![a needle on a dubplate](/sites/default/files/styles/convert_to_webp/public/2024-07/rosenfeld_mu_2024.jpg.webp?itok=sQPE_HgG)
μ (mu)
In this performance and video installation, Marina Rosenfeld presents her commissioned work μ (mu). Titled after the mathematical term for friction or touch, and inspired by the artist’s longstanding interest in turntablism, the work takes place along the surface of a dubplate at the moment of inscription.
In μ (mu), Rosenfeld has figured the dubplate (a one-off, hand-cut record) as a distinct audiovisual landscape--here, it is a scene that stages sonic and visual events activated by friction. Rather than merely playing the digital audio embedded in the record, μ (mu) explores surface phenomena along the material of the dubplate itself, capturing footage and images at an incredibly small scale as it traces the path of a sculptural stylus designed by Rosenfeld.
μ (mu) engages both sound’s material conditions and, through the work’s focus on touch, its social aspects. Rosenfeld has also composed a score--in part from the video's own mise-en-scene--which integrates turntable sounds and recordings that play with noise, analog synth, and forms of abrasion.
This presentation of μ (mu) includes a piano performance with a Yamaha transacoustic piano, expanding the work's exploration of the entanglement of acoustic resonance with digital sound. A transducer piano resonates any sound sent through it, digital or acoustic.
The EMPAC installation also imagines μ (mu)’s acetate dubplates as a counterpart to traditional film (of which acetate is also an important component), proposing the project as a point where the materiality of image-making, sound, and touch collide.
Main Image: Marina Rosenfeld, μ (mu), film still, 2024. Courtesy the artist.
Dates + Tickets
EMPAC Fall 2024
Season
US Premiere
µ (mu) is commissioned by EMPAC—Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Gwangju Biennale. Marina Rosenfeld is a Yamaha artist; Yamaha TransAcoustic U1TA upright piano provided by Yamaha Artist Services, New York.
EMPAC 2024 FALL is made possible by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. EMPAC’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.