Mexican multimedia artist and composer Laura Luna created a new multimedia concert perfor- mance inside EMPAC’s 360-degree panoramic screen.

A photographer turned video and film artist, Laura Luna began to experiment with music in 2013. Perceiving sound as a powerful art form for enhancing memories and narratives, she recorded sounds around her that triggered emotions and memory fragments, building them into a rich tonal music. Using field recordings, voice, a modded Atari computer, a Gameboy and various synths, she constructs sounds to describe fantastical scenes and narratives, creating soundtracks for sublimely fogged-in worlds inspired by the sort of science fiction that deals in the eerily heart- rending. In 2014, she released the experimental album Isolarios inspired by stories about lost cosmonauts, expeditions without return, magical realism, and the works of Italo Calvino.

With a passion for machines, generative narra- tives, and the complexities of memory, Luna has developed audiovisual performances, installa- tions, and interactive works where different materials and technologies coexist. Luna per- formed at EMPAC following a production residency in Studio 2 aimed at creating a new multimedia concert performance inside EMPAC’s 360-degree panoramic screen.

Death–metal bassist Colin Marston was in resi- dence to record his complete works for player piano and feedback. Known as a powerful figure in the New York death-metal scene, Marston plays with groups such as Behold...The Arc- topus, Dysrhythmia, Krallice, and Gorguts. His complex and technically demanding music weaves jagged rhythms with unrelenting energy to confront listeners with a wall of pure sonic force. His prolific output includes extreme metal, progressive/experimental rock, avant garde improvisation, free jazz, new music/modern classical, and ambient genres.

Members of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra were in residence to record Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Octet in E-Flat Major; K 375. The recording was created specifically for playback on EMPAC’s 500-speaker Wave Field Synthesis Array audio system, in order to precisely spatialize each instrument. This recording was subsequently presented for the first time at Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson’s 2017 Campaign Launch Dinner on the theater stage. In her remarks, President Jackson told the audience, “As you walked across the stage to take your seats, you may have felt as if one of the eight woodwind instruments seemed to be playing right next to you, while music from other instruments seemed farther away—and each in its own location... What you have experienced is a revolution in placing sound in space known as Wave Field Synthesis.” 

New York-based quartet Yarn/Wire performs an evening of work by contemporary German composer Enno Poppe, including the world premiere of the EMPAC-commissioned piece Feld. The program will also feature Tonband, Poppe’s co-composition with Wolfgang Heiniger.

Enno Poppe describes his music as “dented nature”: While grounded in compositional guidelines taken from the fields of acoustics, biology, and mathematics, his pieces gradually disobey their own rules, contorting and evolving through an almost hallucinatory atmosphere of unexpected sounds. Highly respected as both a composer and a conductor, Poppe has led the Berlin-based ensemble mosaik since 1998, and has presented his orchestral, chamber, and operatic works throughout Europe. In 2015, Poppe’s Speicher received its US premiere at EMPAC, performed by the Talea Ensemble.

Yarn/Wire is a quartet of two percussionists and two pianists: Laura Barger, Ning Yu, Ian Antonio, and Russell Greenberg. The ensemble is known for its flexibility to slip between classical and modern repertoire, and has become a leading group in the new-music world. Yarn/Wire were last at EMPAC in 2014 to premiere and record The Negotiation of Context by Davið Brynjar Franzson.

PROGRAM:

• Enno Poppe Feld (2007/17) World Premiere
• Enno Poppe + Wolfgang Heiniger Tonband (2008/12)

First invented in 1986 and recently reconstructed for artist-in-residence Tarek Atoui’s spring-season-closing performance WITHIN, the SubBassProtoTon is a walk-in bass generator that allows visitors to physically experience frequencies that are too low for audible perception and to interactively explore sound when it reaches the range of hearing.

The SubBassProtoTon (literally, “below-low-first-tone”) was first constructed by EMPAC’s Director Johannes Goebel for a large outdoor art event in Germany. Subsequently the ProtoTon traveled Europe as part of a sound exhibition for children and students, and other versions were built for exhibitions. Essentially a cubical organ pipe, the instrument consists of a wooden box large enough to comfortably accommodate two or three people.

When inside, participants can manipulate a sliding wooden wedge that opens and closes a window at the front of the box. Air is generated by a motorized organ blower outside the box and is channeled towards the wedge where different sounds are created depending on how far the wedge is opened or closed. This oscillating air pressure results in a sonic frequency that moves from the audible human range to below what can be heard, yet can be physically felt.

Although the SubBassProtoTon was used as a musical instrument for Atoui’s WITHIN, the box is more properly understood as a science-museum-style installation that allows visitors to explore some fundamental principles of sound while actually being immersed in the instrument itself. Anyone who interacts with the ProtoTon, regardless of age and musical or scientific aptitude, can come to understand the basic dynamic of sound behind instruments as diverse as the organ, flute, or ocarina, and enjoy the gentle massage that comes from standing inside these instruments’ vibrations.

New York-based quartet Yarn/Wire performed an evening of work by contemporary German composer Enno Poppe, including the world premiere of the EMPAC-commissioned piece Feld. The program also featured Tonband, Poppe’s co-composition with Wolfgang Heiniger. Yarn/Wire were in residence to record both pieces for future release.

Incoming Rensselaer freshman are invited to an electronic dance music mini-festival run by students for students.

As a part of Navigating Rensselaer and Beyond (NRB), MashUP! is the culmination of a two-day workshop where students learn to work with professional-caliber digital audio, video, and lighting technologies. EMPAC’s production team mentors participants to guide them through the process of producing a big-stage EDM event. On the final night, participants stage a full-scale dance party to help welcome the incoming class.

MUSIC/SOUND

A night of outer-orbit house music with Chicago experimentalist Hieroglyphic Being.

You find a vinyl record out in the desert, faded and with no markings. Upon returning home, you place it on the turntable and are enveloped by distorted, raw, rhythmic pulsations. The sound gives you a glimpse into another world, another way of existing. It works its way inside of you, and you begin to subtly move. This is the sound of Hieroglyphic Being. Also known as Jamal Moss, the Chicago-based producer and record-label boss (Mathematics) has spent decades prolifically releasing music into the outer orbits of house culture. Occasionally donning aliases such as Sun God, IAMTHATIAM, and Africans with Mainframes, Moss refers to his sound as “cosmic bebop,” “rhythmic cubism,” and “synth expressionism,” embracing the mystical power of dance music to move bodies and expand minds. In 2015, Moss joined forces with Sun Ra Arkestra bandleader Marshall Allen and the J.I.T.U Ahn-Sahm-Buhl for We Are Not the First, an avant-jazz ode to musical ancestry and sonic transcendence.

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