Rensselaer Alumni Magazine - Spring 2017 - 40
The Color Out of Space is the title of one such book published this fall in collaboration with MIT's List Visual Arts Center. The book documents an EMPACcommissioned project undertaken by Italian artist Rosa Barba in 2014-15. Working with Rensselaer's Hirsch Observatory, Heidi Newberg (professor of physics, applied physics, and astronomy), and undergraduate students, Barba used images of celestial bodies taken through the observatory telescope to create a meditative science-fiction film, projected in March 2015 on the west façade of the EMPAC building. Later that year, Tristan Perich, Nate Wooley, Longleash, and many more, spanning the genres of contemporary classical, jazz, and electronic music. A unique approach was taken in fall 2015 by popular electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never (aka Daniel Lopatin). In advance of the release of his album Garden of Delete on the British record label Warp, Lopatin undertook a week of residency in EMPAC Studio 1 to craft the stage show (including lighting design and projections) for his upcoming world tour. Studio 1 served as a model club atmosphere to test strobe effects, color washes, and integrated video. His subsequent performance in front of a Rensselaer crowd served as both a test run for the tour and unofficial premiere of one of the year's most internationally celebrated musical acts. Electronic composer Tim Hecker took a similar approach that season, working with the lighting designer MFO. The duo used their EMPAC residency and performance to experiment with extreme haze effects in Studio 1, which all but obscured the performer while enveloping the audience in a seemingly infinite cloud that crackled and glowed when struck A R G U A B L Y T H E M OS T E X CI TI NG PA RT OF A N E MPACC O M M IS S IO N E D P R O JE CT I S WHA T HA PPE NS HE RE ON CAMPUS. the film figured as the centerpiece of a retrospective of Barba's work at MIT's List Visual Arts Center. Musical commissions can also take a variety of forms. If you see a musician on EMPAC's performance calendar, it's likely that they are also working in residence, either on a new performance or a recording project. In the past few years, EMPAC has commissioned new recordings, either complete albumlength works or select compositions from musicians as diverse as Ben Frost, Michael Gordon, Amirtha Kidambi, Laurel Halo, Oneohtrix Point Never's lighting design study in Studio 1 for his world tour of Garden of Delete. with LED lights. The effect is now a standard part of Hecker's touring show. In many cases, it isn't until a commissioned work finds its audience in a festival environment that the wider conversation begins. German artist Thom Kubli's project Black Hole Horizon began in 2012 with a series of questions: "What kind of relationship exists between oscillating air, black holes, and soap bubbles? What effect does the sound of horns have on the human psyche and why is it present in different creation myths? What impact does gravity have on our For German artist Thom Kubli's project Black Hole Horizon, he and the EMPAC team built a series of horns that transform sound into three-dimensional objects by producing giant soap bubbles from the compressed air. 40 RensselaeR/ spRing 2017 7122-16 RPI*EMPAC feature_Sp17_p36-41_Rev.indd 40 2/9/17 1:17 PM