The Aural Aesthetics of Modernity: From the Philips Pavilion to EMPAC

In autumn 2023, the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Music and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute presented Shifting Center , an exhibition that explored sound through geological formations, architecture, and cultural artefacts. Using spatialisation techniques such as higher-order ambisonics and wave field synthesis, the works created immersive and disorienting auditory experiences. Curators Vic Brooks and Nida Ghouse framed ‘shifting centre’ as a metaphor for dislocation, evoking feminist and political theories of marginalised peripheries and centralised power. While the exhibition was conceptually and technically ambitious, we argue that the aurality of EMPAC itself – marked by abstraction, isolation and immersion – ultimately muted its decolonial potential. By tracing a lineage of spatial audio from the 1958 Philips Pavilion, we examine how architectural acoustics shape the possibilities of what can be heard in EMPAC, limiting the aural and more-than-aural reception of works presented there.