New Focus on Experimental Arts

From Rensselaer Magazine: June 2002

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. He will begin his appointment July 1.

"Johannes Goebel's impressive resume mirrors exactly what we are looking for in an artistic director," says 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."

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.

At Rensselaer, Goebel will conceive, implement, and manage the artistic programming for the new 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 arts center's design.

Construction on the 160,000-square-foot experimental media and performing arts center is expected to begin in 2003.