Emptyset is a

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

-based production project, formed in 2005 by James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas. Ginzburg and Purgas say that by working across performance, installation and the moving image they are examining the physical properties of sound, the legacy of analogue media reflecting upon structural/materialist art production and the perceptual boundaries between noise and music. Emptyset has produced installations for

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

and the Architecture Foundation in London, and presented live performances at

Arnolfini Arnolfini is an international arts centre and gallery in Bristol, England. It has a programme of contemporary art exhibitions, artist's performance, music and dance events, poetry and book readings, talks, lectures and cinema. There is also a ...

, Spike Island Artspace,

Kunsthalle Zürich The Kunsthalle Zürich is a contemporary art exhibition centre in Zurich, Switzerland. It is located on Limmatstrasse, near the city centre. A number of temporary exhibitions are organized each year. In 2014 Daniel Baumann replaced Beatrix Ruf ...

Sonic Acts Sonic Acts is an organisation for the research, development and production of works at the intersection of art, science and theory. It also commissions and co-produces new works, often in collaboration with international festivals, arts organisati ...

XIV and Club transmediale (CTM) festival. Writing in the magazine ''Fact'', Josh Hall stated that the duo "are preoccupied with interstitial spaces: the points at which distortion takes on its own volition; at which form begins to dictate content; at which techno yields to the equipment with which it is made." Ginzburg and Purgas began Emptyset in 2005 to explore their shared interests in rhythmic music and bass. Both have backgrounds within Bristol's club music scene: Ginzburg runs Multiverse, a studio complex and collective of record labels that initiated (among others) Pinch's

Tectonic Tectonics (; ) are the processes that control the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. These include the processes of mountain building, the growth and behavior of the strong, old cores of continents ...

and Subtext, which has released many of Emptyset's earlier releases. He also produces club tracks as 'Ginz'. Purgas, who now lives in London, has a history in art and sound art curation, a background in

techno Techno is a Music genre, genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally music production, produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central Drum beat, rhythm is typ ...

, and curates exploratory electronic music events under the banner 'We Can Elude Control'.

Releases

* ''Blossoms''

Thrill Jockey Thrill Jockey is an American independent record label established by former Atlantic Records A&R representative Bettina Richards and based in Chicago. History Richards started the label in 1992 with $35,000 of family and personal capital, while ...

(Okt 2019) * ''Borders''

(2017) * ''Recur'' Raster-Noton (2013) * ''Material'' Subtext recordings (2013) * ''Collapsed'' Raster-Noton (2012) * ''Medium'' Subtext recordings (2012) * ''Demiurge'' Subtext recordings (2011) * ''Emptyset'' Caravan recordings (2010)

Projects

*An installation presented within the central courtyard of the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, developed as part of the museum's programme exploring sound, performance and architecture. *A project commissioned by Spike Island Artspace as a collaborative installation with the Turkish visual artist Cevdet Erek. *A film developed for Tate Britain’s Performing Architecture programme, produced inside the decommissioned

Trawsfynydd nuclear power station Trawsfynydd nuclear power station ( cy, Atomfa Trawsfynydd) is a decommissioned Magnox nuclear power station situated in Snowdonia National Park in Gwynedd, Wales. The plant, which became operational in 1965, was the only nuclear power station i ...

in North Wales. *An installation, commissioned by the Architecture Foundation, that took place in a former concrete testing bunker, the Ambika P3 space beneath Baker Street in London. The project took advantage of the site's huge reverberation and its resonant frequencies to produce a dense sonic installation. * A site-specific performance presented inside Chislehurst Caves in Kent. *A project based around

Woodchester Mansion Woodchester Mansion is an unfinished, Gothic revival mansion house in Nympsfield, Gloucestershire, England. It is on the site of an earlier house known as Spring Park. The mansion is a Grade I listed building. The mansion was abandoned by its b ...

in Gloucestershire, England.

References

{{Authority control British sound artists Living people British experimental musicians Year of birth missing (living people) Musical_groups_from_Bristol