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. Projects, residencies and productions at EMPAC will come from all domains of time-based arts, including but not limited to video, dance, music, theater, internet art, DVD productions, interactive installations, and multimedia art. Some pieces that are created or presented at EMPAC may grow out of the media-rich environment of EMPAC and could travel to other venues, nationally and internationally, others works may be site-specific to EMPAC.
As a facility and an environment, EMPAC will serve as a magnet to artists in a wide variety of time-based disciplines - performance, theatre, dance, music and film/video. Once the facility of EMPAC is completed, artists will be given residencies and commissions which include a rare and powerful combination: time to experiment in performance and production spaces of the highest quality combined with a technologically advanced infrastructure. As part of its mission to support artistic production with resources and facilities which are project-specific, EMPAC will provide access to equipment, expertise, rehearsal space, research, or other support as part of a commission, according to the needs of that project.
Past:
The Light Surgeons: True Fictions: New Adventures in Folklore
09.14.2007 — The first public presentation of an EMPAC commission. This piece is currently touring internationally.
Recorded and shot in and around Troy, New York, True Fictions: New Adventures in Folklore is an eye-popping performance of epic proportions
with projections on multiple over-sized screens that fuse documentary film making, live and electronic music, animation and motion graphics with innovative digital video performance tools.
Taking American folklore as a departure point, the UK-based Light Surgeons tackle the universal
question of how our personal, political, and national myths evolve
from subjective stories to widely held truths. The artists guide the audience through this terrain with a
live collage of documentary footage, interviews and music recorded in Troy and across the rest of the state of NY- from Troy’s Uncle Sam’s Day Parade to a cramped music
studio in Brooklyn to an upstate Native American reservation and more.
With support from the .
Current:
DANCE MOViES Commission
With the support of the — the EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission supports the creation of new works in the field of experimental dance film and video. Through the DANCE MOViES Commission, EMPAC aims to support and encourage the
development of the genre of dance film and video in the Americas.
Images: (top)Kino-Eye directed by Joby Emmons and Elena Demyanenko (USA) — Pasillo created by David Farias, Carla Schillagi and Maria Fernanda Vallejos (Argentina)
- Kino-Eye directed by Joby Emmons and Elena Demyanenko (USA)
- Nora Chipaumire: A Physical Biography directed by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, choreographed by Nora Chipaumire with Souleymane Badolo, soundscore by Thomas Mapfumo, produced by Joan Frosch (USA/Zimbabwe)
- Pasillo created by David Farias, Carla Schillagi and Maria Fernanda Vallejos (Argentina)
- Soldier directed/choreographed by Victoria Marks, directed by Margaret Williams (USA/UK)
The 360° screen is only one of the technologies being developed and improved in this collaboration between EMPAC,
UNSW and ZKM for the Wooster Group's THERE IS STILL TIME.. BROTHER and Workspace Unlimited’s
They Watch.
The Wooster Group: »THERE IS STILL TIME.. BROTHER«
The Wooster Group: »THERE IS STILL TIME.. BROTHER
Workspace Unlimited: They Watch
Workspace Unlimited: They Watch
Jennifer Tipton
Commissioned by EMPAC, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [USA].
Produced by EMPAC together with the UNSW iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research [AUS], and the
ZKM | Institute for Visual Media [D] and in collaboration with The Wooster Group.
»THERE IS STILL TIME.. BROTHER« is a commission for an installation that consists of an interactive projection for a 360° screen. (see right).
CONCEPT SUMMARY:
The commission is rooted in the recording of a Wooster Group performance developed specifically to be viewed as a projection on a 360° screen. The video is revealed by way of a window that scans around the screen, never showing the whole of the projection at once. The window is controlled by an audience member or performer who selects which part of the 360° video to reveal at any given time. However, it is clear that the sections of the video that are revealed are all unfolding in one, continuous 360° space and that there is some kind of linear timeline to the sections of the performance that we are watching unfold.
This piece challenges the notions of linear narrative in theater or film by creating a time-based theatrical experience that can be experienced in a new way each time it is “performed” by the individual controlling the interface which dictates that which we see and hear in the immersive space of spacialized sound and projection. The viewer is involved in an immersive process of discovery where their chosen point of view creates the dramaturgy of the piece and literally activates the story.
It will have its European premiere at the ZKM in Karlsrhue Germany (December 2007).
With support from the .
»THERE IS STILL TIME..BROTHER« full production credits.
» More Information about The Wooster Group
They Watch is a commission for an installation that consists of an interactive projection for a 360° screen or other immersive projection space.
CONCEPT SUMMARY:
Using a modified computer game engine, artificial intelligence, and an immersive projection environment, They Watch creates an ambiguous hybrid space where the virtual blends with the real, and where encounters with simulated characters challenge our ideas of presence, place, perception and identity.
Workspace Unlimited is an internationally renowned collective that creates virtual worlds and interactive installations at the point where art, architecture and digital technologies converge.
» More Information about Workspace Unlimited
For three weeks in January of 2008, acclaimed lighting designer Jennifer Tipton will turn the EMPAC construction site into a dynamic light sculpture that can be seen from vistas near and far.
This project is the first large-scale installation to be created by Jennifer Tipton, long known to performing arts audiences as one of the most tireless innovators in stage lighting. In her career of nearly fifty years, Ms. Tipton has received numerous awards including two Tonys, two Bessie awards, an Olivier award, two Drama Desk awards and the National Endowment for the Arts Distinguished Artist Award. Her artistic contributions have also been recognized through grants from the Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Theater Artist Residency Program among others.
“There are perhaps a dozen lighting designers in the country who work steadily enough to support themselves by their art, and maybe half a dozen
who are acclaimed and in demand. Among these is Jennifer Tipton, characterized most often for the impeccability of her taste and a certain precision and
cerebral quality to her work…”. — Elizabeth Stone for the
The New York Times.
