Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof
By DENNIS OVERBYE (NY Times)

TROY, N.Y. — On a hillside overlooking this college town on the banks of the Hudson, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has erected a technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses.

Eight years and $200 million in the making, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or Empac, resembles an enormous 1950s-era television set.

But inside are not old-fashioned vacuum tubes but the stuff of 21st-century high-tech dreams dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before, its creators say — 220,000 square feet of theaters, studios and work spaces hooked to supercomputers.

Read more at NY TIMES

Shirley Ann Jackson, a physicist and the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in front of the dome of the new theater.

This album cover below has got to be one of the coolest. I mean, I dream of sitting on a fat slize of pie playing my synth. One day…

Neil Rolnick, composer and faculty member of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

EMPAC's Opening – experimental media and performing arts center – troy, ny usa