Unburying, from Liminals, Emerging: Three Contexts for a Microtonal Prepared Piano
(2025)
author(s): Matt Choboter
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
Can an acoustic grand piano be sonically and conceptually reimagined so as to re-negotiate its foundational assumptions around tuning and timbre? Why should the piano continue to be so accustomed to only one tuning system? In contrast, how can “pure sounds” (ratios found in the harmonic series) co-exist with ethnically diverse microtonal tunings?
Spanning a period from 2020-2022, “Unburying, from Liminals, Emerging” explores a microtonal prepared piano in three artistic contexts. These include: a solo project called “Postcards of Nostalgia; a chamber ensemble consisting of saxophone trio, percussion and piano; and a “percussion ensemble with soprano saxophone called Juniper Fuse.
Dialoging with a newly invented tuning system, what emergent properties might we find when magnetic piano preparations are used to evoke specific timbral effects from Balinese Gamelan and Indian Karnatik music? Collectively, how can this expanded notion of “piano” merge with spatialization to facilitate interactive experiences for audiences? How might a process-oriented Jungian-inspired dream work communicate itself so as to distill and coalesce a fertile musical landscape?
Dreamachinery
(2024)
author(s): Ruthia Jenrbekova
connected to: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
published in: Research Catalogue
The exposition presents individual outcomes of the collective PEEK project “The Magic Closet and the Dream Machine: Post-Soviet Queerness, Archiving, and the Art of Resistance” (AR 567), which was implemented in 2020—2024 by four artists/researchers: Katharina Wiedlack, Masha Godovannaya, Iain Zabolotny and Ruthia Jenrbekova. The overall conceptual frame, based on the well-known artefact called “Dreamachine”, has been developed by this collective, however, the exposition at hand present a particular approach and outcomes by its author, a PhD-in-Practice candidate Ruthia Jenrbekova.
Our experimental art-research project was a study of queer lives in a number of post-soviet cities. One of the project’s ambition was developing and testing an experimental artistic methodology, which in my version is called “Dreamachinery”. Trying to connect it to a particular artistic tradition that I labeled as “Queer Light & Magic”, I present here a few outcomes of my personal interactions with the participants of a series of workshops that I conducted in the cities of Almaty, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Berlin and Vienna.