In San Francisco, on Bush St., there stands Audium Theatre with 49 seats where listeners are surrounded by speakers in sloping walls, a floating floor, and a suspended ceiling. The room is completely dark. It is the Sound-Sculptured Space where compositions are performed live at each program by a tape performer who directs the sounds through a custom console to any combination of the 176 speakers.
“I have always been possessed by the evocative qualities all sounds seem to have, whether natural or electronic, says composer Stan Shaff. "Sounds touch deeper levels of our inner life, layers that lie just beneath the visual world. All sounds are communicative — sound as birth, life and death; sound as time and space; sound as object, environment, or event. Audiences should feel sound as it bumps up against them, caresses, travels through, covers and enfolds them.”
Ongoing; Friday and Saturday nights at 8:30. Audium: Sound-Sculpted Space. No children under 12. Tickets: $20. For more information: www.audium.org.