The OpenEnded Group: Upending with music by Morton Feldman followed by The Making of Upending with The OpenEnded Group :: March 25 and 26, 2010, 7:00 p.m. (Matinee: March 27, 2:00 p.m.) :: Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, EMPAC @ Rensselaer, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY.

Upending is a revelatory stereoscopic theater performance: an animated, actor-less drama of disorientation and reorientation that compels viewers to rethink their relationship with the material world. Using ordinary flat photographs and stereoscopic HD video as the basis for a battery of non-photorealistic rendering technique, Upending transfigures familiar objects, spaces, and persons in ways that are both beautiful and uncanny. The play of images is accompanied by a gutsy new EMPAC-produced recording of Morton Feldman’s first String Quartet by the FLUX Quartet that places the listener, literally, in the center of the ensemble, with every sonic gesture articulated across space simultaneously. Through this aural lens, the video becomes almost balletic, even as the visuals allow the audience to hear Feldman as never before.

Following a post-performance break for refreshments, each evening will conclude with The Making of Upending, a talk and q&a covering the two year process of the work from inception to premiere.

Upending was commissioned by EMPAC and developed in residence over a two-year period utilizing EMPAC’s unique facility, technology and staffing. The commission was made possible by support from the Jaffe Fund For Experimental Media And Performing Arts.

For more information on this event, please call the EMPAC Box office at 518.276.3921 or visit the EMPAC website.

About EMPAC

The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) opened its doors in 2008 and was hailed by the New York Times as a “technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses… dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before.”

Founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, EMPAC offers artists, scholars, researchers, engineers, designers, and audiences opportunities for creative exploration that are available nowhere else under a single roof. EMPAC operates nationally and internationally, attracting creative individuals from around the world and sending new artworks and innovative ideas onto the global stage.

EMPAC’s building is a showcase work of architecture and a unique technological facility that boasts unrivaled presentation and production capabilities for art and science spanning the physical and virtual worlds and the spaces in between.