PULSE Live! takes over EMPAC for its annual evening of electronic dance music. Experience the best student DJs, VJs, producers, and designers performing live with all the technological power of EMPAC at their disposal. PULSE (People Using Live Software and Electronics) is a Rensselaer student group that meets weekly at EMPAC to learn, practice, and experiment with digital sound technology. Participation is open to all Rensselaer students. PULSE Live! marks the culmination of a year’s worth of work.

This screening presented two cycles of short films that explore techniques of image-making from the 20th century to the present day. Produced a decade apart by the late filmmaker Harun Farocki, Eye Machine I-III (2001-2003) and Parallel I-IV (2012-2014) chart the development of imaging technologies from simulation techniques to CGI and computer vision. Through a close reading of archival, military, televisual, cinematic, and industrial images, Farocki uncovers the processes and means of production to test the underlying socio-economic and political conditions of their development.

Eye/Machine I-III Harun Farocki’s three-part series made between 2001-2003 utilizes a vast collection of image sequences from laboratories, archives, and production facilities to explore modern weapons technology. This trilogy examines “intelligent” image-processing techniques such as electronic surveillance, mapping, and object recognition, in order to take a closer look at the relationship between man, machine, and modern warfare.

Parallel I-IV A four-part cycle of essay-films made between 2012–2014, Parallel I–IV delves into the techniques and technologies involved in the making of contemporary moving images. Charting the development of computer animation through video games, industrial cinema, and military imaging, Farocki discards the cinematic notion of the “real” to uncover the unseen labor invisibly rendered into these on-screen digital worlds. 

German filmmaker Harun Farocki (1944–2014) made close to 120 films, including feature films, essay films, and documentaries. He worked in collaboration with other filmmakers as a scriptwriter, actor, and producer. 

Sound artist Sabisha Friedberg’s work explores perceptual thresholds, focused sub-sonic compositions, and low-frequency levitation. It pulls together concepts from the perceptual, phenomenological, and phantasmagorical to create thought-provoking, mystifying pieces. During her residency, Friedberg offered a talk and a work-in-progress installation/performance.

For Chasing the Phantasmagorical: Challenges and Process, Friedberg discussed her past practice as well as the elements investigated during her time at EMPAC.

Continuing her explorations into sound and frequency, the performance Strange Cloak–Sub-Flight Infinity investigated the relationship of levitation, suspension, and low-end thresholds through metaphor, pseudo-science, and real physics. The piece was built around bass-frequency sonic levitation with objects made to float and flutter as a ghostly effect of the sound waves themselves. 

Born in South Africa and currently based out of Brooklyn and Paris, Friedberg has performed and presented installations widely in Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan, and Northern America.

Commissioned and partially developed through the EMPAC artist-in-residency program, Extra Shapes is a performance for lunging figures, a musical concert for loudspeakers, and a light show. Created by DD Dorvillier, in collaboration with composer Sébastien Roux and lighting designer Thomas Dunn, Extra Shapes occupies a rectangular space divided into three horizontal bands, featuring sound in the front, light in the middle, and dance in the back. Picture a slice of Neapolitan ice cream with its three separate bands—strawberry (sound), vanilla (light), chocolate (movement)—then rotate the plate to view each of its sides. In Extra Shapes, the idea is to present the three mediums simultaneously but separately, and to propose a new way of experiencing and thinking about abstraction in a live situation. 

Choreographer and performer DD Dorvillier has been developing her work and practice in New York City since 1989. In 2010, she moved to France and has continued to elaborate her work internationally. Through her original works, Dorvillier has always challenged pre-established definitions, including her own, of dance and choreography. By building works through physical, conceptual, and philosophical approaches, Dorvillier addresses issues of spectatorship, translation, and meaningfulness, in a playful yet urgent manner.

Composer Sébastien Roux writes electronic music, and presents it in diverse formats, from CD’s and records, to public listening sessions, sound installations, sound walks, and radio pieces. In 2011 he began to develop an approach focused on principles of translation, analyzing the structures of preexisting art works (visual, musical, literary) and transposing them into scores for new works (radiophonic or electroacoustic taped music).

Lighting designer Thomas Dunn has collaborated with DD Dorvillier/human future dance corps, lighting all the company projects since 2004. In 2007 he received a Bessie for his lighting design of Nottthing Is Importanttt at The Kitchen in New York. Other credits include works with TheaterWorks Singapore, The Civilians, Trajal Harrel, and Sens Productions. Thomas is also a recipient of a 2009 Kevin Kline Award for Outstanding Lighting Design.

Speicher, an evening-length concert work by German composer Enno Poppe, is a project that was in development since 2008. Premiered at the Donaueschingen Festival in 2013 to widespread acclaim, Speicher pushes its 22 players to their interpretative and technical extremes. Complex rhythms, microtonal intonation, and nuanced textures combine to create a rich and detailed work of ambitious scale and scope. Poppe says the following about the piece:

“Musical phenomena are never abstract. The idea behind Speicher is the search for extremes—extreme condensation, thinning, acceleration, broadening. For the piece to be able to continue and remain interesting, it is important—besides diversity—for the audience to be able to recognize certain parts. Anything can be recognizable—a single sound as well as a complete formal structure. Therefore it seems less important to keep inserting new ideas into the piece but rather to create an unpredictable network of derivations. The next step would be to be able to foresee what will happen next. Thus, an active way of listening would be created. But, in a reservoir [‘speicher’], things always get into a mess anyway.”

Enno Poppe’s music, which he summarizes as “dented nature,” grounds itself in compositional guidelines influenced by acoustics, biology, and mathematics. As his composition unfolds, he gradually disobeys his own rules, contorting material to create an unstable, constantly evolving, almost hallucinatory atmosphere of unexpected sounds.

A US premiere, Speicher was presented in the Concert Hall, featuring the US-based Talea Ensemble.

This series of talks focuses on materiality and time—how material and passing time can be seen as reciprocal conditions for each other’s qualities. It is inspired by the thoughts of French philosopher Henri Bergson:

“If I want to mix a glass of sugar and water, I must… wait until the sugar melts. This little fact is big with meaning. For here the time I have to wait is not the mathematical time, which would apply equally well to the entire history of the material world…. It coincides with my impatience, that is to say, with a certain portion of my own duration…. It is no longer something thought, it is something lived.”

Bergson’s text has punctuated philosophical discussions since it first appeared in 1908. The series will bring together material scientists, biochemists, architects, philosophers, curators, and media theorists to unravel the relationship of time and materiality within each discipline.

Theorist Giuliana Bruno spoke about how the physical appearance of surfaces holds deep meaning for us as they are part of cultural contexts established by architecture, visual art, cinema, and philosophy. Arguing against the prevailing association of surfaces with shallowness and superficiality, Bruno used examples such as faces and facades, as well as screen surfaces, to suggest that surfaces are carriers of information, history, and politics. Surfaces constitute a connective tissue, serving as meeting places, interfaces, sites of transformation, and intimacy. By their very nature, surfaces contain a depth of meaning. Giuliana Bruno, professor of visual and environmental studies at Harvard University, explores the intersections of film, the Visual Art, and architecture. Her seminal work Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (Verso, 2002) won the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Book Award in Culture and History—a prize awarded to “the world’s best book on the moving image”—and has provided new directions for visual studies. She is also the author of Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Art (MIT Press, 2007), and Streetwalking on a Ruined Map (Princeton University Press, 2002).

This series of talks focused on materiality and time—how material and passing time can be seen as reciprocal conditions for each other’s qualities. It is inspired by the thoughts of French philosopher Henri Bergson:

“If I want to mix a glass of sugar and water, I must… wait until the sugar melts. This little fact is big with meaning. For here the time I have to wait is not the mathematical time, which would apply equally well to the entire history of the material world…. It coincides with my impatience, that is to say, with a certain portion of my own duration…. It is no longer something thought, it is something lived.”

Bergson’s text has punctuated philosophical discussions since it first appeared in 1908. The series brought together material scientists, biochemists, architects, philosophers, curators, and media theorists to unravel the relationship of time and materiality within each discipline.

Giuliana Bruno, professor of visual and environmental studies at Harvard University, explores the intersections of film, the visual arts, and architecture. Her seminal work Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (Verso, 2002) won the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Book Award in Culture and History—a prize awarded to “the world’s best book on the moving image”—and has provided new directions for visual studies. She is also the author of Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts (MIT Press, 2007), and Streetwalking on a Ruined Map (Princeton University Press, 2002).

A rare US performance by Mouse on Mars, one of the most influential and innovative duos in German electronic music. This concert marked the opening of Rosa Barba’s The Color Out of Space, for which Jan St. Werner designed the soundtrack. 

Since 1993, Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma have been making electronic music that defies genre labels and classification, mixing IDM with krautrock, disco, pop, ambient, and avant-garde styles. Their music has been reinterpreted by orchestras and remixed by DJs, performed in concert halls and shown in museums. Characteristically, their 21 Again anniversary record featured collaborators as diverse as Tortoise, Prefuse 73, Modeselektor, Junior Boys, and members of Stereolab, the Boredoms, and Battles. Fusing theory, sound research, and deep, sensual experience, the duo has forged an identity around process and agility rather than any set sound profile. 

Rosa Barba’s two-part EMPAC commission was produced in collaboration with Rensselaer’s Hirsch Observatory and was presented on four consecutive Saturday evenings throughout March 2015. While transforming EMPAC’s 8th Street façade into an outdoor cinema that uses the solar system as source material for a speculative film, a site-specific artwork for the Hirsch Observatory connected the two buildings across campus.

The Color out of Space

A large-scale projection covering the building’s 8th Street façade was viewable from downtown Troy and beyond, and the accompanying sound composition was broadcast via audio stream and on Rensselaer campus radio station WRPI 91.5 FM. Using voices collaged by composer Jan St Werner from interviews, fictions, and readings by artists and astronomers from around the world, including Ingrid Wiener, Georgia Horn, Emma Hedditch, Barbara Hammer, Laetitia Sadier, Evan Calder Williams, Jimmy Robert, Jean-Pierre Luminet, Colin Attwood, Daphne Beal, Heidi Newberg, Matthew Newby, and Oswald Wiener, the piece hovered at the speculative intersection of astronomy and art.

White Museum

A concurrent 70mm film installation at the Hirsch Observatory projected out of the dome and into the sky. Located on the roof of the Jonsson-Rowland Science Center, the observatory was built in 1942 to house a 12” equatorial reflector telescope that was designed and constructed at Rensselaer. Juxtaposed against the current 16” Boller & Chivens dome telescope from the 1960s, the film projector traces the reciprocal relationship of astronomy and cinema.

DIRECTIONS FROM EMPAC TO THE HIRSCH OBSERVATORY

From the EMPAC lobby, walk east approximately three minutes, following the paved sidewalk onto the Rensselaer campus. The south entrance to the Jonsson-Rowland science center will be on your left. An usher will escort you inside.

Rosa Barba’s publications, sculpture, and installation work are rooted in the material of cinema. In 2010, she won the Nam June Paik Award for Coro Spezzato, The Future Lasts One Day (2009). She was a resident artist at Artpace in San Antonio in 2014, Chinati Foundation in Marfa in 2013 and the Dia Art Foundation in 2008. Her work has been presented in exhibitions worldwide, including Time as Perspective (2013) at the Bergen Kunsthall; Auto Kino! (2010) at the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin; Making Worlds at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009; and Italics: Italian Art Between Tradition and Revolution, 1968–2008 (2008–09) at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Jan St Werner is a composer and musician based in Berlin, Germany. Aliases include Mouse on Mars (with Andi Toma), Microstoria (with Markus Popp), Von Südenfed (with Andi Toma and Mark E Smith), Lithops, Neuter River, Noisemashinetapes. He has produced numerous recordings both solo and collaboratively, including The Fiepblatter Catalogue on Thrill Jockey Records and the Mouse on Mars 21 AGAIN Project on Monkeytown Records. St Werner co-runs Sonig, an independent music label for experimental, electronic and non-genre-specific music. He has composed orchestral works for musikFabrik, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. St Werner’s work has recently been featured at the ICA, London; Radialsystem V, Berlin; Kunsthaus Muerz, Austria; Kunstverein Munich, and Cornerhouse Manchester.

Speicher, an evening-length concert work by German composer Enno Poppe, is a project that was in development since 2008. Premiered at the Donaueschingen Festival in 2013 to widespread acclaim, Speicher pushes its 22 players to their interpretative and technical extremes. Complex rhythms, microtonal intonation, and nuanced textures combine to create a rich and detailed work of ambitious scale and scope. Poppe says the following about the piece:

"Musical phenomena are never abstract. The idea behind Speicher is the search for extremes—extreme condensation, thinning, acceleration, broadening. For the piece to be able to continue and remain interesting, it is important—besides diversity—for the audience to be able to recognize certain parts. Anything can be recognizable—a single sound as well as a complete formal structure. Therefore it seems less important to keep inserting new ideas into the piece but rather to create an unpredictable network of derivations. The next step would be to be able to foresee what will happen next. Thus, an active way of listening would be created. But, in a reservoir ['speicher'], things always get into a mess anyway.”

Enno Poppe’s music, which he summarizes as “dented nature,” grounds itself in compositional guidelines influenced by acoustics, biology, and mathematics. As his composition unfolds, he gradually disobeys his own rules, contorting material to create an unstable, constantly evolving, almost hallucinatory atmosphere of unexpected sounds.

A US premiere, Speicher was presented in the Concert Hall, featuring the US-based Talea Ensemble.