dreyblatt

Created for the project "Paperfile" of the Gallery Oqbo, Berlin. Limited Edition of 12 copies of 4 color hand stamp prints.

The project has been exhibited at the Preview Fair, Berlin and is in the collection of the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Residenzschloss, Dresden

Created for the Exhibition, Sex Brennt - Magnus Hirschfled's Insitute for Sexual Science and the Book Burning, in the Berlin Medical Museum of the Charite

An enlargement of an entry card which Magnus Hirschfled used in collecting information on sexual preferences for a statistical analysis of homosexuals in society. The cards were handed out to metal workers and students in the Technical University of Berlin. Lenticular technology was chosen for this work as an interactive means of display. The work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable from varying viewing positions.

Source: Hirschfeld, Magnus: Das Ergebnis der Statistische Untersuchungen über den Prozentsatz der Homosexuellen, Verlag von Max Spohr, 1904 Dank an Alstercolor Bild + Medienservice GmbH & Co. KG

Exhibited: Berlin Medical Museum of the Charite; 2008

"Speak Stones' is presented as a high-tech frieze in three sections and is intended to be experienced in lateral movement by the viewer. The fragmentary stone inscriptions are given a "voice" in our perceptions as we navigate the space.

Lenticular technology was chosen for these works as an interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest".

Texts are derived from ancient roman epigraphic inscriptions and an anonymous early latin text on memory-technics, 'Rhetorica ad Herennium', often atributed to Cicero (1st Cent. B.C.).

Exhibited:
Gallery e/static, Torino
Artissima 14 Art Fair, Torino

These fifteen lenticular text images refer to Benjamin's famous essay, "Ausgraben und Erinnern" (Walter Benjamin, Ausgraben und Erinnern, in: ders., Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. IV.1, hg. von Tillmann Rexroth, Frankfurt a.M. 1972, S. 400 f.)

The texts are derived from online epigraphic databases of ancient inscriptions maintained by European and North American Archaelogical research institutions (list below). Commentaries to thousands of papyrus, stone, clay and wax inscriptions were collected from these databases, specifically chosen for content refering to readability and fragmentation.

Lenticular technology was chosen as an perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which seem to "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest".

Sources:
Die digitale Papyrus-Sammlung der Universitäten Halle - Jena - Leipzig; Papyrussammlung Universität Trier; Catalogue of Paraliterary Papyrus, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; The Egypt Exploration Society und Center for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University; Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg, Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions Database, University of Chicago; Cuneiform Inscriptions Database, University of Minnesota; Cuneiform Digital Palaeography Project, University of Birmingham

Produced with support from Alstercolor Bild + Medienservice GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg.

Exhibited:
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin (as part of the exhibition; "Translation: Text as Image" within the frame of the Walter Benjamin Festival, Berlin), 2006-2007

Photos: 1-4: Waldemar Kremser, 5: Arnold Dreyblatt

A digital LED display in a Sicilian village square, loses access to it's memory chip. Photographed by the artist in 2002. Edition of three available at Gallery e/static, Torino

Exhibited:
Gallery e/static, Torino, 2007

Collection of 81 individual visiting cards, acquired in Venice, August, 1992; white frame, 140 x 105 x 4 cm., individual mounts.

Originally exhibited as "La Scalinate di Piazza d'Italia", 1994

Description of "La Scalinate di Piazza d'Italia" (1994):
A staircase in an decaying back house in East Berlin. A collection of one hundred Italian visiting cards from the turn of the centruy, which the artist discovered in a junk store in Venice, each with only one name and no address or phone number, are encased in individual transparent plastic envelopes and nailed to the underside of 100 steps, arriving to the highest landing in the attic. As the public ascends, each card gradually appears at eye level, a collection of 100 faceless vanities of Italian royalty.

Exhibited:
"Index", 1998:
Foreign Ministry, National Parliament, Oslo, Norway (Permanent Collection)
Galerie Bleibtreu, Berlin, 2004
Galerie Kai Hilgemann, Berlin, 2003

"La Scalinate di Piazza d'Italia", 1994
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1994

25 Color Prints positioned in a grid and layered over a wall of text. The work was installed in the Galerie Anselm Dreher, Berlin in 2003.

The photographs were taken in an east european botanical garden. Plants are marked by a labyrinth of small signs, from which the text has been removed or is unreadable.

The wall text is an excerpt from the "Preface" to Stages on Life's Way" (1845), Søren Kierkegaard, an essay on memory.

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.

Exhibited:
Galerie Anselm Dreher, 2003

12 works, 90 x 70 x 5 cm. are hung in a series on a long wall. Each work contains a wooden frame, a wooden panel, a layer of reflective plexiglass, a miniature lamp, a magnifying optic, and an adjustable microfiche/microfilm holder. 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).

In the center of the plexiglass-covered wood panel, one finds a small hole with a lens, from which light is emanating. One peers into the 'peephole' lens which magnifies a small circular image of documents from the full collection of 98 pages which have been printed on Microfiche in miniature. One's eyes gradually focus on an illuminated miniaturized text which has been magnified to the limit of perceptual readability.

The twelve texts are derived from the German and Austrian Bureau of Standards for data destruction: 'Vernichten von Informationsträgern', Deutsches Institut für Normung, Berlin, and 'Aktenvernichtung', Österreichisches Normungsinstitut, Vienna

While much of Dreyblatt's work often reflects on the process of collecting, storing and archiving information, here the text speaks of the technical and planned disapearance and destruction of our collective memory by institutions and governmental agencies.

Exhibited:
Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main, 2005

84 chronological archive documents, plastic envelopes, format DIN A4, nails with spacers

'The T Documents' is one of a number of related works derived from over 4,000 intelligence documents from State Archives in Europe and North America from the inter-war period which have been collected by the artist.

These documents reveal 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 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 installation 'The T Documents', the artist's personal selection of 84 original archive documents have been digitized and faked by specially developed printing techniques applied to the reverse side of postwar East German archival pages, posing question about the identity of both the subject's personality and the authenticity of the documents themselves. The documents are displayed in chronological order in transparent envelopes hanging on metal hooks. Selected excerpts are translated and typed in German on small strips of paper which has been inserted into the envelopes.

In related works, thousands of documents have been entered into a database and are displayed by computer projection. A realization for the World Wide Web has been prepared in collaboration with the University of Lüneburg, Department of Cultural Studies.

Sources: 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:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel; Marstall, Munich, 1995
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen, 1996
Hudobné simulakrá. Jozef Cseres, Bratislava 2001
Jewish Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2005
Gallery e/static, Torino, 2007

Related Web Project: http://www.leuphana.de/tmail

Digital prints, format DIN A1, laminated, moveable and suspended on wire track.
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

Colors: Green and Red; 60 x 120 cm

Images selected from "Home Movie" stills from Dreyblatt's multi-media performance, Die Luftmenschen

Exhibited:
Galerie Shin Shin, Berlin, 1992