29.04.2009,
Haus Wiegand / Berlin Dahlem / 7-Kanal-Klanginstallation

The installation was planned for the annual Berlin congress of the Leo Back Institution for the study of
the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry. Soundmaterial of the Leo Back archives has been
aranged to a 7 channel in- and outdoor installation at Haus Wiegand in Berlin Dahlem. The project had
been honoured by a Leo Baeck research scolarship in New York.
One source was the Austrian Heritage Collection, a program whose specific goal is to document the
history of Austrian-Jewish émigrés who fled to the USA during the Nazi years. Interview-parts containing
childhood memories of the interviewees, basically jewish life in Vienna befor the nazis came into power,
have been divided into hundreds of fragments that have been ordered by the pitch of their speaking
voices.
The second source was the record-collection of the Loe Baeck institute, containing jewish music that has
been recorded arround that period of time (1920-1935). The music has been digitalised and analysed
for their fundamental frequencies in order to trigger the sorted fragments of the interviews.
Additional electroacoustic composition technics have been used to create a precisely defined
acoustic space. This stereo-mixdown is of course a serious reduction of the work.

The adjustment of the seven speakers leads from the buildings
consistent geometrical principles. As the building itself, constructed
by the german architect Peter Behrens in 1911, the installation has
been aligned throughout the site´s longitudinal axis. The four speakers
in the garden continue the buildings order of columns and reflect the
peristyle-entry along the buildings midpoint. The three central windows
to the garden become speakers itself by attached transducers.
The are audible inside of the building as well as outside.