🕚 Date & Time: Saturday, September 14th, 2025 at 12:00-5PM PM ET
📍 Location: Nolan Park, in the lawn area adjacent to Harvestworks Art and Technology Program, Building 10a, Nolan Park, Governors Island
🎟️ Free and open to the public
32-Channel Grove is a long-form sound performance using 32 speakers spread throughout the lawn area in Nolan Park. The speakers play harmonized tones, creating the experience of a massive spatialized chordal structure which the audience is able to walk through and explore, driving their own sonic experience via proximity to individual tonal elements.
32-Channel Grove is a long-form sound performance using 32 spatialized speaker channels spread throughout the lawn area in Nolan Park. The speakers play harmonized tones, creating the experience of a massive spatialized chordal structure which the audience is able to walk through and explore, driving their own sonic experience via their proximity to individual tonal elements. The synthesized electronic
sound will blend with sonic elements present in the natural environment, creating a harmonious union of electronically synthesized and natural environmental audio. The piece is controlled by the ShiftDriver Spatial Audio System, a custom electronic audio platform designed by the artist. The system controls the 32 speakers via wire runs from the central controller, allowing the artist to compose the tonal structure in real time in response to the natural environment. This piece is produced as part of the artist’s 2025 NYSCA Support for Artists Grant and builds on Cathedral-64, the artist’s 2023 installation at Harvestworks on Governors Island. Both these pieces are part of a longterm body of work using the ShiftDriver system building towards the creation of TEMPLE-65536: the world’s largest spatial audio instrument as a permanent installation open to artists and composers from around the world.
Emmett Palaima is an artist working with electronics and esoteric processes of sound creation. His work is conceptually rooted in the idea that technology and magic are one and the same, and that electricity is a manifestation of the divine or elemental forces underlying physical reality. He creates instruments which explore the experience of sound as an embodied, physical process and the sculptural beauty of the systems used in sound creation.
His practice approaches music history through a materialist lens: that the technological tools used to make music drive its stylistic development, and that by building new platforms for sonic experience, it is possible to advance the music-historical process. A key feature of this approach is collaboration, making the instruments he creates accessible to other performers thereby sharing and more fully exploring their sonic and creative potential. This approach centers on a long-term body of work building towards the creation of TEMPLE-65536: the world’s largest spatial audio instrument as a permanent installation open to artists and composers from around the world.
He has been an artist-in-residence at Harvestworks and a recipient of a NYSCA Support for Artists Grant. In 2024, he opened Chambers Hum, a public sound artwork developed in collaboration with the NYC MTA, active seven days a week on the Chambers St A/C subway platform. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Currents New Media Festival and Fusebox Festival. He has worked as a Sound Technologist for immersive installations with Meow Wolf Creative Studios and Dadalab, and contributed to projects for the Whitney Biennial, the Palm Springs Art Museum, and the CalArts MTIID Program. He has toured as a guitarist with Elizabeth Colour Wheel and played electronic ensemble sets at Moogfest and MASS MoCA. He has also worked professionally as a designer of guitar pedals and synthesizers. His practice is a consolidation of these diverse influences, combiningelements of functional and aesthetic design, sound, performance and architectural space. He lives in New York City.
🌐 WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
https://emmettpalaima.com/GALLERY
https://www.instagram.com/hammerhead_audio/?hl=en