Johannes Goebel Named To Lead Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center

From Campus.News Rensselaer has chosen Johannes Goebel, a respected curator and renowned composer of electronic music, to lead the university's experimental media and performing arts center. "Johannes Goebel's impressive resume mirrors exactly what we are looking for in an artistic director," said President Shirley Ann Jackson. "He will bring scholarship and innovation to our program of experimental media and performing arts. With other faculty, he will create a center that is unprecedented as a site of new knowledge in disciplines that range from art and architecture to physics and information technology." Since 1990, Goebel has established the IMA [Germany's Institute for Music and Acoustics] as one of the foremost production and research sites around the world for combining experimental music with digital technology. Goebel is the founding director of Germany's Institute for Music and Acoustics (IMA) at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. A center for art and media, the ZKM is a forum for international exchange that combines art with research in science, art, politics, and finance. He will begin his new appointment July 1. As the artistic director for Rensselaer's experimental media and performing arts center, Goebel will conceive, implement, and manage the artistic programming for the arts facility. He will relate advanced technology to the arts, and work with Rensselaer's artists in electronic media and with faculty in traditional academic disciplines who are interested in research and scholarly collaborations with artists. Goebel also is expected to be influential in the latter stages of the performing art center's design. Since 1990, Goebel has established the IMA as one of the foremost production and research sites around the world for combining experimental music with digital technology. Goebel is well-known at Stanford University, where he was co-director of the university's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 1996. Goebel has taught and lectured at universities around the world on the aesthetic implications of computers in the music domain. Born in Wittorf, Germany, Goebel earned what is equivalent to a master's of arts degree at the Staaliche Hochschule für Music und Theater in Hannover. He and his wife, a former music teacher, have four children.