Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center
Encyclopedia
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...
in Troy
Troy, New York
Troy is a city in the US State of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. Troy is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital...
, New York, which opened on October 3, 2008.
The director of EMPAC is Johannes Goebel. He was previously the director of the Institute for Music and Acoustics, which he founded at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
. EMPAC's curators are Helene Lesterlin (Dance), Kathleen Forde (Visual Arts), and Micah Silver (Music and Sound Art). The building is named after Curtis Priem
Curtis Priem
Curtis R. Priem is an American computer scientist.He received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1982...
, co-founder of NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
and graduate of the RPI Class of 1982, who donated $40 million to the Institute in 2004.
Construction
The institute announced plans for the construction of a new performance hall in Fall of 2001 with construction costs originally slated at $50 million. After a design competition and discussions with architectural firms, the plans were revised with a new construction cost of $141 million and completion date of sometime in 2006. While some though that RPI needed improved music and arts facilities, the increased size and construction cost were seen as unnecessarily expensive by many students and faculty.The project broke ground on September 19, 2003. During 2004 the Institute began a large capital campaign and Rensselaer alumnus and trustee Curtis Priem
Curtis Priem
Curtis R. Priem is an American computer scientist.He received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1982...
, '82, donated $40 million in an unrestricted gift. RPI decided to officially name the project in his honor. Additionally, the Institute received a $1 million gift for EMPAC programs from alumnus David Jaffe in 2006.
Over 100,000 cubic yards of earth were evacuated from the hill to make room for the structure. RPI has had problems in the past with the instability of the ground on the hillside, a phenomenon known as mass wasting
Mass wasting
Mass wasting, also known as slope movement or mass movement, is the geomorphic process by which soil, regolith, and rock move downslope under the force of gravity. Types of mass wasting include creep, slides, flows, topples, and falls, each with its own characteristic features, and taking place...
. To prevent the EMPAC from "sliding down the hill", 215 rock anchors were drilled into the ground to stabilize the foundations. At over 210 feet (64 m) long, they are some of the largest anchors in North America.
In September 2005, the institute hosted EMPAC 360: On Site + Sound, a multimedia and performing arts presentation to celebrate the midpoint of construction. The event was attended by over 3000 people from the region. The expected completion date was moved to sometime in 2008.
In January 2008, RPI commissioned lighting designer Jennifer Tipton
Jennifer Tipton
Jennifer Tipton is a lighting designer. She has designed for dance, theater and opera.In 1958, she graduated from Cornell University...
to create a large lighting display called "Light Above the Hudson". Operational for several weeks, the display drew attention to the center with a 300 by 100 feet (30.5 m) array of multicolored lights and search lights pointed into the sky.
The grand opening celebrations were held on three weekends from October 3 to October 19, 2008, with all events free to the public. The inaugural concert was programmed by Micah Silver and Johannes Goebel on October 4 and was a seamless concert that included the Albany Symphony Orchestra
Albany Symphony Orchestra
The Albany Symphony Orchestra is a professional symphony orchestra based in Albany, New York. The upcoming season will mark the orchestra's 78th....
with pianist Per Tengstrand
Per Tengstrand
Per Tengstrand is a Swedish pianist.In 1995 he attained the Long-Thibaud Competition's 4th prize. He subsequently was awarded the 1996 Geneva Competition's 2nd prize and won the 1997 Cleveland Competition. He has been internationally active as a concert pianist since.In 1999 he was prized from the...
, the International Contemporary Ensemble
International Contemporary Ensemble
The International Contemporary Ensemble is a contemporary classical music ensemble of thirty chamber musicians, including strings, woodwinds, piano, percussion, voice and composers, which enables great flexibility of programming...
and Vox Vocal Ensemble performing spatial music
Spatial music
Spatial music, music in space, or space music uses the localization of sounds in physical space as a compositional element in music, in sound art, and in sound editing for audio recordings, film, and video...
ranging four hundred years of music composition. Performances were also given by the Norwegian group Verdensteatret
Verdensteatret
Verdensteatret is a hybrid performance art company based in Norway.In 1986 Lisbeth Bodd and Asle Nilsen founded Verdensteatret, a collective of artists from different fields who collaborate to stage pieces which combine performance, installation, shadow-play, sound and animation...
, the Japanese collective Dumb Type
Dumb Type
Founded in 1984, the artist collective Dumb Type is based in Kyoto, Japan.Members are trained in varied disciplines, including visual arts, theatre, dance, architecture, music composition and computer programming...
and a duet performance by pianist Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...
with Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
a poetry reading by Taylor, and a party DJ'd by Madlib
Madlib
Otis Jackson Jr. in Oxnard, California, known professionally as Madlib, is a Los Angeles-based DJ, multi-instrumentalist, rapper, and music producer...
. October 11 was alumni weekend and featured Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences...
, and October 18 was family weekend and featured Gamelan Galak Tikka, the Ensemble Robot and the Roy Haynes Fountain of Youth Band
Roy Haynes
Roy Owen Haynes is an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Haynes is among the most recorded drummers in jazz, and in a career lasting more than 60 years has played in a wide range of styles ranging from swing and bebop to jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz...
. Each weekend also contained numerous lectures and workshops including Johannes Goebel and Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
. Studio 1 Goodman Studio/Theater hosted a special 360-degree film by The Wooster Group
The Wooster Group
The Wooster Group is a New York City-based experimental theater company known for creating numerous original dramatic works. It gradually emerged during 1975-1980 from Richard Schechner's The Performance Group and took its name in 1980...
entitled There is Still Time..Brother alternating with screenings by Workspace Unlimited.
Architecture and facilities
Grimshaw Architects
Grimshaw Architects is an architectural firm based in London. Founded in 1980 by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, the firm was one of the pioneers of high-tech architecture...
, London and New York, designers of The Eden Project, the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
, and International Terminal Waterloo. The architect of record is the New York City architectural firm Davis Brody Bond. The engineers for the project are Buro Happold
Buro Happold
Buro Happold is a professional services firm providing engineering consultancy, design, planning, project management and consulting services for all aspects of buildings, infrastructure and the environment, with its head office in Bath, Somerset...
.
The main concert hall seats 1,200, and has been lauded as one of the most acoustically perfect concert halls in the world. The acoustical firm Kirkegaard Associates
Kirkegaard Associates
Kirkegaard Associates is an American acoustics design firm based in Chicago, Illinois, with an office in Boulder Colorado. As of 2010, the company is headed by Lawrence Kirkegaard and employs 29 professionals in architecture, acoustics, music recording, mechanical and audio engineering, musical and...
was contracted to work on the system. Extensive computer modeling was done of the ceiling canopy before construction to optimize the transmission of sound waves. EMPAC is the first venue to use Nomex
Nomex
Nomex is a registered trademark for flame resistant meta-aramid material developed in the early 1960s by DuPont and first marketed in 1967.- Properties:...
fire-retardant fabric for a ceiling canopy to reflect sound waves. The exterior of the main concert hall is lined with 36000 square feet (3,344.5 m²) of Western Red Cedar. Grown in sustainable forests in British Columbia, the wood was chosen for its fire-retardant properties. A 20000 square feet (1,858.1 m²) glass wall lines the north side of the building. A water/glycol mix circulating through the steel support beams maintains an even temperature and limits condensation on the glass. EMPAC is also looking to become LEED Silver certified.
EMPAC is also home to a 400-seat theater with an 80′ x 40′ stage, 60′ fly tower, and computer controlled rigging. EMPAC also has two very large projection screens: a 50' x 40' one in the theater and a 60' wide screen in the concert hall. There are two main multi-purpose studio spaces. Studio 1 has 3500 square feet (325.2 m²) and has 40-foot-high ceilings, and Studio 2 is 2500 square feet (232.3 m²) with 28 feet (8.5 m)-high ceilings. There is also a 1400 square feet (130.1 m²) rehearsal studio called Studio Beta, and 4 Artist-in-Residence studios (with one being permanently occupied by the Institute President, Dr. Shirley Jackson, as a private, part-time office). Studio 1 and Studio 2 are lined with acoustical panels to diffuse sound using innovative paneling designed to simulate the characteristics of tree bark. Different panels are designed to absorb and refract different frequencies of sound. All performance spaces have a maximum noise level of 15dB, making them some of the quietest artistic presentation spaces in the world.
A 360-degree projection system has been developed, which is used for virtual reality research, art works, and cinematic presentations. The current system has a 40 feet (12.2 m) round, 15 feet (4.6 m) tall circular screen which surrounds viewers, who either can walk around or view from swivel chairs. Special 360-degree cameras are used for filming, along with microphones which record directionality. The sound can then be played back on an array of surround-sound speakers, allowing sound projection from any angle toward the audience. One commission, THERE IS STILL TIME..BROTHER, by The Wooster Group, began at EMPAC and then left to tour internationally. Several other commission are currently underway.