EMPAC Diffusive Panel

The acoustically diffusive panels that clad the Studio walls of Rensselaer’s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center were developed over two years and three generations of fabrication and testing. The final form is cylindrical with a binary arrangement of surface holes on a fine grid. The composition was determined by the partition function from number theory, though any sequence random in appearance would perform just as well. The holes are normal to the local surface, requiring flexible molds created from a resin positive.