Bristol based production project formed in 2005 by James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas. Working across performance, installation and the moving image the project examines the physical properties of sound, through electromagnetism, architecture and process based image making. Their work considers the legacy of analogue media reflecting upon structural/materialist art production and the perceptual boundaries between noise and music. Their recorded output includes the releases Recur and Collapsed for as well as Medium, an expanded live recording in Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire. Emptyset have produced installations for Tate Britain and the Architecture Foundation in London, and presented live performances at Arnolfini, Spike Island, Kunsthalle Zurich, Sonic Acts XIV and Club transmediale (CTM) festival. They 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. You might refer to Emptyset’s album work as process music, but their processes are definitively separate from the practices of composers like Reich or Stockhausen. Although Emptyset often explore the potential of composition based on complex “rule-sets”, the duo instead seem primarily interested in the potential of hardware; in the unpredictable possibilities of analogue boxes in labyrinthine signal chains.
http://emptyset.org.uk