Series II. Randy Yau currently serves as Vice President of 23five Incorporated, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and increased awareness of sound works in the public arena, and to the support and education of artists working with and discussing the medium of sound. He founded Activating the Medium, an annual festival bringing sound artists from all over the world to perform, exhibit and lecture. Activating the Medium hosted artists such as: John Duncan, Matt Heckert, Steve Roden, Sheri Simons, Neil Grimmer, Brandon Labelle, Kimhide Kusafuka, Koji Tano & more. Mr. Yau is an active performer of sound sculpture and sound recordings. He has performed and exhibited extensively throughout the West Coast of the United States & Japan, with artists such as Incapacitants, Masonna, Scot Jenerik, Achim Wollscheid, Crawl Unit, Zbigniew Karkowski, Geoffrey Brandin, Speculum Fight, K. Mizutani, Destroy All Monsters, Kazumoto Endo and more. Randy Yau also founded Auscultare Research, a record label releasing sound works from artists all over the world. He has conducted radio programs focused on noise & sound art for over 8 years, including Dark Market Broadcast.
Randy Yau’s recordings deal with conceptual ideas that challenge sound and the physicality of it’s form. Yau aims to recreate sound in kinetic sequences that are organically impossible or absolutely inhuman. Although his sounds may sound “real” or “natural” in occurance, they are far from it. Abject actions and organic sounds are recorded and meticulously re-constructed to create sound incidents virtually non-existent either in nature or occurring as a function of time. Composed in a manner of “existence vs. void,” Yau confronts the listener with distressed silence and pulverizing anxiety
