Announcing our first summer lab for interactive media in performance! Directed by Johannes Birringer and Mark Coniglio, the workshop offers intensive training and possibilities for experimentation with mixed reality and real time architectures, programmable environments, interactive design and the integration of time-based media into live performance and installation.

Workshop blog: http://empaclivemediaperformancelab.blogspot.com/

The activities of the lab are open to visitors, and information about the proceedings and the research process will be available soon.

The workshop addresses emerging and professional art practitioners, scientists, researchers, and students from different backgrounds in performance and new media committed to sharing their interest in developing a deeper understanding of composing work focused on real time, interactive or time-based experiences and multidisciplinary collaborative processes (video, sound processing, projection design, lighting, choreography and directing).

Participants will be in residence for the duration of the lab and offered our exceptional facilities for investigating performance and design techniques that will develop skills and inspire new ideas for working in mixed realities and interlinked physical/virtual or distributed aesthetics. The workshop will include examples and references to international stage works, choreographic systems, installations and site-specific works, as well as hands-on experimentation in full resolution with interactive systems.

Methodologies for the laboratory are conceived by Theater director and media artist Johannes Birringer, founder of the annual Interaktionslabor and professor of performance technologies at Brunel University (London), and Mark Coniglio, artistic co-director of Troika Ranch and creator of the Isadora software. Both artists are widely recognized for their pioneering work in the international performance and media network. Interaktionslabor was last offered on tour in Belo Horizonte, Brasil (2008), and Birringer’s and Coniglio’s work has been featured in numerous festivals and exhibitions around the world.

SKILL REQUIREMENTS

Intermediate/advanced experience in performing with audio/visual technologies and/or programming. Previous experience with Isadora or Max/MSP recommended. This workshop is geared for those already working with technology but wishing to improve their skills and get new perspectives.

WHAT TO BRING

It is recommended that participants bring rehearsal clothing and their own laptop and other tools (camera, recorder, etc.). Digital equipment will also be available.

WORKSHOP FEE

$500

HOUSING

Participants in the workshop will be able to choose single dormitory style housing near the Rensselaer campus for $50/ night, or may organize their own housing in Troy.

SCHEDULE

The lab is intensive and will run from 10AM - 10PM daily. Registration will be held Monday morning, August 16, and work that day will start at noon. Participants will wrap up their work Sunday morning, August 22, and depart Sunday afternoon.

The NYC-based ensemble Yarn/Wire recorded seven newly commissioned works by young composers (including Eric Wubbles, Alex Mincek, Kate Soper, Mei-Fang Lin, Davíð Franzson, Sam Pluta, and Aaron Einbond) for their debut recording, Tone Builders, released in 2010.

Founded in 2005, Yarn/Wire is a chamber quartet that specializes in the performance of 20th and 21st century music. In addition to the numerous world premieres of music written specifically for the ensemble, Yarn/Wire frequently presents US premieres by many leading international composers. The unique instrumental combination of two percussionists and two pianists allows the ensemble flexibility to slip effortlessly between classics of the repertoire and modern works that continue to forge new boundaries. Yarn/Wire maintains an active performing and teaching schedule at festivals, chamber music series, universities and colleges across the country.

Eric Wubbels alphabeta

Alex Mincek Pendulum VI: Trigger

Kate Soper Wolf

Mei-Fang Lin Yarny/Wiry

Davíð Brynjar Franzson The Negotiation of Context (B) for two pianos and two bass drums

Sam Pluta Tile Mosaic (after Chagall)

Aaron Einbond Passagework

While in residence, Hans Tutschku developed a new composition, commissioned by EMPAC for the Filament Festival, using a 24-channel loudspeaker system suspended on a truss system. The work explored the human voice in the digital domain and took advantage of the potential for EMPAC’s Studio 1 to be a nearly anechoic space, introducing many layers of virtual acoustics and dynamic spatialization within them. According to the composer, agitated slowness continued his explorations of larger forms: within a long time span, clearly marked sections develop contrasting density states, and the 24-channels surround the listener in the shape of a cupola, allowing the creation of aural spaces which go beyond the physical dimensions of the concert hall. Hans Tutschku is a German composer who has also taught at Harvard since 2004.

Named a Rising Star on the alto saxophone four years in a row by the Downbeat Magazine International Critics Poll, acclaimed by publications from The Wire to The New York Times, Steve Lehman is a saxophonist and composer whose multilayered work stands at the frontiers of contemporary music. He marries the esoteric math- and computer-driven compositional principles of “spectral harmony” to the looseness and fluidity of jazz. Lehman will be playing with his handpicked octet, whose luscious smears of horns and vibraphone float over a sizzling rhythm section.

SOLOS^2 was a performance that demonstrated the acoustics of EMPAC’s Concert Hall (designed by Grimshaw Architects with acoustical consultants Kirkegaard Associates). Subtitled Sopranos + Piano, the concert featured Gaudeamus Prize-winning soprano Tony Arnold, soprano Haleh Abghari, and pianist Jacob Greenberg performing short works from the medieval, romantic, and contemporary eras. Unlike typical recitals, the musicians performed from a variety of vantage points—above the fabric canopy suspended over the Hall, as well as the front and rear balconies. The audience was encouraged to move around the space while the performance was happening to better experience the acoustics, and to hear the music from the performer’s perspective by standing next to the pianist as he played. Greenberg played a Debussy etude twice, first with the Hall in its natural state, and second with motorized fabric panels—designed to variably “tune” the space—lowered to demonstrate the audible change in reverberation. The finale, a Schubert duet, was also performed twice, first with the sopranos on the far extremes of the stage and then together in the traditional spot in front of the piano.

Kicking off the first night of onedotzero DJ superstar Diplo will perform with a cadre of the area’s best VJ’s. Expect the unexpected mixed seamlessly with irreverence and the touch of an international tastemaker. Local live video luminaries dazzling your ocular fluid and flipping your wig will include Ray Cutler, Adam Grossman, Ryan Jenkins, David Lublin, Kevin Luddy, Blair Neal, Fernando Orellana, Misha Rabinovich, and Jack Turner.

Diplo’s 2009 documentary film Favela on Blast will be screened Saturday evening in the Theater.

EMPAC's Eric Ameres and Ryan Jenkins run through the audio controlled lighting setup for Diplo.

As part of the lengthy production process for this EMPAC-commissioned opera, composer Sean Griffin worked in residence with staff as well as auditioned regional actors. He also developed the Cold Spring set by researching, and acquiring on loan, artifacts drawn from the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady, NY, the General Electric Company collection, and from several other historic collections of upstate New York industrial history. Griffin worked in collaboration with EMPAC engineers on integrating the computer-based lighting system and cue-based computer-controlled rigging with his compositional approach, blending these technologies with dancers, musicians, actors, and a roller derby team.

Sean Griffin’s unique compositional works rely on interdisciplinary incongruities positioned at the intersection of sound, image, performance, and the archive. His works manifest as music, large and small-scale operas, collaborative installations, historically weighted musical performance works, and numeric choreographies. His pieces have been commissioned and presented internationally by venues including LA’s REDCAT, Hammer Museum, and Contemporary Museum of Art, London’s Royal Academy and Tate Modern, among others. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Victor Herrero will be unable to perform at tonight's concert with Josephine Foster. Foster will instead be joined by folk maven Rachel Mason. What makes a song a song? To what extent does it depend on the presence of a human voice? This question lies behind the last of the Spring New Nothing concerts, in which two charismatic performers offer their idiosyncratic take on the song. Josephine Foster (“a Grace Slick for the 21st century” — Arthur magazine) transforms the poems of Emily Dickinson with her otherworldly soprano. And Victor Herrero performs new songs for the Spanish guitar.

A rare US performance of work by one of the most influential living European composers, as interpreted by two exciting new music ensembles. The German composer Helmut Lachenmann is known for his musique concrète instrumentale—music that uses an iconoclastic vocabulary of instrumental sounds, recombined to create imaginary timbres. The result can be uncanny: imagine a string quartet able to sound like a car crash.

Lachenmann’s demanding, imaginative music was performed in concert by SIGNAL, one of the most exciting chamber orchestras playing in the US today, and the JACK Quartet, praised for its “explosive virtuosity” by the Boston Globe. The composer was in attendance, performing a work for piano and taking the speaking role in an ensemble piece with SIGNAL. SIGNAL is a large ensemble comprising some of the most gifted and innovative musicians in New York City. JACK Quartet commissions and performs new works, working closely with composers in the US and Europe and touring extensively.

The German composer Helmut Lachenmann is known for his musique concrète instrumentale — music that uses an iconoclastic vocabulary of instrumental sounds, recombined to create imaginary timbres. The result can be uncanny: Imagine a string quartet able to sound like a car crash. Lachenmann's demanding, imaginative music will come alive in this concert by SIGNAL, one of the most exciting chamber orchestras playing in America today, and the JACK Quartet, praised for its “explosive virtuosity” by the Boston Globe. The composer will be in attendance, performing a work for piano and taking the speaking role in a large ensemble piece with SIGNAL.

PROGRAM

Helmut Lachenmann Pression
Helmut Lachenmann String Quartet No. 2
Helmut Lachenmann Ein Kinderspiel
Helmut Lachenmann ,,…Zwei Gefuhle…”