IRCAM researcher Markus Noisternig was in residence in the Concert Hall working on a combination of EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis System and a 64-channel Ambisonic Dome, while interfacing with Rensselaer’s Blue Gene Summer Computer to calculate time reversal for 3D audio positioning.
Mexican artist and composer Laura Luna creates a new multimedia concert performance 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 narratives, and the complexities of memory, Luna has developed audiovisual performances, installations, and interactive works where different materials and technologies coexist.
Luna will perform at EMPAC following a production residency in Studio 2 aimed at creating a new multimedia concert performance inside EMPAC's 360-degree panoramic screen.
NOTE: Capacity for this performance will be very limited, as the audience will be within the panoramic screen. Advanced ticket purchase is recommended.
Main Image: Laura Luna during her production residency inside EMPAC's 360-degree panoramic screen. Photo: Mick Bello/EMPAC.
Bringing together Swedish upstart Toxe with British veteran Actress, this evening promises hard-edged beats tinged with mystery and mayhem.
One of the most stylistically elusive figures in UK electronic music, Darren Jordan Cunningham has been releasing music under the name Actress since 2004. Mixing club-ready techno with dark ambient and experimental sensibilities, Actress has built a catalog of iconic and genre-defying albums on Ninja Tune and Warp while headlining shows at the world’s dance-music proving grounds, such as the Barbican Center and Berghain Berlin. In April he released AZD, which Cunningham describes as “Non dance based civilian mind groove, mapped to an external soul beyond the collapsing black hole…Music is chaos R.I.P Music.” Part of the AZD project is an expanded live show that aims to integrate various MIDI and synthesizer technologies into one intelligent musical instrument that Cunningham calls “the music vitamin of the Metropolis.”
Opening the show is Toxe—AKA Tove Agélii—the Swedish producer who arrives at EMPAC for her first American performance. The Stockholm-based DJ is quickly becoming known for her aggressive beats and anything-goes mixes.
Main Image: Actress in Studio 1. Photo: EMPAC/Rensselaer.
A five-day intensive workshop on the technical, theoretical, and practical issues surrounding spatial audio platforms, particularly focused on Wave Field Synthesis and High-Order Ambisonics. Hosted by EMPAC at Rensselaer along with IRCAM (the Paris-based Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), and HUSEAC (Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition), this workshop will give participants the opportunity to experience large-scale, complex audio setups in pristine acoustic environments.
Information on EMPAC's Wave Field Synthesis system.
A force within Latinx culture and the rising genderqueer electronic aesthetic (alongside Arca, Lotic, Rabit, etc.), Elysia Crampton has described her style as “severo,” a word suggestive of the raw textures and violent juxtapositions she creates with source material ranging from American pop to cumbia, hip-hop, ratchet, and South American metal. A descendent of the Aymara people indigenous to Bolivia, Crampton made waves with last year’s. A sister piece to the theatrical production Dissolution of the Sovereign: A Timeslide into the Future, the album was written in the style of an epic poem, taking inspiration from the story of the Aymara revolutionary Bartolina Sisa, whose severed limbs were paraded through the Andes after her execution at the hands of Spanish colonists.
Conjuring history, myth, and dream while deftly collaging the sonic trappings of a world in flux, Crampton’s electronic compositions are ranging emotional narratives that seek reconstitution and sovereignty.
Opening the show was Oakland-based synth artist and techno producer Russell E.L. Butler. Exploring themes of transplantation, evolution, and healing, Butler dedicated their recent EP I’m Dropping Out of Life to the “black, brown, trans, queer, and gay folks of Oakland,” especially those who tragically died in the December 2016 Ghost Ship art collective fire.
Jazz trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire comes to EMPAC with his celebrated quartet. Signed to the legendary label Blue Note Records, Akinmusire is a rising star in American Jazz. At 19, he began touring professionally with saxophonist Steve Colemen, before studying with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Terrence Blanchard at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.
In 2007, he won both the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition. Akinmusire has since worked with jazz icons from Vijay Iyer and Aaron Parks to Esperanza Spalding and Jason Moran, recording two albums as a bandleader, including 2014’s The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint. In 2015, he contributed to rapper Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-nominated album To Pimp a Butterfly.
Sam Harris — Piano
Harish Raghavan — Bass
Jeremy Dutton — Drums
Main Image: Ambrose Akinmusire Quartet on the theater stage in 2017. Photo: EMPAC.
During the second night of public concerts highlighting EMPAC’s Spatial Audio Summer Workshop, Hans Tutschku will present four multi-channel electronic compositions arranged for a large array of loudspeakers. Tutschku is a master in the creation and performance of music that includes sonic movement, space, and scale as important features of the listening experience. For this performance, Tutschku will adapt his work for a 248-channel Wave Field Synthesis array and 60-channel Ambisonic dome surrounding the audience in EMPAC’s Concert Hall.
As part of EMPAC’s Spatial Audio Summer Workshop, audio researcher Markus Noisternig will present an evening of multi-channel audio works. Using a 248-channel Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) array and a 60-channel Ambisonic dome, Noisternig will showcase the capabilities of this immersive system in a pristine acoustic space. WFS and Ambisonics represent the cutting edge of 3D, “holophonic” sound systems, which allow the composer to place and move sounds around the audience with an incredible degree of precision. While part of the workshop, this performance is open to the general public.
A five-day intensive workshop on the technical, theoretical, and practical issues surrounding spatial audio platforms, particularly focused on Wave Field Synthesis and High-Order Ambisonics. Hosted by EMPAC at Rensselaer along with IRCAM (the Paris-based Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), and HUSEAC (Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition), this workshop will give participants the opportunity to experience large-scale, complex audio setups in pristine acoustic environments.
Markus Noisternig (IRCAM) and professor Hans Tutschku (Harvard) will join EMPAC’s audio staff in dissecting the technical and artistic concerns in the creation and presentation of high-count multi-channel audio projection. Each day will consist of seminar-style workshops and lectures, along with time for hands-on experience with the over 700 channels of audio, including EMPAC’s new Wave Field Synthesis array.
EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis array was constructed in 2016 and consists of 558 independently controllable speakers spread across 18 portable and reconfigurable modules.
The workshop will take place throughout EMPAC, granting participants access to the sophisticated audio systems in place. In addition to smaller studio spaces, five venues will be outfitted with high-channel-count audio arrays, including:
Participants should be composers, audio engineers, or programmers with interest in multi-channel composition. Experience with MAX is recommended.
There will be two open-to-the-public performances during the week on Mon + Thurs evenings. More information will be available later this spring on the specifics.
Held across EMPAC’s venues, the workshop will run from 10AM–6PM each day with lectures in the mornings and scheduled time later in the evenings in each venue. Performances will be held Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Coffee, lunch, and parking included for full workshop attendees only.
Lodging accommodations are available on campus for those traveling to attend. Checkin/out will be open on the 9th and 15th for those who want to arrive the day before / leave morning after workshops.
