A matched set of empty rooms sit across from each other at the Henry, each with its own muted soundtrack. A speaker looks at you from each corner, while blond benches conceal the sound equipment. Four spotlights are directed at the benches, casting butter-pale walls into shadow. The rooms look identical. Only they don’t feel that way. This is +Room-Room, a two-part, two-artist sound installation composed using the gallery’s ambient noises. Both Seattle-based Yann Novak and Vancouver, B.C.–based Jamie Drouin began with the same aural details: whooshing, white-noise air conditioning, and a low mechanical drone. In creating +Room, Novak added to the room’s own noise, while Drouin took those sounds apart. Somehow -Room is, in fact, a more ominous place to be. +Room seems to ring with occasional church bells, punctuated by a fan’s live metallic percussion. -Room becomes a claustrophobic enclave of unspooling low drones, wave upon wave of murmuring tones. After you’re compelled to leave that space, you’ll notice that +Room wears its yellow walls at a somehow brighter hue.
– Adriana Grant (I Saw This: Rattle and Hum, The Seattle Weekly)

Please silence your cell phones, iPods, corduroy pants, and crinoline dresses. If you require hearing aids that can create interference with audio systems, go see the Henry’s excellent William Kentridge show instead while your friends listen carefully—very carefully—to the + Room, – Room installation. In these two small facing galleries, whispering, rustling, chewing gum, and hard-soled shoes are strongly discouraged. The trick to appreciate this collaboration between Yann Novak and Jamie Drouin is to walk back and forth between the two rooms (which consist of white walls, benches, and speakers) and listen for the difference. The two visiting artists built their sonic dialectic from the original gallery “room tones,” originally recording the buzz and thrum and hiss of the creaky old ducts when the Henry was completely silent and empty. (“We let the AC have its own individual voice,” Novak drolly said during a recent walk-through.) Then they added digital processing, and voilà—one room is positive, the other negative. One is more a low underscore hum, the other more a sibilant sine wave. Which artist created the soundtrack for which room? You’ll have to read the placards. It’s like the world’s slowest DJ battle, with the turntables running at two rpm.
– Brian Miller (The Weekly Wire, The Seattle Weekly)

In one room: white noise with an almost subsonic throb to it.

In the other room: a higher resonance, approaching but not quite reaching gamelan-chime or church-bell reverberation.

Now installed at the Henry Art Gallery, “+Room — Room” is a collaboration between sound artists Jamie Drouin, of Victoria, B.C., and Yann Novak, a former Seattleite based in Los Angeles. There’s nothing to look at here. The whole point is to highlight sounds that we “typically filter out,” the artists say.

The two men’s sound sources, recorded last summer when the museum was closed, are the Henry’s air-conditioning system and, they argue, the building’s architecture itself. Novak added resonance, extending the ventilation system’s “notes” while allowing it to “still have its own voice.” Drouin subtracted elements, with a muted result that, he says, is “almost like you’re hearing the lighting.”

The recorded sound, intended to interact with live ambient sound in the gallery, is barely audible to a casual gallery visitor. Drouin says he and Novak were after “a subtle experience” with their staggered 30-minute loops of sound that gradually go out of phase over the course of a museum day.

If the subtlety of an hourlong exchange between live ambient sound and recorded noise-manipulation isn’t your bag, you can also experience “+Room — Room” as a CD ($10 at the Henry’s gift shop). It makes for a nicely trippy headphone experience.
– Michael Upchurch (At the Henry Art Gallery, the sweet sounds of — the AC system?, The Seattle Times)

Empty rooms, ambient noise and benches are all that comprise the new +ROOM-ROOM exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery. Upon taking the time to listen carefully, however, the greater significance of the work can be found.

+ROOM-ROOM is the brainchild of sound artists Yann Novak and Jamie Drouin; it uses two separate sound installations in visually identical rooms to challenge preconceived notions regarding space and sound. The exhibit focuses on ambient noise recorded in the two galleries.

“We’re always drawn to visual cues in spaces, but rarely do we pick up on the auditory cues that fulfill our experiences in environments,” Drouin said. “Every space has its own sonic signature.”

Drouin’s piece, “-ROOM”, uses deep tones of ambient noise to create a sense of foreboding. It is reductive in that it houses a ventilation system that takes in air and has a significantly lower temperature than its counterpart. Together with four-channnel dimensional surround sound, this creates a dark, ominous atmosphere.

“We were really fascinated by these two rooms,” Novak said. “Visually, they are almost identical, but we realized that they have very different feels.”

Novak’s “+ROOM” is additive in its outward ventilation system and warmer temperature. The white noise has much lighter tones, and creates a softer atmosphere.

“We take the same starting point, and what we end up doing with that is actually quite distinct,” Drouin said. “It’s almost a portrait of how we work.”

The two artists decided to work together on the project after meeting at the Henry for another event and becoming intrigued by the identical architectural spaces. After taking an interest in one another’s work, they began collaborating and returned last year to record the soundtracks in the gallery.

“They wanted to explore the sonic signature of the rooms and at the same time explore their own differences as sound artists,” associate curator Sara Krajewski said in introducing the artists’ Feb. 6 performance at the gallery.

The physical separation of the rooms and the differences in their atmospheres create two distinct experiences for viewers and listeners. While the theme of auditory-spatial perception resonates throughout the exhibit, each room is a study in the unique perspective of ambient sound.

“We’ve noticed a parallel where we elaborate on our work in very different ways,” Novak said. “There are all these layers of similarities that we started compiling and elaborating on.”

The artists note that their auditory exhibit is an unfamiliar medium for many patrons and acknowledge that it requires a different form of appreciation.

“The nature of sound work is that there is an investment of time required,” Drouin said. “We are asking the audience to slow down more than they usually would.”
– Lexie Krell (The Sound of Art: New auditory exhibit at the Henry, The Daily)