All Over Albany

EMPAC fall 2015 season

Without ado, further or otherwise, here's the slate for the upcoming fall season at EMPAC. It is, as usual, full of performances, talks, and events that promise to be interesting, thought-provoking, even challenging.

Compressed schedule

Jump to the expanded schedule listing, which includes some blurbs about each event.

September 2: Programming EMPAC: The First 4,158 Days

September 2: On Screen/Sound: No. 1

September 9: On Screen/Sound: No. 2

September 10: The Extra People - Ant Hampton

September 17: dotQuantum - Flatform

September 23: On Screen/Sound: No. 3

September 24: WITHIN 2 - Tarek Atoui

September 30: On Screen/Sound: No. 4

October 1: Jennifer West and Michael Ned Holte

October 2: vhvl + Daedelus + Ikonika

October 8-9: Recursive Frame Analysis - Mark Fell

October 13: Biocatalytic Nanocomposites: Engineering Form, Function, and Protection from Disease - John Dordick

October 15: France Jobin

October 22: The Machine is the Message: How Technology Will Fundamentally Change Music - Rob Hamilton

October 28: On Screen/Sound: No. 5

October 30: Mount Rushmore - Elizabeth Orr

November 4: On Screen/Sound: No. 6

November 5: Eternity and Megalomania: The Politics and Mechanics of Archiving - Johannes Goebel

November 12: Tim Hecker

November 13: THINGING: Dance and Translation and the Work of Anne Carson

November 18: On Screen/Sound: No. 7

December 2: On Screen/Sound: No. 8

December 3: Mary Halvorson + Colin Marston

December 11: Holly Herndon

Expanded schedule

All blurbage via EMPAC's website. For more description and ticket info, head on over there.

September 2: Programming EMPAC: The First 4,158 Days
Our new book, Programming EMPAC: The First 4,158 Days, presents a vivid mosaic of all the events, projects, and works developed and presented here at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center from 2014 back to inception. To celebrate what we have achieved and kick off the next 4,158 days of this ongoing experiment, we cordially invite you to join us for this official book launch, which will directly precede the first event in the Fall 2015 Program.

September 2: On Screen/Sound: No. 1
The first screening of the new series On Screen/Sound focuses on analog and synthetic experiments by US-based artists who pioneered new approaches to the correlation of a film's sound and image tracks.

September 9: On Screen/Sound: No. 2
The second program of On Screen/Sound presents a series of shorts from the past five decades that use human movement to embody the connection between image and sound.

September 10: The Extra People - Ant Hampton
The Extra People is an immersive theater performance where 15 audience members sit and watch another 15 onstage. After half an hour, they find themselves replacing those onstage, only to discover that another 15 have appeared in the seats they've left behind. And so it continues, through the hours... The theater building--dormant, empty, and unlit save for your flashlight--seems unable to be deactivated. And within this strange process, wearing headphones and a "hi-viz" vest, you're cast along with everyone else as some kind of extra. But an extra for what?

September 17: dotQuantum - Flatform
Italian media-art collective Flatform present dotQuantum, a multimedia performance that manipulates moving image, programmed light, and objects to "see through" a static understanding of the world around us.

September 23: On Screen/Sound: No. 3
The third screening in the series On Screen/Sound is introduced by Brooklyn-based filmmaker and archivist Andrew Lampert.

September 24: WITHIN 2 - Tarek Atoui
For WITHIN 2, Tarek Atoui will present his approach to performing sound in relation to anticipation, tactile sound, visual noise, gestures, and the multimodal nature of hearing. The workshop is a platform for performance, research, improvisation, and spatial composition that explores not only auditory perception among our diversity of listening abilities, but the social relations of public space, techniques of visual communication, and architectural tactility.

September 30: On Screen/Sound: No. 4
The fourth screening in On Screen/Sound brings together painting, architecture, fashion, dance, and music for an evening of modernist and surreal cinema.

October 1: Jennifer West and Michael Ned Holte
Artist-in-residence Jennifer West presents an evening on the "remembered movie" with Los Angeles-based writer and curator Michael Ned Holte. In a conversation of personal cinematic histories, each will perform memory (and movies) by capturing and reconnecting the places, spaces, and languages born from the movie-going experience.

October 2: vhvl + Daedelus + Ikonika
From three stylistically distinct corners of the global beat scene, a trifecta of dance-music heavyweights descend on Troy for a late-night concoction of hip-hop, house, and techno.

October 8-9: Recursive Frame Analysis - Mark Fell
Returning to EMPAC after his 2013 multi-venue installation and performance, British artist Mark Fell presents Recursive Frame Analysis, a new work for light, sound, and human movement. As with many of Fell's previous works, Recursive Frame Analysis emphasizes highly formalized aesthetic strategies: arrangements of intensely saturated light, raw synthetic sound, disrupted rhythmic structures, and kinetic systems that urge the audience to their perceptual and cognitive boundaries.

October 13: Biocatalytic Nanocomposites: Engineering Form, Function, and Protection from Disease - John Dordick
n this talk, Dr. Dordick will highlight Rensselaer's recent efforts to exploit the interface of biology with materials science, enhancing protein function along the way. Both fundamental advances and applications will be discussed, the latter focused on composites that endow surfaces with decontaminating properties and nanomaterials with magnetic properties that enhance therapeutic function.

October 15: France Jobin
The electronic music of composer France Jobin can be described as "sound-sculpture," revealing a minimalist approach to complex sound environments where analog and digital methods intersect. While her music often makes use of restraint and limit, she isn't one to shy away from extremes. Her skillful interplay between highs and lows, louds and softs create an intricate narrative, which stretches the listener's perception and continually refocuses attention.

October 22: The Machine is the Message: How Technology Will Fundamentally Change Music - Rob Hamilton
Modern computing technology has empowered a generation of creatives to engage their audiences directly as interactive partners rather than passive consumers. The creative and commercial successes of immersive game experiences predict an adventurous future, and have already acclimated audiences to nonlinear forms of storytelling while feeding our growing need to take an active role in our own entertainment. The room is prepped, so to speak, for a new age of procedurally generated, media-rich art and music, which eschews linearity and embraces the dynamism inherent in our tools.

October 28: On Screen/Sound: No. 5
The fifth screening in On Screen/Sound grapples with ideas of the real, acted, and reenacted as intertwined in both image and music.

October 30: Mount Rushmore - Elizabeth Orr
Brooklyn-based artist Elizabeth Orr presents a multimedia performance and her work-in-progress film Mount Rushmore, a moving-image work that interprets the language and visuality of online political marketing and the alarmist fundraising strategies of contemporary American politics.

November 4: On Screen/Sound: No. 6
The sixth screening in the series On Screen/Sound features two works composed exclusively using light: Lis Rhodes' Light Music and Henning Lohner and John Cage's One11 and 103.

November 5: Eternity and Megalomania: The Politics and Mechanics of Archiving - Johannes Goebel
The talk will finally give an overview of present preservation strategies in the digital domain and present the concrete solution we found for EMPAC, which is both cheap and pragmatic. This approach may be of interest to anyone in the scientific world, in industry (where it is being adopted), or at home.

November 12: Tim Hecker
Canadian electronic musician Tim Hecker returns to forge a new performance of sound and light. Hecker was last in residence at EMPAC in 2012, during which time he recorded a portion of his critically acclaimed album Virgins.

November 13: THINGING: Dance and Translation and the Work of Anne Carson
Through the articulation of his body, choreographer/dancer Silas Riener explores the potential of dance in describing "things." Based on word histories, personal histories, and translational acts in poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson's Variations on the Right to Remain Silent, The Autobiography of Red, and the Gender of Sound, Riener resists the linguistic impetus to name in the effort to describe. Driven by both the promise and inherent futility of choreographic description, he performs this resistance as a translational act that challenges us to combine memories with meaning while circumnavigating language and the weight of words. Invited to speak in-conversation with Riener, Anne Carson will provide linguistic subject, foil, and counterpoint.

November 18: On Screen/Sound: No. 7
Footsteps, the screech of car tires, a gunshot--these events, devoid of their identifiable sounds, would render their image nearly powerless. It is the unity of these elements that binds them together and gives them visceral effect. The seventh screening in the On Screen/Sound series examines the influence of Foley and sound effects on moving image.

December 2: On Screen/Sound: No. 8
Introduced by London-based artist Cally Spooner, the final fall event for the On Screen/Sound series presents an evening exploring the specificities of transforming the musical from theater to screen.

December 3: Mary Halvorson + Colin Marston
In a performance that juxtaposes jazz with extreme metal, guitarist Mary Halvorson and bassist Colin Marston will play solo sets hailing from opposite sides of the musical spectrum.

December 11: Holly Herndon
Holly Herndon's musical range and depth has positioned her as a definitive figure in contemporary sound, forging ties between avant-garde composition, protest music, and electronic dance pop.