Auditorium with Jamie Drouin Two Person Sound Performance
45:00
2006 - 2007


Performance History

Mutek 2007, SAT, Montreal QC, June 1, 2007
The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle WA, November 18, 2006


Description

Auditorium is a live sound collaboration between Seattle artist Yann Novak and Victoria artist Jamie Drouin. The two artists first met on a panel discussion hosted by Seattle’s 2006 Decibel Festival at the Henry Art Gallery, and both immediately recognized a connection between their two bodies of soundwork; using altered field recordings and sharing a mutual interest in exploring the ability of sound to alter the atmosphere of spaces we inhabit—physically and emotionally.

Two months later, the two artists met once again at the Henry Art Gallery to perform Auditorium, which uses the performance space itself as a sonic point of departure. Recordings made by Novak of the empty space were amplified and layered to create a singular, modulating drone which enhanced the particular ‘fingerprint’ of the space. Drouin’s approach was to define the space with a more scalpel-like hand, inserting sonic pings and rhythms which called attention to the depth and scale of the auditorium, and to interject more textural sounds which would occasionally push the listeners attention outside of the building, reminding them of the thin membrane between the inside/outside worlds.


Reviews

A/Visions 3 was focused on atmospheric droning tones, with Jamie Drouin and Yann Novak (CA) beginning the evening with emotional waves of tone and texture that built up in parallel to the lighting in the room. While the program stated that the source material was the room itself, one would be hard pressed to find an aesthetic connection between the source and the end result. Nevertheless, it was still one of the most dramatic experimental pieces presented at Mutek, and quite beautiful.

After a stunned audience remembered to begin its thunderous applause, Robert Henke (a.k.a. Monolake) took the stage amid applause of his own. His “Layering Buddha” is a piece inspired by the Buddha Machine, a transistor-radio-size ambient-tone-generator box produced by artist collective FM-3. While Henke’s piece might have been slightly more satisfying to those intimately familiar with the Buddha Machine’s preset atmospheres, everyone in the room was content to soak up the beauty of his re-processed end result. Once the gorgeous tones receded and all the audio grains fell into silence, the crowd erupted with a standing ovation. Needless to say, A/Visions 3 was one of the highlights of the festival.
– Grooves Magazine


Jamie Drouin and Yann Novak will be playing the SAT itself. Parts exploration of psychoacoustics, architecture and audience, their "Auditorium" uses recordings of the performance space augmented with more exploratory tones to highlight environmental influence on performance in a new twist on the classic "I Am Sitting In A Room". The infamy of the SAT building as a performance space, especially the leakage of street noise into the building, makes this one of the most thought provoking shows of the festival.
– Panpot


Artists Jamie Drouin and Yann Novak presented their breakthrough project Auditorium, an experimental sound cycle that uses performance space as the meeting point for a medley of static, field, and found sounds. The result is an interactive sound journey shared by a dazzled audience.
– The Link


On Friday evening SAT provided the open space needed for the featured performers. Opening the set was Jamie Drouin and Yann Novak’s Auditorium. The space was lit by mirroring tonal, stark white video, almost white noise drone. The open hiss and whir and rumble opened quite slow and steadily as the two were situated facing each other, dressed completely in black. The deadpan drill of layered atmospheres they created grew subtley larger with a far-reaching quadrophonic like surround sound effect. On par with similar past performances in the same setting by Angel and Alva Noto (both back in ‘04), these gentlemen were at peak level as the a/v experience was fully immersive, wrapping and slithering around me like a wild amphibian. One of the major highlights this year by far. A duo to watch.
– Igloo Magazine