Biography
Yann Novak [b. 1979] is a Los Angeles–based artist, composer and technologist whose work draws from his unique perspective as a queer autodidact. Working critically with technology, Novak uses sound and light to explore questions of presence, agency, and technological influence, transforming these intangible materials into human-scaled encounters that blur the physical and the virtual. Novak’s diverse body of work—installations, performances, sound diffusions, recording, videos, browser-based works, and prints—invites participants to inhabit spaces that resist commodification through direct, embodied experience.
His work has been experienced through performances at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha [2024, 2021]; Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane [2023]; PICA, Portland [2019]; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane [2019]; Desert Daze, California [2018]; Fylkingen, Stockholm [2018]; Iklectik, London [2018]; de Young Museum, San Francisco [2016]; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles [2016]; Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park [2014]; The Stone, New York [2011]; LACMA, Los Angeles [2010]; and Mutek Festival, Montreal [2007]; among others. Novak’s work has been exhibited at Dimensions Variable, Miami [2020]; Human Resources, Los Angeles [2017]; The Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades, California [2016]; The Broad, Los Angeles [2015]; Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles [2014]; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, California [2011]; Soundfjord, London [2010]; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle [2009]; and SFMoMA, San Francisco [2009]; among others. His compositions have been released by Room40, Touch, LINE, 901 Editions, and Dragon’s Eye Recordings, among others.
Over the years, Novak has collaborated with artists including Ohan Breiding, Rebecca Bruno, Celer, Richard Chartier, rafa esparza, Steven Miller, Robert Takahashi Novak, taisha paggett, Fabio Perletta, Alex Schweder, and others on projects ranging from sound collaborations to scores for dance and installation.
Novak’s recent honors include the designation of Cultural Trailblazer by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs [2021-2022], and the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists [2019]. He has participated in numerous artists residencies including Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, Melbourne [2019]; EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm [2018]; Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles [2015]; Taliesin Artist Residency, Spring Green, Wisconsin [2014]; Touch Mentorship Programme, London [2014]; Jental Artist Residency, Sharidan, Wyoming [2010], among others. Novak’s work has been the subject of articles and reviews in publications including C Magazine, Drain Magazine, Inside Art, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Neural Magazine, Signal to Noise, The Stranger, and The Wire, among others.
Beyond his studio practice, Novak operates the design studio 3n Design, where he works hands-on with independent artists and cultural organizations to build websites and digital infrastructure using open-source technologies and sustainable web practices. In 2024, he founded Substratum, an organization dedicated to preserving independent websites in an attempt to preserve the fabric and diversity of the open-web. Through these ventures, Novak champions the principles of the open web—independence, decentralization, interoperability, and universal access.
As a curator, Novak focuses on creating opportunities for artists and audiences to build communities that otherwise might not exist. This began in 2005 when he re-launched his father’s imprint Dragon’s Eye Recordings with a new focus on limited edition releases by emerging and mid-career sound artists, composers, and producers. In 2018, Novak refocused the imprint to emphasize the elevation of marginalized voices in experimental music. Since its re-launch, Dragon’s Eye Recordings has published over 100 editions and has received critical acclaim internationally. From 2013 to 2024, he was a member of VOLUME, a curatorial collective dedicated to presenting time-based work by emerging and established artists engaged in sound-based practices through performances, concerts, exhibitions, screenings, workshops, and publications. From 2023 to 2024, he was a member of the curator led gallery Monte Vista Projects, where he helped organize various exhibitions including solo shows by Dorian Wood and Joey Veltkamp. In 2022 Novak started his bi-monthly radio show Sounds Towards A Queer Ambitopia where he imagines sonic worlds beyond the utopian/dystopian binary—through queer and queered sounds.
Artist Statement
As an artist, I am informed by my unique perspective as a queer technologist and autodidact. In my work, I explore questions of presence, agency, and technological influence through the construction of immersive spaces that resist commodification through direct, embodied experience. Rooted in the “objectless” nature of intangible materials—sound and light—my work often takes on an intermediate character, offering enough information to transform space while offering room for unmediated experience. By fostering these conditions, I invite audiences to reclaim agency over their own experience.
My work draws on a wide range of sources, including raw and altered field recordings, analog and digital sound synthesis, manipulated artificial and natural light, code and data, and projection to produce slowly evolving and interlaced sonic and visual fields. Drawing from the historical lineages of experimental electronic music and the Light and Space movement, my work engages critically with technology and modernism, questioning the utopian promises while embracing art’s capacity to resist fixed interpretation. Through careful consideration, my works not only address experience and sensation, but simultaneously create space for agency and embodiment. Taking the form of installations, performances, sound diffusions, recording, videos, browser-based works, and prints, my work invites participants to question both the physical and the virtual.