Arnold Dreyblatt (b. New York City, 1953) is an American media artist and composer. He has been based in Berlin, Germany since 1984. In 2007, Dreyblatt is a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and is the Vice-Director of the Visual Arts Section. He is currently Professor of Media Art at the Muthesius Academy of Art and Design in Kiel, Germany. Dreyblatt studied music with Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and Alvin Lucier and media art with Woody and Steina Vasulka.
Arnold Dreyblatt will perform at our partner project Modular Organ System by Phillip Sollmann and Konrad Sprenger w/ daily live interventions this month.
His artistic practice of the last 30 years has ranged from large staged multi-day performances (“The Memory Projects”, 1995-2001), involved installations (such as “From the Archives”, 1999; “The Wunderblock”, 2000; “Turntable History”, 2009) and lenticular wall works (such as “Ephemeris Epigraphica”, 2006 and “Writing Cage”, 2012) as well as interactive artistic research projects such as “Performing the Black Mountain Archive” (2015) at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art. At the same time he has continued to develop his unique work in composition and music performance.
FACTS:
1: Nervous
2: Tinitus
3: Fake News
QUESTIONS:
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Abstract analog video art, minimalism in music and the visual arts.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
At SUNY Buffalo, seminar with Morton Feldman, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, 1974.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Sacred Music of the Aztecs, Folkways (My number one of all time)
Come Out to Show Them, Steve Reich
Folk Music of the Bahamas, Nonesuch
Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks
I am sitting in a Room, Alvin Lucier
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
East, Ruins.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Soviet War Memorial Schönholz.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Art, which I do in any case, since I am also a visual artist.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
CD – Music at the Bauhaus.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Phillip Sollmann.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Petröfi Czarnok, Budapest, 1985.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Without Fourier Analysis my music would not exist.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
I am an only child.
