With an impact reaching across the entire spectrum of the Rensselaer experience, this new focus will provide students,
researchers, artists, and audiences with opportunities to link the arts with leading-edge research and performance across disciplines.
EMPAC, the $142 million new Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center that is scheduled for completion in the
fall of 2008, will provide students, artists, researchers, and audiences with opportunities to link the arts with leading-edge research
and performance. They will debate questions of art and science that defy conventional answers, find solutions to known and yet unknown
challenges, and develop new ways of looking at concepts, images, and sounds. It will become an international center for innovation in the
arts set within a university dedicated to groundbreaking discovery and innovation.
Led by director Johannes Goebel, EMPAC will inspire experimentation, cross-disciplinary inquiry, and advanced
research. In fact, the construction of this extraordinary building has already inspired research that may impact the planning and
design of performance venues around the world.
EMPAC programming already is enlivening—and enlightening—the campus. Events have encompassed a variety of arts offerings,
including entre-deux, and intriguing performance installation, and a performances by the foursome Ethel (string quartet),
Benton Bainbridge (video), Stephan Moore (audio), Pierre–Alain Hubert (pyrotechnics), and Flyaway Productions (dance) @ EMPAC 360.
entre-deux
Stephan Moore and Benton C. Bainbridge
Flyaway suspended 80 feet up on the west flytower wall
Ethel
Pierre–Alain Hubert
Ning Xiang, chair of Rensselaer’s graduate program in architectural acoustics, is using advanced signal
theory concepts to develop a multiple sound-source measurement system to better predict the acoustic characteristics of complex rooms
such as concert halls. The 1,200-seat main EMPAC performance hall will be the first room to be so characterized. Xiang’s “multiple
acoustics measurement technique” greatly streamlines the process of measuring acoustics, gathering the acoustical information
of any given space in minutes.
His method also can be used to quickly identify and correct acoustic mistakes within an existing performance
space or to verify design goals in new building construction. Xiang’s approach enables all speakers in an area to emit a sound
to designated receivers simultaneously. To interpret the data of each sound as it travels from speaker to receiver, Xiang’s group
has created a new deconvolution algorithm that is loaded onto a computer with data acquisition and digital-to-analog capabilities. The
system measures and graphs how well sounds move within the space.
» http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=1102
Suvranu De, assistant professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear
engineering, leads a team that is combining the sense of touch with 3-D computer models of organs to create a new approach to training
surgeons, a virtual simulator that allows surgeons to touch, feel, and manipulate computer-generated 3-D tissues and organs. De and his
collaborators are now turning that expertise in computer haptics (sense of touch) and virtual environments to a new project that could
profoundly impact experimental arts presentations.
They are developing the foundations for a robust and reliable shared virtual environment in which interactive haptic
feedback is added to existing visual and auditory feedback. The project will concentrate on developing methods to overcome current network
limitations such as latency and packet loss and then study how humans use the ability to communicate touch over long distances when
interacting with other humans or machines.
» http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=1674
Jonas Braasch, assistant professor of architecture, and his group are developing a new recording system that
correctly tracks and reproduces multiple sound-sources and incorporates them into 3-D sound projection systems. This new approach
has the potential to significantly improve and refine current sound systems, both for audio and video experiences. Braasch, who
received this year’s Lothar Cremer Award from the German Acoustical Society, the highest scientific honor given by the
society, investigates various aspects of spatial hearing in complex scenarios, among other subjects.
In a project that can affect experimental media as well as a wide variety of other fields, Rensselaer’s
Department of Language, Literature, and Communication has been awarded a major research grant from the Society for Technical
Communication. In this project, Rensselaer will develop standards for analyzing, designing, and testing the usability of
tech-mediated communications — ranging from graphics, to Web sites and Web gallery interfaces, to wikis and distance education environments.
The team is studying “post-documents,” the electronic interfaces that have become increasingly visible
as we move toward a paperless society, relying less heavily on traditional, physical documents for informative and educational
purposes. The first goal is to identify what factors make post-documents usable. Following their findings, the group will
produce and test a “Post-Document Toolkit,” made up of a set of broad characteristics that make electronic content
usable and an associated set of metrics for measuring post-document usability.
» http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=1757
