"Register" by Arnold Dreyblatt

"Register" by Arnold Dreyblatt, 2007; Wood, steel, plexiglass, projector, 3 flat displays, 4 computers; exhibited in a historical exhibition at the Jewish Museum. Vienna. At the end of a long darkened corridor, 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. 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 K? Production: ?Anlaufstelle der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien? and ?J?disches Museum Wien" Exhibited:

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YouTube | February 22, 2009

Tags:. .wien. .muss. .gregor. .drawers. .darkened