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As Ben Rubin works out concepts and algorithms for Shakespeare Machine, a permanent installation that will open at the Public Theater in New York in fall 2012, he will transform our public interior into a laboratory of words and motion, projecting glowing white text from Shakespeare’s complete dramatic works onto walls, walkways, and other surfaces.

Shakespeare’s plays are structured around the powerful forces of love, death, family, trust, jealousy, fate, and desire. But in the universe of Shakespearian physics, the subatomic forces that hold words together encompass puns, rhymes, alliteration, rhythms, and unexpected constructions. “These subtle forces of language are essential to the transcendent power of Shakespeare’s work,” says Rubin. I want to create a kind of supercollider for Shakespeare’s texts, where the particles to be accelerated and smashed together are scenes, lines, and phrases. Which words, when hurled toward each other, will cause a reaction? Which collisions will most likely provide traces of the incandescent energy, wit, and emotion that existed at the moment of these plays’ creation?”

Curator: Kathleen Forde

March 5-9 — Shakespeare Readings

Beginning Monday, March 5th and continuing through March 9th, we will celebrate the opening of A Shakespeare Accelerator with a week-long continuous reading (by groups of students from Rensselaer and the surrounding community) of Shakespeare’s 67 plays, used in the installation. FREE coffee, tea and hot chocolate will be served. The readings will take place from 2-5PM in the Context Space and are FREE.

April 9 — Typography Class Project Opening

Beginning Monday, April 9, EMAC Typography class projects, inspired by Ben Rubin’s installation, will be on view in the Context Space. FREE.

Bio:

Ben Rubin is a New York City-based media artist. He has worked closely with major figures in contemporary culture, including composer Steve Reich, architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Renzo Piano, performers Laurie Anderson and Arto Lindsay, theorists Bruno Latour and Paul Virilio, and artists Ann Hamilton and Beryl Korot. He frequently collaborates with UCLA statistician Mark Hansen, and their joint projects include Moveable Type (2007), and Listening Post (2002). Rubin has created large-scale public artworks for the New York Times, the city of San José, and the Minneapolis Public Library. In 2011, Rubin and Mark Hansen joined forces with the Elevator Repair Service theater ensemble to present Shuffle, a new performance and installation that re-mixes text from three American novels of the 1920s. He has taught at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, as well as the Bard MFA program and the Yale School of Art.