Matthew Goodheart made a pivot that most conservatory-trained composers never attempt: he walked away from a career as a free-jazz pianist in the San Francisco Bay Area to study what sound actually does to the people in the room. That research earned him a 2014 Berlin Prize in Music Composition and a technique he calls “reembodied sound,” attaching transducers to gongs and cymbals so they resonate autonomously, turning instrument into environment. On Oct. 8, Goodheart sits down at EMPAC with Felix Deufel, the Leipzig-based sound artist and director of ZiMMT, who has been asking the same fundamental question from a completely different direction.
About the Show
The event is one installment of INTERFACE, EMPAC’s new monthly series that trades the finished-work presentation for something harder to program: honest conversation about process. The stated premise is that “researchers talk about their creative process, and artists talk about their research,” leaving room for experiments, failures, and the intuitions that redirect a project. For the Oct. 8 edition, Deufel and Goodheart take up the question of what sound means for humans and the environment, working through spatial acoustics and composition with the shared conviction that sound is “not simply something we hear, but something that locates us in space and shapes our relationships to our surroundings.”
Deufel brings the perspective of a working spatial audio researcher who founded ZiMMT, a Leipzig nonprofit operating out of a former ball bearing factory with dedicated 3D audio systems, in 2020; his practice spans field recording, room installations, and research into acoustics and ecosystems. Goodheart holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia; he has worked alongside Wadada Leo Smith, Fred Frith, and Pauline Oliveros and is an Associate Professor in the arts at RPI. The Oct. 8 talk is also the first event in a three-day cluster: a workshop on Grapes 3D audio software runs Oct. 9 at EMPAC, followed Oct. 10 by an installation of Deufel’s work on EMPAC’s 39-speaker ambisonic system. Refreshments and informal conversation follow the talk at Evelyn’s Café.
Venue & Logistics
The talk takes place in EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman at 50 8th St. in Troy, part of the Capital Region’s most technically ambitious experimental arts infrastructure. INTERFACE runs on the second Thursday of each month; this is the October installment.
Tickets
Admission is free. The event runs 6–7 p.m. Event details at EMPAC