David Tudor, Bandoneon! (A combine…), performed at 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, 1966

Excerpt from 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, A Series of 10 Documentary Films
Directed by Barbro Schultz Lundestam
Produced by Billy Klüver and Julie Martin
Original footage by Alfons Schilling
ca. 1995–2007

In 1966, Swedish electrical engineer Billy Klüver and American visual artist Robert Rauschenberg gathered 10 avant-garde artists and 30 Bell Labs engineers to participate in a collaborative, multidisciplinary project combining new technologies with theatre, dance, and music. The event, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, took place at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York from October 13–22, 1966. More than 10,000 people attended the performances. The event led to the founding of the organization Experiments in Art and Technology the following month.

David Tudor, Bandoneon! (A combine…), performed at 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, October 14 and 18, 1966
Performance Engineer: Fred Waldhauer

Composer David Tudor taught himself to play the bandoneon, an accordion-like instrument, after seeing Mauricio Kagel’s Pandorasbox, bandoneonpiece (1960). The title of this performance, Bandoneon! (a combine…) has a layered meaning. The exclamation point represents a factorial, a mathematical operation used to calculate the number of ways a set of items can be arranged, while the phrase “a combine” references Robert Rauschenberg’s term for an artwork that incorporates both painting and sculpture. In his composition, Tudor created countless combinations of sound, lighting, and sculptural elements, all controlled by the bandoneon’s buttons. Electronic equipment, including Waldhauer’s Proportional Control System and Robert Kieronski’s Vochrome, played a key role in processing and modifying the sounds the bandoneon activated, distributing them to loudspeakers moving around the Armory floor. The sounds also reached Lowell Cross’s image-deflection system, resulting in visual projections on large screens. Through this performance, Tudor embraced the cavernous space of the Armory, turning it into a giant feedback instrument.

This clip is part of the Getty Research Institute exhibition Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), on view at the Getty Center from September 10, 2024 through February 23, 2025. Learn more at getty.edu/sensing_the_future

The complete footage of 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, A Series of 10 Documentary Films is available for researchers at the Getty Research Institute (accession number 2023.M.37):
http://primo.getty.edu/GRI:GETTY_ALMA...

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