News
This Fall, the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York presents a full schedule of performances, screenings, installations, festivals, and talks in which funk meets Futurism, vacation days are documented and dissected, hip hop hits the theater stage and Andy Warhol’s film Sleep becomes the backdrop for a slumber party.

Following the resounding success of our first year in the new building, the upcoming events build off that momentum while continuing to push people’s expectations. Whether there is an event happening or not, EMPAC is the place to be. With ongoing public installations and exhibits set up on the mezzanine, within the 360-degree screen and hidden off the beaten path, you will be able to discover new works created here by artists in residence.

It all starts off with Contact Ensemble’s Elevated on Thursday September 3, an evening of music by composer David Lang, accompanying (or accompanied by) a film by a major visual artist. Next up is the Japanese noise / percussive psychedelic group Boredoms with Atlanta’s ambient punk band Deerhunter on Friday September 11. The latter is the premiere of the New Nothing series, which tackles the (age-old) complaint that there is nothing new happening in music, all while in a physically transformed concert hall.

EMPAC will also continue to support the creative and intellectual work of the Rensselaer community with performances, lectures and research projects.

To stay on top of everything that EMPAC is up to this Fall, point your browser to our website (updated frequently) at http://www.empac.rpi.edu/.

Fall 2009 EMPAC events

Contact Ensemble, Elevated
Thursday September 3, 8 PM
7 PM Pre-concert talk
Composer and Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang presents four genre-defying new musical works in conjunction with films by visual artists Guy Maddin, William Wegman, Bill Morrison, Matt Mullican and Doug Aitken.

Boredoms: BOADRUM 9 with Deerhunter
New Nothing series
Friday September 11, 8 PM
Two bands, nine (make that ten) drummers, and an evening of noise/music that’s experienced not just with the ear but the entire body.

Jean Painlevé, The Sounds of Science
Unfiction series
Thursday September 17, 7:30 PM
The eight mesmerizing short films of Jean Painlevé in The Sounds of Science screening are at once a mix of surrealist-influenced shorts and serious science documentaries accompanied by a hypnotic and dreamy score by rock band Yo La Tengo.

Slow Wave: Seeing Sleep
Friday September 25 – Sunday September 27
Friday September 25 from 5 to 7 PM: Opening reception (as part of Troy Night Out)
A three-day festival of exhibitions, screenings, performances, and talks devoted to the methods for giving form to the elusive, and at times, ineffable enigma of sleep.

Mads Lynnerup, Take a Day for Yourself!
Thursday October 1 – Sunday November 29
Open Monday – Saturday from 12 PM to 6 PM
Thursday October 1 from 5 to 7 PM: Opening reception and talk
Friday October 30 from 5 to 7 PM: reception with artist (as part of Troy Night Out)
The genre-crossing Danish artist mounts a whimsical yet searching investigation of the everyday, incorporating video, posters, and ordinary people from the Troy and Rensselaer communities.

DANCE MOViES Commission 2007-2008
Saturday October 3, 7 PM
Body Traces installation on level 4
Four dance films commissioned by EMPAC and premiered at EMPAC's opening festival. Fusing dance with the moving image, these works span a wide geographic, visual and emotional range.

Per Tengstrand
Saturday October 3, 8:30 PM
Friday October 2 at 7 PM: Talk by Per Tengstrand
The acclaimed Swedish pianist who electrified audiences at EMPAC’s opening returns with a recital and talk on Beethoven as a technological innovator.

Susanna Helke, White Sky
Unfiction series
Thursday October 8, 7:30 PM
White Sky is a documentary film about the human ability to adapt to destruction and continue with everyday life in an ecologically devastated environment.

Daniel Teige & Volkmar Klien, Multichannel Residencies
Friday October 16 & Saturday October 17 at 8 PM
October 16 & 17, 7 PM: Talk/demo with the artists
Two composer/sound artists create thrillingly complex new works for a 360° aural environment.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph, The Break/s: a mixtape for the stage
Friday October 23 & Saturday October 24, 8 PM
The poet and hip-hop theater sensation Marc Bamuthi Joseph brings together movement, music, and personal storytelling in a multimedia travelogue of Planet Hip-Hop.

Workspace Unlimited, They Watch
Friday October 30 – Saturday November 21
Open Monday – Saturday from 12 PM to 6 PM
Friday October 30 from 5 to 7 PM: Opening reception with artists (as part of Troy Night Out)
Wednesday November 18, 7 PM, EMPAC will host a lecture by experts in panoramic art, including Bernd Lintermann, Director of Germany’s Institute of Visual Media ZKM.
An installation that immerses the viewer in an ambiguous liminal space where the virtual merges with real and the observer becomes the observed.

TBA + Zs
New Nothing series
Friday October 30, 8 PM

Marc Downie, FIELD talk and weekend-long workshop
Friday November 6 – Sunday November 8
Admission to Talk is free; admission to workshop is $55 (Rensselaer student) / $110 (everyone else)
Friday November 6 at 7 PM: Talk
Saturday November 7 & Sunday November 8: Workshop (by reservation – space is limited)
Marc Downie, the creator of the powerful digital art programming environment FIELD, gives a talk on the software and leads a two-day workshop in its manifold uses.

DANCE MOViES Commission 2008-2009 Premiere
Saturday November 7, 7:30 PM
Body Traces installation on level 4 (admission is free)
Associated events: Talk / Q&A with artists following screening
The official premiere of four new works created through this year’s DANCE MOViES Commission, the EMPAC program that brings together moving bodies and the moving image.

Skeleton$ & Luciano Chessa
New Nothing series
Friday November 13, 8 PM
Funk meets Futurism in this paradoxical pairing of artists from far ends of the musical spectrum.

Garth Knox
Saturday November 14, 8 PM
Pre-concert Talk at 7 PM with composer James Dillon and violist/composer Garth Knox
A world master of the viola plays an evening of music – some very old, some very new – written expressly for his instrument and its baroque-era cousin, the viola d’amore.

Astra Taylor, Examined Life
Unfiction series
Thursday November 19, 7:30 PM
In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas.

Chunky Move, Glow
Thursday December 3 & Friday December 4, 7 & 9 PM
Artist Talk after the 7 PM performances
Wednesday December 2, 7 PM: Talk by Frieder Weiss
In Glow, by Australian company Chunky Move, a solo dancer both sensual and grotesque thrashes through a constantly shifting habitat of light.

Werner Herzog, Encounters at the End of the World
Unfiction series
Thursday December 10, 7:30 PM
Werner Herzog's filmic portrait of Antarctica and the small community of scientists who have gravitated to its surreal landscape.

* Any and all event information is subject to change and/or cancellation - please watch our website for updates.
* All events on this list are open to the public.
* Tickets are $15 / $10 / $5 (unless otherwise noted):
$15: general admission
$10: Rensselaer faculty and staff, seniors, and students (with ID)
$5: Rensselaer students (with ID)
* The Unfiction series and DANCE MOViES screenings are $5.
* Lectures, openings, receptions and installations are free.

EMPAC on Facebook + Twitter
You've already attended an event at EMPAC. Great! Can't wait to see you again. And you've read about EMPAC's residencies and commissioning programs. We hope you're as excited about them as we are!

Now, you're looking for more ways to be part of the EMPAC community. You've got it: Keep up on EMPAC events, information and conversation by joining the EMPAC Facebook group and by following us on Twitter. On Facebook, you'll find member-posted photos and videos, and be able to join in the discussion of all things EMPAC. On Twitter, you'll get our lastest last minute event info reminders, and maybe even a few surprises! Stop by soon.

Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Troy-NY/Experimental-Media-and-Performing-Arts-Center-EMPAC/65599049452

Twitter
http://www.twitter.com/EMPACNews

EMPAC - The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute in Troy, NY- announces the 2009-2010 guidelines for the DANCE MOViES Commission.
This is an open call for artists, choreographers, dancers, and filmmakers, based in the Americas,
working in the genre of dance for the screen. The deadline for the proposals is May 1, 2009.

The EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission will support the creation of experimental works for the
screen which may vary widely in content and form, yet are united by the fact that the image on
the screen was crafted by, or in collaboration with, a choreographer or movement-based artist. Up
to 3 commissions will be awarded in the range of $7,000 - $40,000.

This year, with the opening of the EMPAC building in the fall of 2008, artists may apply to create
their DANCE MOViES works in conjunction with the Artist-in-Residence program. Works
commissioned may take advantage of EMPACʼs spaces and technology, using infrastructure such
as computer-controlled rigging or large-scale immersive studio environments.

Backed by the Jaffe Fund for Experimental Media and Performing Arts, the DANCE MOViES
Commission supports works for the screen including film, video, installation and other audiovisual
formats. The works may be narrative in nature or abstract; they may range in length (up to
20 minutes); they will certainly vary in style, technique and expressive intent.

In 2007, its inaugural year, EMPACʼs DANCE MOViES Commission received more than 150
applications from dance-filmmakers in North and South America. As the first major US-based
commissioning program available to dance-film artists in the Americas, the DANCE MOViES
Commission represents an important opportunity for those working at the intersection of the
moving body and the moving image.

The four commissioned projects in 2007 included a poetic film based on the autobiographical
account of an US-based African choreographer returning to dance in Zimbabwe; a work featuring
American veterans of the war in Iraq; an Argentinean video interlacing pure movement, form and
architecture; and a piece in which a contemporary Russian dancer is viewed in the aesthetic
context of post-Soviet surveillance.

Four further works are in production now from the 2008-2009 cycle. They include an installation
created through 3D laser scanning; a finger puppet musical; a dance film created in one long take
by music video collaborators; and the third in a mind-bending trilogy experimenting with reversing
movement that is already danced in reverse.

The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), founded by Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, is dedicated to work which explores the integration of technology, media and
the performing arts. Through the DANCE MOViES Commission, EMPAC aims to support and
encourage the development of the genre of dance film and video in the Americas.

More information, guidelines and application instructions at www.empac.rpi.edu.

Guidelines and info available for download in Spanish too!
The application deadline is MAY 1, 2009
Contact: Emily Berçir Zimmerman, EMPAC Curatorial Assistant, at 518.276.4547 or
dancemovies@rpi.edu.

Though online registration for tonight’s 9 PM performance of Robert Normandeau’s "Cinema for the Ear" is now closed, there are tickets still available at the door.

Normandeau—one of the most celebrated “acousmatic” composers today—will perform works rarely heard in the United States, using an orchestra of more than 40 loudspeakers hung from the ceiling and surrounding the audience. Come experience this first use of the EMPAC Concert Hall’s ideal design for multichannel electronic music!

For more information about Robert Normandeau, visit:

http://www.empac.rpi.edu/events/opening/symposium/normandeau.html

2008.10.09: New York Times — A New Concert Hall Plays Up the Sound and Celebrates the Science

2008.10.04: The Saratogian — RPI unveils new facility for the performing arts

2008.10.02: Associated Press (Washington Post) — NY university unveils new media and arts center

2008.10.01: Troy Record — EMPAC is the future of art exhibition

2008.10.01: New Music Box — At the Intersection of Art and Science

2008.10.01: Albany Times Union — Arts and science meet at EMPAC

2008.09.28: Broadcast Engineering — Lawo gear powers Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute new media center

2008.09.28: Albany Times Union — EMPAC promises experimentation and performance

2008.09.24: Albany Times Union — Daring project reaches a crescendo

2008.09.23: New York Times — Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof

2008.09.22: World Architecture News — EMPAC's new art headquarters complete

2008.09: Rensselaer Alumni Magazine — Bold Experiment

This one is from Folsom Library which is facing SW.

http://empac.rpi.edu/building/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/science/23troy.html?ref=science&pagewanted=all

Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof

"Just as such tools of science make possible new kinds of art, Dr. Jackson said, she hoped this new center of art would lead to new science. “It’s exciting,” Dr. Jackson said. “The real message is we don’t know all that’s going to come out of this, but we know it’s going to be important.”"

DENNIS OVERBYE, NYTimes

Celebrate the Grand Opening of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) with three weekends of world-class artistic performances and workshops, premieres of commissioned artworks, eye-opening exhibitions of research at the frontiers of science, and social events ranging from black-tie elegant to come-as-you-are eclectic.

For an up-to-date list of performances and more information please visit:
» http://www.empac.rpi.edu/

EMPAC – the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - announces the four recipients of the 2008 EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission. Chosen from a short list of 28 projects by an international panel of dance-film practitioners, curators and producers, the projects range in format, style and emotional tone: from single-channel video installation to 16mm film, from the spectacular to the surreal.

The projects will receive awards ranging from $7,000 to $40,000 and will be premiered in the fall of 2009 at EMPAC.

» Full Press Release

LIZ AGGISS + BILLY COWIE (UK)
April 15 – 19, 2008

Men in the Wall and In the Flesh (3D video installations) :: Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie
Tuesday, April 15 - Saturday, April 19, 2008
Greene Gallery, Rensselaer campus

Gallery hours:
Thursday, 12 - 8 pm
Friday, 12 - 8 pm
Saturday, 12 - 8 pm

All events free and open to the public!

I hope that each of you will engage with EMPAC programs and explore what meaning EMPAC has for you. I guarantee that it will be challenging. I guarantee that it will be new. I guarantee that it will transform how we regard science, technology, and the arts, and their nexus — how we interact with the future, how we see ourselves as human beings.

— Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, President, Rensselaer.

The three opening weekends highlight, in turn, arts, science and technology, and campus community — and the impact of EMPAC upon them — with elements of each threaded throughout.

The Arts

The first weekend, October 3-5 will celebrate the expressive range that can be accommodated by EMPAC : from classical music presented in an environment of unprecedented acoustical purity, to interactive multimedia works that test the boundaries of performer and audience, to research exhibitions.

Research, Science, and Technology

The second weekend, October 9-12 we will host a symposium featuring eminent researchers from the science and engineering communities in a discussion about where those fields may intersect and connect with us, and the extent to which they will drive, challenge, augment, and inform each other.

Campus Community

The third weekend, October 16-19, will feature artistic performances ranging in media and style, and chosen in collaboration with Student Life, with the intent of reflecting the interests of the Rensselaer student body. It, also, is Rensselaer’s Family Weekend.

Throughout the opening, exhibits detailing our architectural and artistic history, as well as its future potential as a research platform, will be on display.

For a towering, incandescent presence and for raising the bar to celestial heights in her full-tilt performances; for her deep, unwavering commitment to the meaning and the soul of the choreography in Urban Bush Women's season at The Joyce Theater.

Nora Chipaumire Nora Chipaumire was born in Mutare, Zimbabwe during the Chimurenga Chechipiri, or second war of liberation. A self-exiled artist now based in New York, she investigates the collaborative process within cultural, political, economic, and technological identities of African contemporary life. Nora Chipaumire is a Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) 2007-08 Choreographic Fellow. She is a recipient of National Dance Project (NDP) Tour Support in 2007-08. She also received a Jerome Travel and Study Grant to participate in the JANT-BI Diaspora Project in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal in May and August 2007. Nora was honored with the Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award from Wesleyan University Center for the Arts on March 10, 2007. She is featured in the documentary Movement (R)evolution and is the subject of the documentary-in-progress, Nora Chipaumire: A Physical Biography, directed by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, supported by a 2007 EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission.

LIZ AGGISS + BILLY COWIE (UK)
April 15 – 19, 2008

Hi Jinx (performance lecture) :: Liz Aggiss
Tues, April 15, 8PM in Academy Hall, Rensselaer campus, Troy, NY

Men in the Wall and In the Flesh (3D video installations) ::
Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie
Tues-Sat, April 15-19, noon-8PM in the Greene Gallery, Rensselaer campus

All events free and open to the public!

--

They are near-mythic figures. Even to those with only fleeting interest in the arts or the history of modern dance their names resound: Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp . . . Heidi Dzinkowska.

Well, maybe not Heidi Dzinkowska.

So, why has British artist Liz Aggiss chosen to enact, in her performance-lecture Hi Jinx, this unknown yet “seminal early twentieth century dancer, choreographer and filmmaker”? Why dedicate herself to such thorough presentation of Dzinkowska’s legacy via archival film, dance reconstructions and demonstrations of Dzinkowska’s “highly influential”--we’re assured--Dance Commandments?

The answer may be found in the curious Commandments themselves. “Commandment Number One: Thou shalt not improvise; keep your improvising for the bathroom!”

Or in the choreographer’s idiosyncratic performances, as recreated by Aggiss: One piece lasts just so long as it takes the dancer to crack every knuckle—indeed, seemingly, every joint—in her body. During another, Aggiss entices the audience: “If I were you, I’d just let my eyes wander up and down my body; because I’m about to perform a rather graceful and sinuous turn.”

The turn is accomplished—after much fussing with a handful of uncooperative frock—with slightly more grace than a fall down a steep staircase.

Aggis has been called the Vivienne Westwood of the dance film world: “anarchic, strawberry blonde, fearless and satirical,” and Hi Jinx displays a warm rebellious wit while asking the audience to think sideways about its desire to create historical icons from the past.

Following the performance, the public is invited to the opening reception for two video-installation projects by Aggiss and collaborator Billy Cowie, which will be showing all week.

Men in the Wall is a 3D video installation depicting four life-sized men in a sequence of poems, jokes, songs, flamenco—and naps. In the Flesh has been called a “magical experience.” How else to describe a performance by a dancer who appears solid and present, but is in fact a projection? 3D glasses create the illusion that she dances before the viewer “in the flesh.”

Parking for Hi Jinx is available in the lot adjacent to the venue, with entrance on College Avenue.

Parking for the Greene Gallery is available on street, in metered parking spots, and in the Visitors Lot behind the Public Safety offices with access directly across the street from the Playhouse on 15th street.

All events free and open to the public!

Additional information: www.empac.rpi.edu

DEADLINE : MARCH 01, 2008

Online registration now available.

OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission supports the creation of new works in the field of experimental dance for the screen made by, or in collaboration with, a choreographer or movement artist based in the Americas.

Up to 3 commissions will be awarded in the range of $7,000 - $50,000. Artists may apply to create works in conjunction with the Artist-in-Residence program, taking advantage of EMPAC’s spaces, technology, infrastructure such as computer-controlled rigging or large-scale immersive studio environments.  

-- guidelines, application and info: empac.rpi.edu/commissions/DMC 
-- questions: dancemovies@rpi.edu or 1.518.276.3918
-- deadline: 3/01/08

Backed by the Jaffe Fund for Experimental Media and Performing Arts, the DANCE MOViES Commission supports experimental works for the screen including film, video, installation and other audio-visual formats.

The DANCE MOViES Commission 2008 PANEL:

-- Leonel Brum (Brazil)
-- Lynette Kessler (USA)
-- Christina Molander (Sweden)
-- Laura Taler (Canada)

Please visit the DANCE MOViES Commission website for full bios of the panelists.

About EMPAC
EMPAC – the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center – is a place and a program where the arts challenge and alter our technology and technology challenges and alters the arts. Founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, EMPAC is an arts institution that draws strength from being part of a great research university. It operates nationally and internationally: attracting innovative artists, both renowned and emerging, from around the world; offering artists, researchers, and audiences opportunities that are available nowhere else under a single roof; providing unsurpassed facilities for creative exploration, and for research in fields such as visualization and movement capture; sending new artworks onto the global stage.
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www.empac.rpi.edu

SLAVOJ ZIZEK: Pervert's Guide to Cinema
Tuesday, January 29 8pm
Heffner Alumni House

LONE TWIN: Nine Years
Wednesday + Thursday, Feb 13 – 14 8pm
Rensselaer Playhouse

JOHNATHAN BERGER: Data Speaks, Are you listening?
Thursday, March 6 4:30pm
Biotechnology Auditorium

LIZ AGGISS: Hi-Jinx
Tuesday, April 15 8pm
Academy Hall

AGGISS & BILLIE COWIE: Men In the Wall
Tuesday, April 15 4 – 10pm
Wednesday, April 16 12 – 5:30pm
Thursday – Friday, April 17–18 12 – 10pm
Saturday, April 19 2 – 10pm
Greene Gallery, Rensselaer Campus

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A TINY BELL
Friday April 25 8pm
Location to be announced

http://www.empac.rpi.edu/news/2007/2007_1110.html

http://www.empac.rpi.edu/commissions/DMC/workshop/

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November: DANCE MOViES Commission WORKSHOPS
led by EMPAC's Dance Curator Hélène Lesterlin

Free and open to artists interested in applying to the commission. No need to register, just come!

Topics covered: How to apply, what makes a strong proposal, information on the facilities of EMPAC, issues related to installation-based works, examples shown, followed by a Q&A and discussion.

BUENOS AIRES Thursday, November 8th, 2:30 - 4:30 pm
Videodanza Festival International de Buenos Aires

LOS ANGELES Wednesday, November 28th, 7:00 - 9:00 pm
18th Street Arts Center
1639 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404
In the main gallery space.
http://www.18thstreet.org/

NEW YORK CITY Monday, December 3rd, 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011
Take the elevator to the third floor.
http://www.dtw.org/

FREE and open to the public.

DATE: Saturday, November 17, 2007
TIME: 8:00 PM
LOCATION: Academy Hall, Rensselaer Campus

The artist duos hail from San Francisco, Mexico City, and New York and include Sue Costabile + Laetitia Sonami, Luke Dubois + Manrico Montero, and Benton Bainbridge + Bobby Previte.

In the 1970’s, in tandem with pioneering organizations like the Experimental Television Center in New York, artists began developing electronics for their live and installation-based video art. In this tradition, the artists in Custom Control all have personally crafted some aspect of their hardware or software for their performance tools.

FREE and open to the public.

DATE: Friday, October 26, 2007
TIME: 8:00 PM
LOCATION: Heffner Alumni House, Rensselaer Campus

EMPAC (the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) is now accepting proposals for its 2008 commissions. The deadline for the proposals is February 15, 2008.