In dance, gravity is often associated with ascension and descension. Taiwanese choreographer and new-media artist Su Wen-Chi is collaborating with physicist Diego Blas to more accurately embody the principle of gravity in dance.

Su Wen-Chi is well versed at working with interactive media in live performance. Her large-scale solo WAVE (2011/2014), for example, included an 81-channel audio installation of individually motorized LED light boxes that were choreographed in concert with the dancer’s movements. Su is founder of YiLab, which is a group of artists integrating technology with the performing arts to expand their palette of performance.

She is in residence at EMPAC during the prototyping stages of the new work. The artist and three collaborators will explore how live interaction between a dancer, EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis Array, and light might open possibilities for illustrating the effects of gravity as floating and suspension in outer space. Along with her team from Taiwan, Su will work in the studio with local Hudson, NY–based choreographer Adam Weinert and will then present a work-in-progress event at the end of her residency. 

Work-in-progress events offer a window into the research, development, and production of new works by artists in residence at EMPAC. These free events open up a dialogue between our audiences, artists, and EMPAC staff.

This residency has been postponed to follow University policies that have been put in place in light of new developments related to the coronavirus.

EMPAC will host a retreat for the four pairs of artists and writers awarded the UNDO FELLOWSHIP, an initiative by UnionDocs: A Center for Documentary Art to expand radical filmmaking practices and research new languages of documentary cinema. The fellowship recipients include scholar Erika Balsom with filmmaker Eric Baudelaire, essayist and artist Steve Reinke with collaborative artists Dani and Sheilah ReStack, film scholar and programmer Nzingha Kendall with filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, and writer and editor Matthew Shen Goodman with filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins.

Amanda Turner Pohan is in residence at EMPAC with performer Katy Pinke to film Alexa Echoes. 

Alexa Echoes is a film in the mode of a chamber opera by visual artist Amanda Turner Pohan in collaboration with composer Charlie Looker and choreographer Dages Juvelier Keates. The first iteration in a series of three, Alexa Echoes recasts the relationship between cultural movements and commercial technologies through the history of women’s devocalization and disembodiment. It begins with mythical Greek figures, such as Echo, and leads up to Amazon’s smart speaker and digital voice-based assistant for Alexa, also named Echo. Produced after travel restrictions and social distancing measures were implemented at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film combines footage shot in the newly empty spaces of EMPAC with recordings from the collaborators’ homes and remote studios.

In this film, EMPAC is concurrently the site of production, setting, and subject that surrounds three manifestations of the voice: candid, staged, and disembodied. As in much of Pohan’s interdisciplinary oeuvre, the film looks at the body’s complicated relationship to technology as it relates to autonomy, animation, and the melismatic sound of breath. Using choreographed movement, spoken word, and song set to an orchestral score, Alexa Echoes abstracts the gendered decisions that go into framing new media technologies, gesturing to the corporate entities which choreographed them.

This residency is organized by Muheb Esmat, Marisa Espe, Bergen Hendrickson, Ciena Leshley, Ana Lopes, Liz Lorenz, Brooke Nicolas, Elizaveta Shneyderman, and Rachel Vera Steinberg from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies class of 2020, working with EMPAC curator Vic Brooks.

In light of COVID-19, Heartbeat Opera took its LADY M rehearsals and performances online. Rather than cancel its production, the company launched a 10-day remote residency (April 20–May 1) with their artists rehearsing at home, followed by a series of intimate Virtual Soirées through Zoom video conferencing from May 11–20. The full production arrives in Spring 2021.

This New York opera company was scheduled to come to EMPAC at the end of our spring season to develop a new reordered and reorchestrated version of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth, here renamed Lady M. The company was to use their time at EMPAC to collaborate with sound artist and RPI alumna Senem Pirler, creating the supernatural sound of the witches—manipulating their voices through electronic processing. In light of COVID-19, this collaboration happened online.

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All current EMPAC residencies are being hosted remotely with support from EMPAC curatorial, administrative, and production staff and resources. While no artists are on site in Troy, our staff is continuing to collaborate with artists toward the development of new works.

Lesley Flanigan is in residence in Studio 2 to produce a new EMPAC-commissioned performance-installation that continues her exploration into the sculptural potential of sound.

Developing a performance for voice, speakers, electronic tone, and the resonance between, this residency follows from her visit in early 2020 in which she explored the acoustic environment of EMPAC’s concert hall with sine-wave oscillators that generate low-frequency tones, her signature speaker sculpture instruments, and pitches from her own voice. 

Continuing her work here at EMPAC with spatial audio and in particular, EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis Array, Nina C. Young will develop her acoustic brass quintet into a multimedia work for live musicians, spatial audio, and live video processing based on geometric forms and Renaissance music. The residency culminates in the premiere of the new evening-length work on March 19th in the Theater.

Mivos Quartet are in residence at EMPAC to record Steve Reich’s three string quartets Different Trains, Triple Quartet, and WTC 9/11.

As long-time collaborators with Reich, Mivos Quartet is the first group to record and release all three quartets on a single album. Each of his quartets has one or two layers of quartet parts that must be pre- recorded. Mivos is working closely with Reich to re-record all of the backing tracks as well as the live quartet parts for an album that can serve as the definitive recording of these works.

Proclaimed by many as America's greatest living composer, Steve Reich is a musical icon. His body of work has largely defined a genre of modern music, which in turn has become one of the defining schools of American musical style. Reich’s three string quartets are modern masterpieces in string writing, pioneering his technique of interweaving field recordings and speech patterns into the fabric of the acoustic and electronic elements of the compositions.

Abstract turntablist Maria Chávez comes to EMPAC for the first of several residencies to develop a newly commissioned work. Her interest in exploring extremely quiet sounds will be developed in EMPAC’s acoustically generous spaces.

The Unarrival Experiments – Unconcealment Ceremonies is a new live performance installation work by artist Ni’Ja Whitson that is designed to amplify the dark. In dialogue with Yorùbá Cosmology, Astrophysics, and research on the “blackest black,” the work centers the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy through a Black, Queer, and Transembodied lens. Dark matter and dark energy serve as portals to interrogating spaces of the unknown, yet that which have an unequivicated impact on the composition of the universe.

Spring 2023

Sage Ni’Ja Whitson is in residence at EMPAC for three weeks to work with architect Valery Augustin on designing a dome structure to aid in visualizing darkness while also allowing for the seamless integration of immersive VR, projection, and spatial audio.

Spring 2022

Artist Ni’Ja Whitson is at EMPAC to continue set, lighting, video, and Virtual Reality design for their upcoming EMPAC commission, The Unarrival Experiments — Unconcealment Ceremonies. Work includes developing a proof of concept for a performance dome.

Summer 2020

Whitson is in residence at EMPAC to design a performance dome that aids in visualizing darkness while also allowing for the seamless integration of immersive VR, projection, and spatial audio. The highly technical multimedia environment will cradle performers and audience members alike in embodied encounter, collectivity, invisibility, and cosmos.

Ellsworth and her technical collaborators will meet with EMPAC engineers to develop a new work. Ellsworth will present past works and share the process behind the new work in a work-in-progress event.