The show features Bay Area-based artists Victoria Shen, Alexa Burrell, and Noah Berrie. They have established a conversation with each other and with the space, generating multiple dialogues to push the threshold of listening and imagination. The residents have designed their own original works, along with custom controllers to enable each to perform their sound movement live.
New Voices is an experience that 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.
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. Shen has also built custom equipment allowing her to dynamically control the extreme textures and gestural sounds of her piece in real time, producing an experience as singular as the Audium itself. Note: Victoria’s work will be played at each show throughout the series, but she will not be performing live on 3/17/22.
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 Organ Music 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.
Learn more about Audium’s Residency Program here.
This program is funded in part through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.