The staff editorial in the February 1 issue of The Polytechnic concluded with, “When EMPAC opens, let both the students and the world partake of this wonderful opportunity.” I agree wholeheartedly with this wish; that is the plan, and I see it as part of my job to make it happen. The EMPAC team met in November with officers of the Rensselaer Music Association and the RPI Dance Club, and I have met with different representatives of WRPI several times over the past three years. Let me sketch where we stand two years before the opening.
Part of EMPAC is a “Rehearsal Studio” specifically meant for student clubs, student organizations, and student activities. The Rehearsal Studio is 1,300 square feet, 11.5feet high. A storage area and two smaller changing rooms with showers are associated with it. This part of the building also has a separate entrance from the outside. The intention is to have this studio under student programming and planning. Its acoustics are designed for singing but don’t exclude electronic sounds. Its resilient floor is good for dancing with mirrors and ballet barrs included. The space can be quiet for meditations or may be used for presentations or exhibitions. It has a beautiful view into the treetops south of EMPAC.
Three acoustically isolated studios plus support spaces are planned for WRPI.WRPI has its own entrance from the outside, right next to the entrance to the Rehearsal Studio on the campus level. I would very much hope that WRPI will use these spaces as their broadcast center. Seventeen hundred square feet are less than WRPI has currently in the basement of the DCC, but I am sure a solution can be found.
These studios can be patched to any venue of EMPAC to allow live broadcasts of events if so desired. As we come closer to the opening of the building, WRPI will hopefully look into this offer again. WRPI can have total independence from the rest of the building, which I see as important. A very generous café area in the lobby will have the potential to become a meeting point on campus with architectural and, hopefully, culinary qualities. EMPAC will not be open only for events, but rather I hope that EMPAC will be adopted as “campus living room.”
EMPAC as a “Performing Arts Center” will present an ongoing program of the performing arts, sometimes having more events, sometimes fewer, but always aimed at being cutting edge, challenging, and extraordinary. The events we have staged so far may give an indication of such directions: Wow & Flutter with electronics and multimedia, Dance Movies on the football field and elsewhere, EMPAC 360 around the construction site, air Game on game engines, and upcoming on March 3, Dreamscapes and Dark Places with video clips of the stranger kind. We already moved ahead of other college performing arts programs by having a team of young professional arts curators creating unique programs instead of just buying programs from agents as most other places do.
EMPAC is also designed for “experimental media” in research, creation, and production. The new spaces will be used as unique facilities for visualization, audification, movement, music, theater, dance, and immersive environments. The venues of EMPAC are planned to be used by artists during extended residences to develop, rehearse, and produce works as well as by researchers on campus who can utilize the specific properties of these spaces. And students will become part of research and production as interns, work-study students, graduate students, or post-grads.
In order to support all of these projects, it will be very difficult to schedule weekly events in one of the four large venues on a regular basis. We need the flexibility to be able to dedicate, for instance, the theater or one of the studios to a project for extended periods of time without asking them to take down their gear every Monday at 4pmand every Wednesday at 7pm. This being said, the orchestra or the RPI Players or other student groups will hopefully want to perform in one of EMPAC’s venues. Rehearsal days, afternoons, or evenings just before the concert or performance will be coordinated. Such consecutive blocks of time can and should be allotted. It is only the regular “one evening a week” use which may be difficult to accommodate.
EMPAC will come to life through students filling the building—coming to the café inside or sitting outside on the terrace, coming to the events, to WRPI or the Rehearsal Studio, operating equipment in productions, and being part of research projects and new developments. I hope to see you at one of the upcoming events. More information on EMPAC, the building and the program, can be found at http://www.empac.rpi.edu.
Johannes Goebel
Director, EMPAC
