Constantly evolving scenography, kaleidoscopic lighting, jittery electronic sounds, and evocative video projections underscore Ontopoiesis, an EMPAC-commissioned work of experimental music theater. Composer Rama Gottfried, with production designer Anna Paniccia and the experimental music piano and percussion quartet Yarn/Wire, explore new and diverse forms within the intersections of music, experimental theater, and sculpture.

What connects us to our world and shapes our experience of it? How does the world we sense and feel change and grow with us? And how do we in turn shape the world?

The sounds of Ontopoiesis’s whimsical world are multifarious: bowed piano strings form clouds of fuzzy distortion; hyper-detailed, granularly-synthesized caterpillar feet; digital lightning storms and open-air ambisonic field recordings. Through a sonically and visually rich palette of musical characters and landscapes, Ontopoiesis seeks to express life as a self-organizing, self-creating phenomenon–one that ties us deeply to our surroundings, forming unique, subjective experiences. Digital and analog synthesizers mix with Yarn/Wire’s virtuosic acoustic and amplified sounds to create blooming percussion textures and complex, interweaving rhythmic patterns. Micro and macro sounds combine to form a vibrant, emergent theatrical ecosystem of sound.

In choreographer and theater director Jack Ferver’s My Town, the small town is a portal that provides special access into questions of self-expression and collective agency. Set loosely in an area of upstate New York, My Town considers the queer experience outside urban metropoles, and the ways physical geography marks the interior terrains of the mind.

Ferver has described the project as “exploring the disappearance of the femme,” taking a queer departure from the classic American play Our Town by Thornton Wilder in which the female protagonist Emily passes away. My Town is closely informed by the experience of building an art practice in the dense and intense environment of New York City, and the piece deals also with Ferver’s experience growing up in a small town in Wisconsin, and experiencing early familial tragedy.

Moving through tragicomic moments of violence, sexuality, and loss, Ferver balances the work with a playfulness and self-awareness that lifts the work into a surreal register. The fluidity of the work is echoed in the video by acclaimed filmmaker and artist Jeremy Jacob that frames the work and interacts with Ferver’s performance, enabling one scene to melt into another as if in a dream.

Ferver shifts through choreography and theatrical sketches throughout the work. As with many of Ferver’s past projects, My Town focuses heavily on constructing a persona, and also plays at the edge of the fictive and the real.

Choreographer Leslie Cuyjet is in residence in the EMPAC Theater venue to refine theatrical elements for her solo performance, With Marion, originally commissioned by The Kitchen (NYC) for an open-plan loft space.

Experimental musicians and turntablists Victoria Shen and Mariam Rezaei are in residence in Studio 1—Goodman to rehearse and record new music developed over the last year, to debut in their April 2025 performance.

In the EMPAC Concert Hall, renowned violinist and violist Marco Fusi records viola excerpts and pieces by composers Timothy McCormack, Pierluigi Billone, and others, to be published in a volume of contemporary viola and viola d'amore playing from Bärenreiter Verlag.

Claudia Pagès is in residence in Studio 1—Goodman.

P. Staff’s residency in Studio 1—Goodman asks how we record the excesses of a body. Working with a thermal camera, Lidar, and audio recording designed to capture the body’s sonic impact on a space’s acoustics, Staff generates video documentation organized on principles of scanning.

Being & Becoming, a quartet of creative improvisors featuring Peter Evans on trumpet, vibraphonist and synth player Joel Ross, bassist and bass synth player Nick Joz, and drummer Michael Shekwoaga Ode, are in residence in EMPAC Studio 2 writing and recording new music.

Korakrit Arunanondchai, along with Alex Gvojic and Aaron David Ross, is in residence in Studio 1—Goodman to develop a live work of immersive cinema. The project involves the use of atmospherics, projection, and new footage and recordings from an in-progress film Arunanondchai has been developing around a decaying cinema in Thailand.