Since the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center opened, we have learned that it is possible to sellout the 1,200-seat auditorium with a program by a famous mainstream performer such as Winton Marsalis, provided the ticket price is set at $0 and abundant free food and wine are provided. But with avant garde artists on stage and no freebies, the great majority of those 1,200 seats is likely to be empty. In its review of the Saturday, November 8 performance by Arraymusic Ensemble, the Albany Times Union estimates the audience at “perhaps 150.”

This should surprise no one. With a seating capacity just three-fourths that of EMPAC and a stellar reputation for acoustical excellence, the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall sells out infrequently, though it hosts internationally renowned artists ranging from Joshua Bell to Arlo Guthrie.

Does anyone know how those 1,200 very expensive seats are to be filled more than once or twice a year? Is there a business plan showing how EMPAC will generate the revenue necessary to maintain, staff, and operate it? Or are the sonic isolation systems EMPAC boasts designed to muffle the roar of money being sucked in vast quantities down from the academic buildings into a bottomless sink at the corner of College and Eighth Streets?

Let me be clear. I believe that a center for experimental media and avant garde performing art makes good sense. I am enthusiastically for it as a bold integrating next step in developments that have been underway at Rensselaer since the 1960s. But a 1,200-seat auditorium? Experimental media and avant garde art attract audiences numbered in two and occasionally three figures. A performance venue seating 1,200 is out of scale with the mission of a truly experimental media and arts center by a factor of at least five. Unfortunately, that grandiose auditorium exists. The problem now is to figure out how to prevent the task of keeping it programmed from either draining Rensselaer financially or draining EMPAC spiritually.

Michael Halloran