Returning to EMPAC after his 2013 multi-venue installation and performance, British artist Mark Fell presents Recursive Frame Analysis, a new work for light, sound, and human movement. As with many of Fell’s previous works, Recursive Frame Analysis emphasizes highly formalized aesthetic strategies: arrangements of intensely saturated light, raw synthetic sound, disrupted rhythmic structures, and kinetic systems that urge the audience to their perceptual and cognitive boundaries.   

Taking its title from a therapeutic technique (RFA) developed in the 1980s, Recursive Frame Analysis refers to the cognitive patterns around which behavioral relationships and interactions develop; typically these are thought of as “stuck” and therefore also somehow problematic. The frame in the case of this performance could refer to the semiotic or the phenomenological.

The work engages with and responds to vocabularies of shapes developed by New York-based choreographer and dancer Brittany Bailey and performed by Bailey and Burr Johnson.

Mark Fell is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sheffield, UK. He is widely known for combining popular music styles such as electronica and techno with more academic approaches to computer-based composition, with a particular emphasis on algorithmic and mathematical systems. As well as recorded works, he produces installation pieces, often using multiple speaker systems. He started his career in the ’90s house and techno scene as one half of electronic duo SND and released The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making earlier this year on label The Death of Rave.

Brittany Bailey has worked as a dancer/choreographer in NYC since 2008. She graduated from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2008 and went on to train with Merce Cunningham. Bailey has performed with Marina Abramovic, Michael Clark Company, and Robert Wilson. Along with creating performance works for her dance company, Bailey is currently the choreographer on performances with Christopher Knowles, Mark Fell, and a solo dance with visuals by Louise Bourgeois and text by Gary Indiana.

From three stylistically distinct corners of the global beat scene, a trifecta of dance-music heavyweights descended on Troy for a late-night concoction of hip-hop, house, and techno.

Harlem-based sample queen vhvl builds dark, knotty collages from source material that can be both elemental and intimate at turns. Hers is a brand of hip-hop steeped as much in the rivers and forest of the Hudson Valley as in the concrete hustle of the city. Her 2013 debut myrrh drew comparisons to early Flying Lotus, and in 2014 she released a split cassette with Ras G on Stones Throw Records.

LA beat-scene veteran Daedelus is one of the most inventive and prolific figures to have emerged from the legendary weekly showcase Low End Theory at LA club the Airliner. Taking a decidedly baroque approach to his craft, the tech-savvy maestro conducts bottomless banks of sound from his preferred device—the gestural Monome. He’s released 15 records with taste-making labels such as Brainfeeder and Ninja Tune, as well as collaborations with Prefuse 73, Busdriver, and the Gaslamp Killer.

London-based producer and DJ Ikonika has fast become a star of Hyperdub Records, one of the most esteemed purveyors of UK bass music. Her 2014 EP Position built on a career that has synthesized house, dubstep, grime, garage, electro and R&B. When she isn’t touring globally, she runs the label Hum + Buzz.

Icelandic composer Davíð Brynjar Franzson was in residence to develop technical concepts for his work The Cartography of Time, for bass clarinet, cello, trombone, piano, and live electronics. A generative installation for four performers or standalone electronics, the piece is constructed from a handful of sound fragments and composed responses to them. Each sound reflects how each performer involved in the project approaches their instruments as well as how they interact with their immediate sound environment. The result is an environment constructed from these sound fragments, distributed through the performance space.

Four accomplished pianists, four acoustically distinct venues, five grand pianos. This evening of piano performances brought together some of the leading soloists working today in new music to explore their instrument’s full color spectrum in EMPAC’s complete range of acoustic environments. Performing on grand pianos of varying sizes and manufactures, Pianoply examined virtuosity through the lens of situation and setting.

Pianoply featured soloists Vicky Chow, Stephen Drury, Mabel Kwan, and Marilyn Nonken, performing on a selection of pianos: a 9’ Hamburg Steinway, 9’ New York Steinway, 7’ Fazioli, 6’ 7” Bösendorfer, and 7’ 6” Yamaha pianos.

The audience was guided through all of EMPAC’s venues—the reverberant warmth of the Concert Hall, the intimacy of the Theater, the detailed crispness of Studio 1 and the enveloping diffusion of Studio 2—to explore the sonic properties of contemporary repertoire performed through particular instruments placed in particular spaces.

PROGRAM

PROGRAM

Vicky Chow - Studio 2

Michael Gordon - Sonatra (2004)

Stephen Drury - Studio 1

John Cage - Etudes Australes, Book I (1974-75)

Marilyn Nonken - Theater

Joshua Fineberg - Tremors (1996)

Tristan Murail - La mandragore (1993)

Claude Vivier - Shiraz (1977)

Mabel Kwan - Concert Hall

Evan Johnson - three reversed movements, to bring destroyed objects back to life (2014)

Eliza Brown - Between Clouds (2012)

Rebecca Saunders - Shadow (2013)

Gerardo Gandini - Eusebius, Four Nocturnes for One Piano (1984)

Composer Michael Gordon and pianist Vicky Chow were in residence to record, edit, mix and master the work Sonatra. A technical tour-de-force, Sonatra was recorded twice in the Concert Hall—once in standard tuning and once in Just intonation.

Sonatra was released in 2018 by Cantaloupe Records.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.