Arnold Dreyblatt's Nodal Excitation (1979) recorded live in September 2012 at a performance from Brooklyn's  ISSUE Project Room.

Arnold Dreyblatt’s notes on this solo work for his amplified "excited strings" acoustic bass:

"In the spring of 1979, I was approached to perform at a downtown performance festival in New York. I had been developing a repertoire of isolated percussive and bowed attacks, and these evolved into a continuous rhythmic technique in which I could excite chords of overtones above the fundamental."

"The performance considers the location and influence of the acoustic Nodal Regions as identified on #12 and #11 unwound music wire stretched on an acoustic double bass body (40.5" speaking length). The integrity of a fundamental vibration is maintained for both strings at all times; all movement of pitch occurs in the overtone structure. A shorter speaking length is never created through "stopping" or "fretting" techniques. Rather, harmonic, partial vibrations are calculated, coaxed, and are occasionally isolated at the nodes of the string."

Arnold Dreyblatt (born in New York City, 1953) is a composer, performer and visual artist. He studied music with Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and Alvin Lucier and has been based in Berlin, Germany since 1984. Among the second generation of New York minimal composers, Dreyblatt developed a unique approach to composition and music performance. As he began his music in the late 1970's in New York, he invented a set of new and original instruments, performance techniques, and system of tuning and in addition has formed and led numerous ensembles under the title The Orchestra of Excited Strings. In 2007, he was elected to the German Academy of Art (Akademie der Künste, Berlin). He is currently Professor for Media Art at the Muthesius Academy of Art and Design in Kiel.

This podcast was produced in collaboration with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at artonair.org

Arnold Dreyblatt, "Nodal Excitation" Live at ISSUE 9/2012

Boiler Room x First World Records w/ Souleance (LIVE), Yosi Horikawa (LIVE), Comfort Fit (LIVE) & Gilla.

[Broadcasted on 19th September 2013]

Tracklist & video at boilerroom.tv

Yosi Harikawa LIVE in the Boiler Room

Walter Benjamin’s radio broadcasts (1929 - 1932) are a selection of children stories written and read by Benjamin during his colossal research project The Arcades Project, an allegorical look into the birth of modernity in 19th Century Paris. Though the series of broadcasts and the Arcades in general are decisively incomplete, the two enterprises echo one another in content, replete with provocative digressions, and unlikely connections (or "secret affinities").

Radio Benjamin: Cagliostro

Clocktower Productions is an art production institution working in the visual arts, performance, music, and radio. Founded in 1972 in Lower Manhattan by MoMA PS1 Founder Alanna Heiss, Clocktower is the oldest alternative art project in New York. 

Radio Benjamin: Cagliostro

Clocktower Radio

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