News

Ever wonder how rainfall becomes drinking water?  Flo: The Watershed Project, a new game simulation by Rensselaer students directed by Professor of Arts Kathleen Ruiz, lets you experience the journey for yourself—and gives you a unique, memorable perspective on this vital process! 

In her hilarious new fiction short, Nao Bustamante captures another experimental filmmaker, JT (played by noted queer filmmaker Joshua Thorson) as he struggles with his apocalyptic film and the pesky interruptions by one tween next door neighbor. 

What's the Score? by Pauline OliverosA solo improvisation for V Accordion, Pauline Oliveros invites the audience to score a sound during her improvisation. A sound might consist of one single note, chord, cluster or noise that is heard at any time during the piece. The scoring of the sounds will be collected and organized by Oliveros into a score to be performed. This score will be donated to MoMA.http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/events/18491

The Deep Listening Art/ Science conference will span two and half days and will feature over 75 presenters from around the world.  Presentations will include lectures, workshops, performances, listening walks, poster sessions and roundtables. 

RPI Arts Professor Kathleen Ruiz will present FLO: The Watershed Project at the Sandylore Symposium: Cultural Knowledge as a Resource for Disaster Response on Thursday, June 13^th at The Actors Fund Arts Center (160 Schermerhorn St. Brooklyn, NY) at 6:30 pm.  FLO: The Watershed Project is an artistic, scientific and educational game simulation project about the vital important of water, specifically in the New York City West of Hudson Watershed.http://watershed.hass.rpi.edu

Professor of Arts Caren Canier will exhibit four paintings in the exhibition "Summer Pleasures" at Thomas Dean Fine Arts in Atlanta GA, from June 7 - August 3. 

“Oliveros, a pioneer in electronic music and a practitioner in what she has termed "deep listening," goes deep in "The Nubian Word." The concept, story and texts are by Ione, who examines the colonial mind through a mystical vision of British Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, who mapped the Middle East at the end of the 19th century. We encounter him on a Nubian island. Oliveros begins with an extraordinary cosmic electronic soundscape, traveling aurally from outer space to desert, ocean and meadow, where each flower finds its own electromagnetic field. An instrumental ensemble improvises subtly around and inside the electronics, while four singers provide the surface drama. "Remember," one says, "Heaven in your language is not the same as in mine." Oliveros' musical language, formed over a long lifetime of deep listening, is not the same as anyone else's. Here it is distilled in the vastness and fearless intensity of tone.”  -Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times Music Critichttp://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-industry-first-take-20130603,0,1677455.story

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/01/dna-art-recreate-faces

Dr. Ade Knowles, Professor of Practice in the Department of the Arts at RPI, was interviewed by WAMC’s Joe Donahue and Alan Charak during its Roundtable segment at EMPAC (The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performance Arts Center) on May 28.  Dr. Knowles discussed his experience as a faculty member and his unique style of teaching that is incorporated in his Introduction to Afro-Cuban Percussion course and performance group Ensemble Congeros.  

RPI Arts PhD Heather Dewey-Hagborg appeared on CNN Sunday Morning May 19 to discuss how she creates 3D portraits of people using DNA found in hair, gum and discarded trash.

Professor Larry Kagan is one of thirty-four artists with works chosen to be showcased in illuminators at OK Harris Works of Art in NYC.  This exhibit will feature artists inspired by light either in lyrical, abstract or realistic depiction portrayed in paintings and photographer, or as an integral element in light boxes and free standing or suspended sculptural objects.  Exhibition opening is June 5^th from 5 to 7 pm, for more information on this exhibit please visit the OK Harris Works of Art website: http://www.okharris.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/science/tasting-words-dna-art-neuroscience-on-the-small-screen.html?_r=0Stranger Visions. Talk and exhibition at Genspace in Brooklyn on June 13. Exhibition at QF Gallery in East Hampton, N.Y., opens June 29.        While staring at the wall of her therapist’s office, the artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg noticed a strand of hair stuck in a hanging print. Walking home, she noticed that the subways and sidewalks were littered with genetic material on things like chewing gum and cigarette butts, some still moist with saliva. Curious about what she could learn, Ms. Dewey-Hagborg began to extract and sequence DNA from these discarded materials. Then — and here it gets a little eerie — she began to make computer models of their owners’ faces, using genetic clues to print 3-D masks that she concedes “might look more like a possible cousin than a spitting image.” Hanging these portraits along with the original samples, she says, is “a provocation designed to spur a cultural dialogue about genetic surveillance.” After the June exhibitions, Ms. Dewey-Hagborg will show her work early next year at the New York Public Library. She has also collaborated on a tongue-in-cheek project called DNA spoofing, which purports to offer ordinary people some techniques to avoid detection by scrambling their genetic material.

Five RPI graduate students present an impressive range of work in digital animation and photography,electro-acoustic chamber music, and accompanied film on Sunday May 12, 6–8 PM in West Hall Gallery.  Free and open to the public.

"Anyone who follows dual keyboardists like Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia or Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson will be staggered by the work here. Completely improvised, the nine interlocking suites expose almost all variations of what can be extracted from 176 keys." 

"A Sunday walk in Prospect Park is usually a quiet affair, possibly with children's voices heard from afar. This past Sunday, however, the park was filled with the sound of drums; the Taiko drums of Japan, American-Indian drums and even the well-known drums of the Troy High School Drum Corp.  The sounds of the world's percussion traditions were brought to the park by Michael Century, a pianist and composer who is also a professor of new media and music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute."

http://gizmodo.com/5994704/the-weirdest-thing-on-the-internet-tonight-18f44

Please check out the in-depth interview with retiring RPI Professor Neil Rolnick, the lead article on this month's NewMusicBox.org.  Prof Rolnick talks about his career as a composer and plans for the future.  With video and music links.

The Deep Listening Institute is accepting proposals for scholarly lectures, poster presentations, or experience-oriented expositions and/or demonstrations, for the First International Conference on Deep Listening.  The deadline for submission is April 15, 2013.  For more information, please see http://deeplistening.org/site/conference

The Department of the Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute invites applications, expressions of interest, and nominations for the position of full-time Lecturer in Music.  Deadline: May 6, 2013.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Program Ranked in Top 15 Out of 150 Programs in U.S. and Canada

Anton Hand, Master of Fine Arts student is thrilled to announce that RUST LTD’s entry “The Museum of the Microstar” was awarded first place in the Unity DirectX 11 game competition.

and reception for Professor Mary Anne Staniszewski's new book Alternative Histories: New York Art Space, 1960 to 2010.  Friday January 4, 2013, 6 to 8 PM

Professor Mary Anne Staniszewski's new book, Alternative Histories: New York Art Space, 1960 to 2010 (co-edited with Lauren Rosati, MIT Press/Exit Art) was reviewed by the New York Times and described as "an indispensable source book . . . that stands as vibrant and irrefutable evidence of what happens when people take things into their own hands."

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is please to invite community participation from across the Capital District for a seasonal Festival Choir.

The school of HASS is seeking candidates for all levels, including tenure-track Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and full Professor with tenure.

The annual ranking of Rensselaer by U.S. News & World Report — 41st in the nation among national research universities — is one of a number of recent external surveys that recognize the high quality of a Rensselaer education.