Susanna Bolle + Benjamin Nelson • Keith Fullerton Whitman • Miki Kaneda • Lawrence Kumpf • Mark Lewis • Robert AA Lowe • Justin Luke • Pauline Oliveros • Jessica Rylan • Frank Smigiel • Robert Snowden

Almost a decade after EMPAC presented Wow and Flutter—featuring music, performances, and artists of the 1960s multidisciplinary San Francisco Tape Music Center—this two-day colloquium gathered varied perspectives on the current trend of cross-disciplinary artistic practice from those who produce and present visual arts performance and music. The colloquium explored the disconnect between visual and performance artists working with sound, and composers/musicians working with electronics. Despite collaboration, there remains a slippage of presentation and theorization between the disciplines. Currently, it seems that the modular synthesizer could be a bridge between the two. Through the process of obsessive planning, the tactility of performance, and the creation of dense soundfields, the analog mod synth is experiencing a resurgence among visual artists and musicians. Questions explored included: How do such old technological concepts have relevance in a digital world? Is knob twisting influencing a new generation of visual artists with its ease of entry, and entrancing composers and musicians with its physical controls? Will that one module that makes everything truly awesome ever be found? Does the experience of a satisfying click create a different sonic outcome than the reassuring LCD flash onscreen? Or is it really all the same to a lay audience? Is anyone even paying attention? 

The Jaffe Colloquia is a series of exchanges that brings together small groups of artists, curators, and theorists to informally discuss ideas centered around the conditions of, and perspectives on, time-based arts. These events take the form of closed group discussion; however, sessions will be recorded and subsequently made available online.

British acousmatic composer Manuella Blackburn is widely acclaimed for her intricate and meticulous compositions. Blackburn was in residence to work on a composition commissioned by EMPAC called Time Will Tell. Assembled from the sounds of various clocks recorded across upstate New York, Blackburn transformed their mechanistic tick into a frantic and moving world of sound. Blackburn is a lecturer in music technology at Liverpool Hope University, and has received many awards for her work, including first prize for Vista Points in the 10th Electroacoustic Composition Competition Música Viva 2009, Portugal, and the grand prize at the Digital Arts Awards, Japan, for Kitchen Alchemy. Blackburn is also a member of The Splice Girls, a live laptop improvisation duo that performs at experimental music events.

As one of America’s foremost contemporary artists; a persistent experimenter at the intersection of performance, media, and technology; and an inventor of tools and instruments, Laurie Anderson and EMPAC’s exceptional research and production environment for adventurous new work are an ideal match.

The residency provides Anderson with wide access to space, technology, and support for creative experimentation, but just as important, brings the artist into ongoing dialogue with students and faculty at Rensselaer.

Anderson’s voice being altered through electronics—creating her alter ego—is as much a part of her work as her singing, talking, and storytelling voices. This talk explored the many voices she created over the years.

One of America’s most renowned performance artists, Laurie Anderson’s genre-crossing work encompasses performance, film, music, installation, writing, photography, and sculpture. She is widely known for her multimedia presentations and musical recordings and has numerous major works to her credit, including United States I-V (1983), Empty Places (1990), Stories from the Nerve Bible (1993), Songs and Stories for Moby Dick (1999), and Life on a String (2001), among others. She has had countless collaborations with an array of artists, from Jonathan Demme and Brian Eno to Bill T. Jones and Peter Gabriel.

Anderson has invented several technological devices for use in her recordings and performance art shows, including voice filters, a tape-bow violin, and a talking stick. In 2002, she was appointed NASA’s first artist-in-residence, and she was also part of the team that created the opening ceremony for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. She has published six books, produced numerous videos, films, radio pieces, and original scores for dance and film. In 2007, she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. She lives in New York City.

Ryoichi Kurokawa’s audiovisual work syn_ obscures familiar everyday imagery with vibrating, impossibly detailed geometric constel-
lations. Performed live on dual projection screens, his visuals were accompanied with clouds of sound that pulsed in accord to construct a sensory experience of overwhelming energy. 

Kurokawa’s works take multiple forms, including installations, recordings, and live performance. His audiovisual compositions bring visual and sonic materials together using a completely revolutionary perspective. His works have been shown at international festivals and museums including the Tate Modern (London), Venice Biennale, Transmediale (Berlin), and Sonar (Barcelona). In 2010, he was awarded the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Music and Sound Art category. He lives and works in Berlin.

The Calder Quartet presented a concert of new and not-so-new music that framed Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet with works by Webern, Mozart, and a Calder commission by film composer Don Davis: Vexed Man (inspired by Messerschmidt). 

The Calder Quartet performs a broad repertoire striving to channel the true intention of the work’s creator. Known for the discovery, commissioning, recording, and mentoring of some of today’s best emerging composers (with over 25 commissioned works to date), the group continues to work and collaborate with artists across musical genres, spanning the classical and contemporary music worlds, as well as rock, dance, and visual arts, performing in venues ranging from art galleries and rock clubs to Carnegie and Walt Disney concert halls. 

This event is presented in context with La Jeune-Fille et la Mort (The Young-Girl and Death) on Saturday, October 12, 2013, at 7 PM.

PROGRAM

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart String Quartet No. 14 in G major, K. 387 Anton Webern Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 Don Davis Vexed Man (inspired by Messerschmidt) Interval Franz Schubert String Quartet No. 14 in D minor—Death and the Maiden

British electronic musician Mark Fell was in residence to create three site-specific audio and light installations and an immersive performance in the Concert Hall. Each of the installation pieces used the same algorithm to generate different effects: a cube of color-scrolling lights; a three-floor, haze-filled room permeated by vibrantly oscillating light and sound; and a massive, dark space filled by a strobe-lit skydancer. Fell’s invitation for the audience to explore the places less traveled culminated in a performance with a 50-channel audio and 84-channel light work, during which each panel of the fabric ceiling in EMPAC’s Concert Hall was independently lit.

Fell is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sheffield, UK. The variety of institutions that present his work—from large super clubs, such as Berghain (Berlin), to the Hong Kong National Film and Sound Archive—speak to the diversity of Fell’s work. He received an honorary mention in the digital music category at Prix Ars Electronica, and was shortlisted for the Quartz award for his contributions to research in digital music. Fell has also been involved in a number of academic research projects ranging from computer science to musicology and, as a curator, he is recognized for his contributions to the development of experimental electronic music in Europe.

Intricate and meticulous sounds are hallmarks of the work of acousmatic composer Manuella Blackburn. Using a ring of loudspeakers situated around an audience in the dark, Blackburn created a sound-only environment where hearing took precedence over everything else. (“Acousmatic” is a term to define sounds, which can be heard, but have no visible point of origin). The sound samples she uses in her works are sometimes recognizable clicks, often frantically moving, and always crisply detailed. Blackburn received a bachelor’s degree in music, a master’s in electroacoustic composition, and a PhD from the University of Manchester. She is a lecturer in music technology at Liverpool Hope University. 

PROGRAM

Vista Points (2009) Karita oto (2009) Time will tell (2013) - World Premiere New Shruti (2013) - with Dr. Rajeeb Chakraborty, Sarod Switched On (2011) Origami (The Crane) (2008) Javaari (2013)

Best known for his ambient, slowly evolving sound compositions such as The Disintegration Loops (2002), tape-loop tinkerer William Basinski presents his most recent piece, Nocturnes. Originally recorded in 1979, the piano metallic tape loop used in Nocturnes was stored for more than 30 years, gradually being degraded and transmuted by time. Basinski has further altered the identity of the sound by removing the attacks of the piano and overlaying them, creating an underwater-like atmosphere that is strangely recognizable as the ghost of the piano.

William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for over 25 years. His haunting and melancholy soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life, resounding with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time. His epic four-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops, received international critical acclaim and was chosen as one of the top 50 albums of 2004 by Pitchfork Media. Artforum magazine selected The River, Basinski’s transcendental two-disc shortwave music experiment on Raster-Noton.de, Germany, as one of the top 10 albums of 2003. His concerts, installations, and films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker James Elaine have been presented internationally, most recently at the Venice Biennale; Happy New Ears Festival, Belgium; Focus: ONE Festival, Poland; Festival Filosofia, Carpi, Italy; and Cité de la Musique, Paris, among others. Basinski's latest albums, 92982 and Vivian & Ondine, were released in 2009 on 2062/USA and distributed internationally. The Wire magazine selected 92982 as one of the top 50 releases of 2009.

Two masterful pianists from different musical worlds: Vicky Chow is a champion of new music, who performs as a soloist and with ensembles like the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and Craig Taborn is an unparalleled jazz keyboardist who tours as a soloist, band leader, and sideman with musicians like Dave Holland and Tim Berne. Chow and Taborn’s contrasting solo sets represented the wide spectrum of virtuoso pianism today. 

Chow has performed extensively as a classical and contemporary soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble member; While at the University of Michigan, Taborn became a member of saxophonist James Carter’s band. He has subsequently worked with many musicians, including Dave Douglas, Hugh Ragin, Eivind Opsvik, Marty Ehrlich, Drew Gress, Chris Potter, David Torn, Michael Formanek, and Tomasz Stanko, as well as with members of the Bad Plus. 

Program

Avenging Angel Solos and Improvisations Craig Taborn, piano Interval Surface Image for piano and 40-channel 1-bit electronics - Tristan Perich Vicky Chow, piano

Celebrate the DVD/Blu-ray release of Brent Green’s Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then. Produced in conjunction with, as well as shot and mastered at EMPAC, the film of the live version will be screened, followed by a discussion with Green. Purchase of a ticket includes a copy of the release.

Through live action and hand-drawn stop-motion animation, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then tells the true story of a man who fought against reason and nature to save the woman he loved from illness. Heartbreaking, darkly humorous, and philosophically challenging, Brent Green touches on everything from the vastness of space and the existence of God to the futility of our actions and the power of human will. Green narrates the film and provides a soundtrack along with his band.