EMPAC - experimental media and performing arts center
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EMPAC - experimental media and performing arts center

EMPAC - the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center - is a place and a program, where the arts challenge and alter our technology and technology challenges and alters the arts. Founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, EMPAC is an arts institution that draws strength from being part of a great research university. It operates nationally and internationally: attracting innovative artists, both renowned and emerging, from around the world; offering artists, researchers, and audiences opportunities that are available nowhere else under a single roof; providing unsurpassed facilities for creative exploration, and for research in fields such as visualization and movement capture; sending new artworks onto the global stage.

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EMPAC Opening

October 3-19, 2008!

Save the Date!!

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will celebrate the opening of EMPAC during the first half of October 2008, in a style fitting the ambition of its architecture and the scope of its mission.

Come join us in celebrating the grand opening of this remarkable new interface between art, science, and technology.

» Weekend schedule of the opening

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commissions
Dedicated to advancing research and artistic production at the intersection of technology, media and the performing arts, EMPAC is poised to be a major contributing force in many artistic and technological domains. A main focus and major emphasis at EMPAC is the development and production of new works in the performing and media arts.

Commissions in progress include the DANCE MOViES Commission now in it's second cycle, The Wooster Group's THERE IS STILL TIME..BROTHER, and Workspace Unlimited's They Watch. EMPAC’s first public presentation of a commission, The Light Surgeons's project True Fictions: New Adventures in Folklore, was performed in September, 2007. Additionally Jennifer Tipton illuminated the EMPAC building as a light sculpture in January 2008.




empac opening celebration october 3-19, 2008

EMPAC’s OPENING FESTIVAL — SAVE THE DATE!

I hope that each of you will engage with EMPAC programs and explore what meaning EMPAC has for you. I guarantee that it will be challenging. I guarantee that it will be new. I guarantee that it will transform how we regard science, technology, and the arts, and their nexus — how we interact with the future, how we see ourselves as human beings.

— Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, President, Rensselaer.

The three opening weekends highlight, in turn, arts, science and technology, and campus community — and the impact of EMPAC upon them — with elements of each threaded throughout.

The Arts

The first weekend, October 3-5 will celebrate the expressive range that can be accommodated by EMPAC: from classical music presented in an environment of unprecedented acoustical purity, to interactive multimedia works that test the boundaries of performer and audience, to research exhibitions.

dumb type - Voyage
dumb type - Voyage
Verdensteatret - louder
Verdensteatret - louder

Research, Science, and Technology

The second weekend, October 9-12 we will host a symposium featuring eminent researchers from the science and engineering communities in a discussion about where those fields may intersect and connect with us, and the extent to which they will drive, challenge, augment, and inform each other.

Campus Community

The third weekend, October 16-19, will feature artistic performances ranging in media and style, and chosen in collaboration with Student Life, with the intent of reflecting the interests of the Rensselaer student body. It, also, is Rensselaer’s Family Weekend.

Throughout the opening, exhibits detailing our architectural and artistic history, as well as its future potential as a research platform, will be on display.

Schedule, Feeds, More Information

Signup for our email list for up-to-date information about our events and opening. You may also Subscribe to our RSS feed. All EMPAC related feeds are listed below for you to read at your leisure from the device of your choosing.

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