The studio’s innovation also had a physical manifestation in the design of its headquarters. In her essay, Aleksandra Kędziorek recounts the commissioning of artist and architect Oskar Hansen to adapt a room for the purposes of an electronic music studio. Designed in accordance with the guidelines of the architect’s Open Form concept, the studio was painted black (thus earning the nickname ‘Black Room’) in order to achieve a feeling of an unlimited space, which was supposed to be an instrument in and of itself.
The book also contains a conversation with a group of sound engineers from PRES led by critic and curator Michał Mendyk, which took place in 2017; an interview with sound engineer and composer Eugeniusz Rudnik conducted by Zuzanna Solankiewicz, director and screenwriter of the 15 Corners of the World documentary on Rudnik’s experimental music; as well as texts first published in the late 1960s and 70s by sound engineer Bohdan Mazurek, broadcaster Józef Patkowski and Krzysztof Szlifirski.
Archival papers are complemented by essays by scholars, music producers and curators. Katarzyna Świętochowska and Michał Mendyk examine Eugeniusz Rudnik’s Lesson, one of the first pieces produced at the studio. They argue that his sound montage technique stemmed not from his radio work but that it had a clearly cinematic provenance. Antoni Michnik recounts Michael Ranta’s residency at the studio emphasising the significance of direct collaboration between instrumentalist and sound engineer. Michał Libera investigates the Studio’s attitude to electronic music notations discerning two different approaches to scores.
An undeniable gem included in the book is an extract of the Music in Polish Experimental Film essay by musicologist Zofia Lissa, originally published in a 1961 issue of Kwartalnik Filmowy (Film Quarterly). Initially a strong supporter of the Soviet aesthetic, Lissa had become one of the most vocal and active advocates of new music in Poland after the Thaw. As the editor of ULTRA SOUNDS aptly put it: ‘she had undergone her own de-Stalinisation’.
PRES worked closely with film studios across the country. The list of people who collaborated with the studio is astounding and included the likes of Walerian Borowczyk, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Jan Lenica, Andrzej Munk, Jerzy Skolimowski and Andrzej Wajda. The studio’s creations served as sonic accompaniments to dozens of documentaries, feature films, plays, open-air performances and audio-visual installations. Various projects dealing with ‘spatialising’ sound is taken up by Daniel Muzyczuk in his essay Polish Experimental Studio in Search of Multidimentional Sound Spaces, where he gives an account on site specific sound installations by Arne Nordheim and works by Krzysztof Wodiczko.
