Emptyset is a

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...

-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 En ...

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

Spike Island Artspace Spike Island Artspace is an arts centre and art studio complex in Bristol, England. It occupies a former Brooke Bond tea packing factory in the Spike Island neighbourhood. It is a place for the production and exhibition of contemporary art an ...

, Kunsthalle Zürich,

Sonic Acts Sonic Acts is an interdisciplinary arts organisation focused on the research, development, and production of work at the intersection of art, science, and theory. It serves as a platform for international projects, artistic research, and the com ...

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 ( via Latin ) are the processes that result in the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. The field of ''planetary tectonics'' extends the concept to other planets and moons. These processes ...

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 genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...

, 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 (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

, developed as part of the museum's programme exploring sound, performance and architecture. *A project commissioned by

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 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 in Gloucestershire, England.

References

{{Authority control British sound artists Living people British experimental musicians Year of birth missing (living people) Musical groups from Bristol