Audium (theater)
Encyclopedia
Audium is a unique sound art phenomenon that has been presented weekly in San Francisco since 1967. Audium is a creation of composer Stan Shaff that is performed on original equipment designed by Doug McEachern. It is played in a completely dark theater designed to heighten the spatial effects of sound and for "choreographing sound in space." Compositions are developed from acoustic and electronic instruments and from sounds of the natural world used as metaphors. Works are "sculpted" in space through 176 speakers.
Audium has pioneered the language of space in music for over 50 years, as progressively complex compositions evolved jointly with originally-designed performance equipment. Its three major concerns have been development and exploration of space as a language of music composition, live performance in a space uniquely-designed for spatial composition, and the role of the environment in the totality of the work.

Early Development

The concepts gradually refined in Audium began with Shaff and McEachern's experimental electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

 performances in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1959, Stan Shaff met fellow musician and teacher Douglas McEachern, whose background in electronics enabled him to develop original equipment systems for live, spatial performances. Prior to Audium, Shaff and McEachern worked with Anna Halprin
Anna Halprin
Anna Halprin helped pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to herself as the breaker of modern dance. Halprin, along with her contemporaries such as Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, and Robert Morris, collaborated and built a community based...

's Dancer's Workshop and Shaff worked with Seymour Locks, an artist and the originator of the overhead projected light show later used widely at rock concerts in the 1960s. Shaff was also associated with the Tape Music Center
San Francisco Tape Music Center
The San Francisco Tape Music Center was founded in 1962 by composers Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender as a "nonprofit cultural and educational corporation, the aim of which was to present concerts and offer a place to learn about work within the tape music medium"...

 in San Francisco. Early presentations were done at University of California Extension (1960), San Francisco State College (1962) and San Francisco Museum of Art (1963, 1964). These early performances were done with "portable systems" that had about 8 to 16 speakers.

The First Theater

To proceed with experimenting and with exploring these ideas, McEachern and Shaff, in 1965, leased a hall at 309 4th Avenue in San Francisco and began adapting it to become the first Audium theater. It initially was outfitted with 44 speakers, and on May 26, 1967 the first public performance was held. By 1968 the number of speakers had increased to 61. Weekly performances were presented until October 2, 1970. The theater had to close when the lease ended and the building was sold.

The Second Theater

In 1972 Shaff received a grant from National Endowment for the Arts. A storefront, formerly a bakery, in downtown San Francisco was purchased and subsequently converted to a theater. The first public presentation was October 31, 1975 and weekend shows have continued since then. Beginning with 136 speakers, the phenomenon has gradually and unrelentingly grown and evolved. It now has over 176 speakers, and Stan Shaff presents his 9th opus, AUDIUM 9, every Friday and Saturday, opening at 8 PM.

Attendance & Acclaim

The performances have been described as "surreal" and a "musique concrete
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...

." Another author said that Audium harnesses "the primal essence of sound" and that after a performance "you'll emerge uncertain, excitable, outside of yourself." According to Shaff, Audium is periodically visited by members of Walt Disney Imagineering, the R&D arm of the Walt Disney Company, engineers from Dolby Laboratories, sound engineers from the film industry, the Audio Engineering Society, and composers from international universities. Shaff has done very little advertising, but after ongoing programs since 1967, Audium now attracts weekly listeners from around the world.
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