Stockholm-based composer Ellen Arkbro was in residence to develop material to use with EMPAC's Wave Field Synthesis Array. While Arkbro was at EMPAC, she also performed a new solo work For Guitar and Electronics.

Arkbro is a musical alchemist whose work oscillates between the pop music of the ’90s and the American minimalism of the ’60s, while exploring microtonal realms that blur the standard tunings and harmonies of Western music. Her practice takes the form of compositions for early-music ensembles as well as long-duration performances of synthesized dream music, including one piece composed to last 26 days. Her sound work is heavily informed by her studies in pure intonation tuning with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela in New York and with Marc Sabat in Berlin. She describes her 2017 album For Organ and Brass as “a very slow and reduced blues music” written for the 17th-century Scherer-organ in Tangermünde, Germany, paired with microtonal arrangements for horn, tuba, and trombone.

This intensive seminar offers musicians, composers, audio engineers, and programmers the rare opportunity to study the fundamentals of multi-channel spatial audio in pristine acoustic environments. Participants will experience multiple large spatial audio systems, including Wave Field Synthesis, High-Order Ambisonics, and Binaural audio.

Researcher Markus Noisternig (IRCAM), professor Chris Chafe (Stanford), Rama Gottfried, and other guests will join EMPAC’s audio staff in dissecting technical and artistic concerns in the creation and presentation of high-count multi-channel sound projection. Using the full capabilities of EMPAC’s sonic infrastructure, including over 700 channels of audio and EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis array, the seminar will consist of lectures, roundtables, listening sessions, workshops, and performances.

The first week of the seminar is an open forum for participants of all backgrounds and experience levels to dive into general concepts, workflows, and control mechanisms related to spatial audio. Topics will include introductory, intermediate, and advanced patching for IRCAM’s SPAT software, in-depth discussions of Wave Field Synthesis, Ambisonics, Binaural and Transaural audio, 3D audio recording and mixing, and more. The second week of the seminar is a wave field synthesis workshop giving a limited number of participants focused time and hands-on access to the system in order to develop new creative work.

WAVE FIELD SYNTHESIS

EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis array was constructed in 2016 and consists of 558 independently controllable speakers spread across 18 portable and reconfigurable modules.

VENUES

The workshop will take place throughout the EMPAC building, granting participants access to a range of sophisticated audio systems in a variety of acoustic settings. Three venues will be outfitted with high-channel-count audio arrays, including:

• 1,200-seat Concert Hall
  with 64-channel Ambisonic array.
• Large absorptive studio
  (66’x51’x33’; 315m2, 12m high) with two 186-channel Wave Field Synthesis arrays (one frontal linear array and one overhead linear array) and 25-channel Ambisonic array.
• Large diffusive studio
  (44’x55’x18’; 230m2, 9m high) with 186-channel Wave Field Synthesis Array. 

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

MONDAY, JULY 9

Introduction with Markus Noisternig
EMPAC WFS array demo
Object Based Audio with Markus Noisternig and Rama Gottfried.

TUESDAY, JULY 10

Talk with Chris Chafe
Panoramix with Markus Noisternig
Intro to Spat with Rama Gottfried
Listening Session and Q&A time
Okkyung Lee will perform a piece presented by Markus Noisternig using the WFS array

WEDNESDAY, JULY 11

Overhead Wave Field Synthesis with Bobby McElver
Intermediate SPAT Patching with Rama Gottfried
Tour with EMPAC’s Audio team

THURSDAY, JULY 12

Demos in Spatial Audio Recording/Room Impulse Responses
Jens Meyer will give a talk/demo of the EigenMike
Listening Session
Advanced Spat Patching with Rama Gottfried
Tour with EMPAC’s Audio team

FRIDAY, JULY 13

Binaural to Ambisonic workflows
Listening Session
Edgar Choueiri TransAural talk/demo
Roundtable discussion

VIDEO ARCHIVE

Media

click the top right menu icon to open playlist of 12 videos.

Fall 2018

Wu Tsang and boychild are in residence with their collaborators Josh Johnson, Patrick Belaga, Jeff Simmons, and Asma Maroof to continue work on a new performance for EMPAC's Theater to be premiered at the 10 YEARS celebration. Footage shot by cinematographer Antonio Cisneros during the August residency will be incorporated into the final performance.

Spring 2018

Wu Tsang and boychild are in residence in EMPAC’s Theater to experiment with light, scrims, and projection surfaces for the development of a new work in their Moved by the Motion series. The performance is conceived in collaboration with Fred Moten, Patrick Belaga, and Klein.

Spring 2016

Artist Wu Tsang was be in residence in the theater with her collaborators boychild and Patrick Belaga to work on the staging of a new iteration of their performance Moved by the Motion.

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.