Did you miss last year’s Audium residency shows? In anticipation of this year’s residency premiere (Feb 9, 2023), Audium is winding back to one year ago. Residency Rewind: New Voices is a limited rerun of the historic first residency, a reimagining of the space through immersive compositions of spatial sound.
During three months of creation, artists explored sound movement, texture, and spatialization within Audium’s unique, pitch-black 176-speaker space. Bay Area-based artists Victoria Shen, Alexa Burrell, and Noah Berrie established a conversation with each other and with the space, generating multiple dialogues to push the threshold of listening and imagination. The show extends beyond the speaker space, spilling out into the lobby with elements of sound, light, and projection surrounding the audience from the moment they enter the building.
Sound artist Victoria Shen has composed a four-dimensional love letter to Audium . Drawing from the analog modes of composition and music making within her own art practice, Shen tailored her piece using analog synthesis, record manipulation, electroacoustic instruments, and reclaimed piano wire.
Alexa Burrell’s A(Void) Fire is an afro-surrealist techno-horror fairytale about a Black woman who is haunted by a demonic embodiment of her comfort zone. Climate catastrophe, emotional contradictions and tensions between the natural and digital world come to a head as she summons the spirit of Calafia to break free.
Noah Berrie’s Without Organs is a conversation between the body and space. The body, wired to transducers, becomes a resonator; speakers click, snap, and throb to life; the entire building activates as a sympathetic, vibrating, encompassing mass. It is about dissolution of form and imagining a truly free body – formless, unbounded, and flowing.
Audium is the only theater of its kind in the world, pioneering the exploration of space in music for over 50 years. Listeners are bathed in sound which is moved about the space in real-time. "Sound sculptures" are performed in the darkness of the 49-seat theater.
Residency Rewind: New Voices runs Janurary 19-21 & January 26-28, 2023; doors are at 7:00pm and the show begins promptly at 7:30pm. Admission is $25. Tickets on sale now.
Cost: $25