Yolande Harris

Book Launch of ‘Playing the City: Interviews’ after the three editions of this exhibition in the city, curated by Matthias Ulrich at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. 57 artists respond to 10 questions.
20:00, 25 May 2012
Salon Noir, Hohenstaufenstraße 13-25, Frankfurt

Listening and Making the Inaudble Audible – Lecture for the class of Professor Richard Lerman at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
11:30, 27 March 2012

A day of studio visits with MFA students at CalArts Center for Integrated Media, with Edward Shanken.
14 March 2012

The doctoral dissertation ‘Scorescapes: On Sound Environment and Sonic Consciousness’ is available to download on the Leiden University Repository:
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/18184

Scorescapes: Abstract
This dissertation explores sound, its image and its role in relating humans and our technologies to the environment. It investigates two related questions: How does sound mediate our relationship to environment? And how can contemporary multidisciplinary art practices articulate and explore this relation between sound and environment? Read the rest of this entry »

A Radio piece for WDR by Andrea Gerk on the exhibition includes and interview with Yolande:
http://www.wdr3.de/resonanzen/details/artikel/wdr-3-resonanzen-13.html

A radio piece for Deutschlandradio ‚Breitband’ by Anja Krieger includes sound by Yolande:
http://breitband.dradio.de/tracing-mobility/

The public defense for Yolande’s Ph.D. research project “Scorescapes: on Sound, Environment and Sonic Consciousness” will take place at the Academiegebouw, Rapenburg 73, Leiden University,  NL. 
10:00, Tuesday 6 December, 2011.

Scorescapes: Abstract
This dissertation explores sound, its image and its role in relating humans and our technologies to the environment. It investigates two related questions: How does sound mediate our relationship to environment? And how can contemporary multidisciplinary art practices articulate and explore this relation between sound and environment? Read the rest of this entry »

Taking Soundings, Sun Run Sun and Navigating by Circles/Sextant will be shown in this group exhibition on experimental forms and implications of mapping and cartography in networked space.

Participants Include: Frank Abbott (UK), Aram Bartholl (DE), Neal Beggs (UK/FR), Heath Bunting (UK), Janet Cardiff /George Bures Miller (CAN), Miles Chalcraft (UK/DE), Simon Faithfull (UK), Yolande Harris (UK/NL), Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser (DE), Landon Mackenzie (CAN), Open_Sailing (FR/JP), Plan b (Sophia New & Dan Belasco Rogers) (UK/DE), Esther Polak & Ivar Van Bekkum (NL), Gordan Savicic (AT/NL), Mark Selby (UK), Michelle Teran (CAN/DE)

Tracing Mobility – Cartography and Migration in Networked Space
Exhibition, Symposium, Open Platform, at www.hkw.de
Opening: 23 November
24 Nov – 12 Dec 2011

We (Yolande Harris and Edward Shanken) are thrilled to announce the birth of our beautiful daughter Jasmin Aurora Zetta Zohara Harris Shanken! Born at home in Amsterdam at 13:07 on 19 September 2011. http://www.artexetra.com/JAZZ/

Harris Architects and Designers is the winner of the Premios de Arquitectura de Mallorca 2007-2010, awarded by the Col·legi d’Arquitectes de les Illes Balears (COAIB) for their House in a Fig Orchard.

The sound and video installation Pink Noise explores alternative, non-institutional experiments with hyrdophones to question our access to and influence on the underwater environment. Recorded in a National Marine Reserve, The Pink Noise of Pleasure Yachts in Turquoise Sea (full title) reveals unearthly anthropogenic sounds set against idyllic water. Part of the Scorescapes series.

Opening 10 May 2011, 19:00
Exhibition 10 May – 19 June 2011
WRO 14th Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw

Two installations and a full evening of Scorescapes works as part of the Sonic Unconscious series at Issue Project Room, New York. Including installations Tropical Storm, Pink Noise, lecture performance Tuning In/Spacing Out a collaboration with Edward Shanken, Fishing for Sound and SWAMP 3 with Kato Hideki, Jim Pugliese and William Lang.

Saturday 16 – Sunday 17 April 2011
Installations 17:00 – 19:00, Performance Saturday 19:00

Issue Project Room, Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St, Brooklyn, New York

Artist talk at STEIM Amsterdam, 11:00 – 13:00 Tuesday 22 March 2011

Performance of Fishing for Sound, at opening of exhibition “Dump Time. For a Practice of Horizontality”, on sleep, dreams and their effect on everyday life. Curated by Anke Hoffmann and Yvonne Volkart.

Shedhalle, Rote Fabrik, Seestrasse 395, Zurich
Opening: Friday 4 March 2011, 7pm

Taking Soundings and Navigating by Circles (Sextant) in traveling group exhibition Ground Level by the Hayward London, curated by Kit Hammonds, exploring how contemporary art practice, mapping and cartography collide. 

featuring artists; Maria Thereza Alves; The Atlas Group; Ricardo Basbaum; Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon; Center for Land Use Interpretation; Simon Evans; Yolande Harris; Christian Philipp Müller; Eyal Weizman and Stephen Willats.

 17 February 2011 – 10 April 2011 Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum, Leamington Spa, UK

Selected as a new research fellow of the Orpheus Research Center in Music – ORCiM – for 2011, as part of practice-based research with an international group of musician-researchers – “artistic experimentation in music”.

Taking Soundings and Navigating by Circles (Sextant) in traveling group exhibition Ground Level by the Hayward London, curated by Kit Hammonds, exploring how contemporary art practice, mapping and cartography collide. 

featuring artists; Maria Thereza Alves; The Atlas Group; Ricardo Basbaum; Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon; Center for Land Use Interpretation; Simon Evans; Yolande Harris; Christian Philipp Müller; Eyal Weizman and Stephen Willats.

 20 November 2010 – 3 January 2011 Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno, Wales

Presentation of paper ‘Scorescapes: the score as a bridge between sound, self and environment’, in the International ORCiM Seminar on Sound and Score, Orpheus Institute Gent.

16 December 2010

Tuning In, Spacing Out: the Art and Science of the Presentness of Sound, lecture and paper presentation with Edward Shanken at the University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts Albuquerque, US

M0nday 29th November 2010 (time and place tbc)

Tuning In, Spacing Out: the Art and Science of the Presentness of Sound, lecture and paper presentation with Edward Shanken at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art Graduate Center, Washington University, St. Louis, US.
16:30 – 19:30 Lewis Center, 8 November 2010

Performance of Fishing for Sound and new work on sound in sailing and swimming, in the environmental sound festival Ear to the Earth 2010, organised by Electronic Music Foundation (EMF) New York City. This years theme is ‘Water and the World’, including presentations by R.Murray Schafer, Bernie Krauss, Phil Niblock, Matt Rogalsky, Andrea Polli, David Rothernberg and others.

20:00, 28th October 2010, Greenwich House, Manhattan, NYC

Taking Soundings and Navigating by Circles (Sextant) in traveling group exhibition Ground Level by the Hayward London, curated by Kit Hammonds, exploring how contemporary art practice, mapping and cartography collide. 

featuring artists; Maria Thereza Alves; The Atlas Group; Ricardo Basbaum; Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon; Center for Land Use Interpretation; Simon Evans; Yolande Harris; Christian Philipp Müller; Eyal Weizman and Stephen Willats.

Opening 17 September, exhibition 18 September – 31 October 2010  QUAD, Derby UK,

Therapy for Future Flooding is a new composition commissioned by Machine Project as part of the Little William Theater Festival of New Music at the Hammer Museum, UCLA Los Angeles. The piece imagines dream-like communication within a confined space between two musicians and two audience members in an intimate atmosphere. 

13:00 – 16:00 Saturday 11 September, 2010, Hammer Museum UCLA

Susana Zaragoza and Marta Colpani from Masters of New Media at University of Amsterdam use Sun Run Sun, Scorescapes and the walking piece experiments as case studies in a theoretical context in their thesis research “SPACE, but not as we know it: Locative Mapping and Non-Representational Geographies” and “New Media Shaping of Perception and the New Space of the Body”

Field: Thoughts on the Extremities of Field Recording published in the proceedings of the Sounding Out 5 Conference, Bournemouth UK, 8-10 September 2010

A special program Ruhrotronics: Klange der ISEA, by Marcus Gammel on DeutschlandRadio Kultuur. He has included excerpts from Yolande’s ISEA presentation Making the Inaudible Audible, Sun Run Sun and Pink Noise. 

3 September 2010, 00:05

Making the Inaudible Audible: Strategies and Disagreements (or Whale?) Paper presentation at International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), Dortmund.

10:00, Tuesday 24 August, 2010

A series of semi-improvised performances coming out of the week long Deep Listening Retreat, directed by Pauline Oliveros, Ione and Heloise Gold. The retreat and final performances work with techniques of listening, meditation, movement and dream practice.

22:00 Saturday July 10, 2010, Nau Coclea Music Festival, Spain

Ground Level 
Hayward Touring Curatorial Open II, John Hansard Gallery
29 June – 21 August 2010

This exhibition brings together international artists who perform their own personal forms of cartography in their practice. The resulting works suggest maps and surveys, but rather than portraying a singular worldview they put forward idiosyncratic readings of place, drawing from the shared landscapes of language, peoples and signs as well as geography. Curated by Kit Hammonds, winner of the 2010 Curatorial Open.

Maria Thereza Alves | The Atlas Group | Ricardo Basbaum | Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon | Center for Land Use Interpretation | Simon Evans | Yolande Harris | Christian Philipp Müller | Eyal Weizman | Stephen Willats

Yolande gives an artist talk called Sound Flares and Scorescapes, at concert/lecture series Certain Sundays curated by Chris Heenan and Christopher Williams. The evening also includes a lecture by Edward Shanken, Contemporary Art and New Media: Towards a Hybrid Discourse?

17:00 – 19:00, 6 June 2010, at Sowieso, Neukoelln, Berlin.

An evening performance exploring the edges between environmental recordings and acoustic improvisation, makes the second version of  S.W.A.M.P. (Some Wayward Attempts at Monitoring Prawns) (after Diapason Gallery, NY June 2009). Yolande Harris’ environmental and underwater sounds, with Christopher Williams (double bass), Morton Olsen (bass drum) and Werner Dafedecker (double bass).

21:00 at Galerie Mario Mazzoli, Berlin, 5 June 2010

The Sonic Acts XIII Festival on The Poetics of Space, was reviewed in the May issue of Wire Magazine by Rhama Khazam. She singled out Fishing for Sound in the concerts and performance section of the festival:

“Yolande Harris’s Fishing for Sound brilliantly exploited sound’s capacity to conjure up a sense of place. Associating underwater sounds with sounds used to treat stress disorder and sonified data from satellites, it connected outer space with mental and underwater spaces, inviting listeners to think back on their own experiences of such envrionments and their sounds.”

“Resonator is a procedural performance-workshop and idea exchange which investigates diverse artistic, materialist and spiritualist practices that converge around the importance of vibration as a means of making sense of the universe.”

A solo performance Fishing for Sound based on underwater recordings and a presentation in the conference with art historian media theorist Edward Shanken. Sonic Acts Festival, The Poetics of Space, Amsterdam

Pink Noise or The Pink Noise of Pleasure Yachts in Turquoise Sea. Video and sound installation using underwater recordings collected at a National Marine Reserve in Spain during a Sunday in August

Group exhibition Esemplasticism: The Truth is a Compromise, Tag / Club TransMediale, Berlin

Guest lecture at Symposium SICA/Dutch Centre for International Cultural Activities and Trans Artists and the launch of  SICA’s new international magazine Dutch Mountains, with interview.

“On how hospitality and tolerance in the arts effect the mobility of artists and therefore the appointed structures of hospitality – residences, guest studios and artist initiatives.”

15:30- 18:30, Smart Project Space, Arie Biemonstraat 111, Amsterdam

1/12/2009 – 4/12/2009

Satellite Sounding, a sound piece from Sun Run Sun which uses sonified data from GPS satellites combined with peoples spoken reactions, will be played at the LuisterSalon, Vrouw en Muziek, Kunstenaarssocieteit Arti et Amicitiae Amsterdam.

13/11/2009 20:00

Collaborative work by Erik DeLuca, Charles Stankievech, Yolande Harris

Ponce Inlet is an immersive, spatialized, hypnotic sonic exploration of a narrow body of water, an entrance, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal waterway and the Indian River in Florida. The material for the composition was recorded with an array of three hydrophones, mapped by the triangular shape of a boat’s hull and a set of air microphones used to capture the simultaneous sounds produced in air.

FEASt FES, Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center, Miami Florida

9/11/2009 16:30

Guest Lecture, ArtScience InterFaculty colloqium, Royal Academy of Art / Royal Conservatory of Music, Leiden University, The Hague.

13/10/2009

A new interview on Scorescapes called Dolphins, Spectograms and Scorescapes: an Interview with Yolande Harris with Morgan Currie on Masters of Media Blog, University of Amsterdam.

14/9/2009 21:30

Now Stripe Time: On tropical rain, dolphins echolocation and the pink noise of pleasure yachts in turquoise sea.
New sound and video performance at DNK concert series, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam

18/7/2009 – 20/7/2009

Residency at STEIM working on underwater sound recordings and spectograms, Amsterdam.
(image of a dolphin echo-locating)

15/7/2009

Visit and presentation to Michel Andre’s underwater research group, Laboratory for Applied Bio-Acoustics (LAB), Vilanova, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona.

17/6/2009

S.W.A.M.P. (Some Wayward Attempts at Monitoring Prawns) Three low-flying birds cross paths in the Florida swamps: new field recordings by Yolande Harris guide a mobile evening-length improvisation with Christopher Williams, Kato Hideki, Stephen Menotti, Diapason Gallery, Brooklyn, New York.

5/6/2009

Premier of new video installation Tiger in a Tropical Storm, Theatre of the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida.

3/6/2009 21:30

Making the Inaudible Audible, concert and video/sound installations of work dealing with our perception usually un-perceivable qualities such as underwater and ultrasound. Including collaborative work by Eric deLuca, Charles Stankievich and Yolande Harris, and David Dunn. At the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida.

1/6/2009 19:00

Concert of pieces by Alvin Lucier, Quasimodo, ACA Memory Space, I am Sitting in a Room, Chambers and installation Music fore Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums; put together and performed by Associate Artists at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida.

25/5/2009

Book Launch, Aiming for Dead Reckoning: Yolande Harris in conversation with Annet Dekker, in Navigating E-culture publication by Virtueel Platform, Amsterdam.

18/5/2009 – 7/6/2009

Residency as Associate Artist to work with Alvin Lucier at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida.

20/4/2009 – 6/5/2009

Sun Run Sun Satellite Sounders will be presented as part of the exhibition Playing the City “an attempt to open up public space as a collective, free, and configurable space”. Twenty international artists, including Allan Kaprow, Dara Friedman, Dora Garcia, Rirkrit Tiravanija, with events in downtown Frankfurt. Documented on the website and blog. At the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt.

17/4/2009 17:00

Live performance during Edward Shanken’s book opening Art and Electronic Media, Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) Amsterdam.

21/3/2009

Satellite Sounding will be played at the 8th Annual International Women’s Electroacoustic Listening Room Project (WEALR09) as part of the New Music Festival at California State University, Los Angeles.

17/3/2009, 20:30

Musical experiments into underwater creatures and the aqueous properties of the contra-bass flute. Part of Scorescapes. New sound works with electronics and contrabass flute played by Ned McGowan Karnatic Lab evening, Muziekcentrum De Badkuyp, Amsterdam.

10/2/2009, 20:30

New work in progress! Presentation of current experiments into scores, environment and sonic consciousness at Karnatic Lab evening, Muziekcentrum De Badkuyp, Amsterdam.

31/1/2009, 20:00

Performance of Sun Run Sun, Royal Society for Netherlands Musicology KVNM, Aula of the University of Utrecht.

31/1/2009, 14:30

Invited Lecture “Scorescapes: Between the Map and the Music”, Royal Society for Netherlands Musicology KVNM, during a congress on the future of dutch musicology – international, interdisciplinary and practice based research.

19/12/2008

Presentation of current research work Scorescapes on Scores, Environment and Sonic Consciousness at the Orpheus Institute Ghent, Belgium

13/12/2008

My new sound piece, Satellite Sounding, which uses recordings of satellites from Genova, Los Angeles, Singapore and at sea, to combine with peoples spoken reactions, will be played at the Luister Salon, Vrouw en Muziek, Korzo Theatre, Den Haag.

Publication 2008

Taking Soundings and Sun Run Sun / Satellite Sounders are featured in the new publication Creative Interactions – The MobileMusicWorkshop 2004 – 2008, edited by Nicolaj Kirisits, Frauke Behrendt, Lalya Gaye, Atau Tanaka
University for Applied Arts, Vienna, 2008. Read the review on We-Make-Money-Not-Art The book can be ordered online at http://www.mobilemusicworkshop.org

Publication 2008

My article Building as Instrument is part of the new book on audio art, Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time and Culture,
edited by Ros Bandt, Michelle Duffy and Dolly MacKinnon, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2007, paperback coming out in 2009. Read review.

4/11/2008

I’ll be leading this first Scorescapes workshop with a group of students in the multimedia and performance group Re-Active Platform, at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.

28/9/2008 14:00

Artist presentation/performance Sun Run Sun, alongside Esther Polak and A.I.R., during the Re:visie Lab / Netherlands Film Festival Theater de Kikker, Utrecht

24/9/2008 – 26/9/2008

Artist in Residence at PICNIC : Satellite Sounders hosted by Virtueel Platform and <>TAG at the new media conference PICNIC Amsterdam

1/9/2008

Awarded the Basisstipendium from the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture Fonds BKVB

29/7/2008 11:00

Artist presentation Sun Run Sun during the 14th International Symposium for Electronic Arts ISEA 2008 Singapore

(with funding from the Mondriaan Foundation)

18/6/2008 – 5/10/2008

Taking Soundings Scores

3 large prints of the ’scores’ from Taking Soundings presented as part of the group exhibition Possibility of Action, the Life of the Score Including work by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Alvin Lucier, Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, James Tenney and more, curated by Barbara Held and Pilar Subira. Download pdf of exhibition catalogue

MACBA Contemporary Art Museum Barcelona.

6/6/2008 16:00 – 18:00hrs

Artist Walks – Satellite Sounders

Walks with the Satellite Sounders during NIME 8th International Conference New Interfaces for Musical Expression.
The walks will be in the grounds of the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genova, Italy.

18/5/2008 14:00

El Camino

A work in progress presentation/performance of a series on sounding actual journeys – this one weaves around the routes of the 18th century Spanish missionaries in California. At Studio Loos Experiments # 6 concert, Den Haag.

11/5/2008 14:00, 15:00. 16:00hrs

Artist Walks – Satellite Sounders

Three guided walks with the Satellite Sounders during the Temporary Museum Amsterdam at the Netherlands Media Art Institute. More information and reservations on NIMk

28/4/2008 12:00

guest lecture on Sun Run Sun as part of the Art & Activism lecture series at UCLA Art | Sci Center Los Angeles

17/4/2008 20:00hrs

Satellite Sounders presentation at Test_Lab: Topology, V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam

15/4/2008 20:30hrs

Navigating the Space of the Future

Seminar on the occasion of the Sun Run Sun project with presentations by invited speakers, David Dunn and Atau Tanaka, Netherlands Media Art Institute. More information and reservations on NIMk in Amsterdam

2/4/2008 20:30hrs

Sun Running

performance at STEIM in Amsterdam

29/3/2008 – 12/5/2008

28/3 17:00hrs opening

Sun-Run-Sun: the Satellite Sounders

Sun-Run-Sun: Dead Reckoning

sonic walk and sound installation in the Territorial Phantom exhibition at Netherlands Institute for Media Arts (NIMk) in Amsterdam. For images see the Sun Run Sun blog

22/3/2008 – 28/4/2008

22/3 17:00hrs opening event

Navigating by Circles

video and sound installation in the Eco-Visualisation exhibition curated by Tiffany Holmes and Hicham Khalidi at TAG Gallery in Den Haag

20/3/2008 19:00-22:00

lecture at Mediamatic symposium on Eco-Visualisation in Amsterdam

15/3/2008 17:00hrs

Sun-Run-Sun: Amphibian

performance during Dag in de Branding Festival at <>TAG Gallery in Den Haag

1/3/2008 – 1/5/2008

Taking Soundings is presented on the new internet radio program on scores and notations curated by Barbara Held and Pilar Subira. To listen go to:
Radio Web MACBA of the Museu d’Art Contemporani Barcelona

19/11/2007 – 28/3/2008

Sun-Run-Sun

Artist in Residence at Netherlands Institute of Media Arts (montevideo), Amsterdam

follow the blog of the project development On Sonic Navigations http://sunrunsun.nimk.nl

News Archive 2005 – 2007

Scorescapes 2008 – 2011 (in progress)

Fishing for Sound; Tropical Storm; Pink Noise; Ponce Inlet; Now Stripe Time; Scorescape Spectrograms

On sound, its image and its role in relating humans and their technologies to the environment. Largely on underwater sounds and making the inaudible audible, includes performances, installations, graphic images, a new instrument and writings. 

Project working diary http://www.scorescapes.net

Scorescape Spectrograms

A series of images made from the field recordings using spectrogam imaging

Dolphin echolocating and Image of the sound of rain

Tropical Storm

Sound and video installation, field recordings of a tropical storm create a room full of rain. Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida. June 2009.

Pink Noise 

of The Pink Noise of Pleasure Yachts in Turquoise Sea

Video and sound installation using underwater recordings collected at a National Marine Reserve in Spain during a Sunday in August. 

Fishing for Sound – performance at Sonic Acts XIII, Pardiso, Amsterdam

A sea of spatial connections between phenomena underwater, in the mind, and from outer-space. The performance weaves sounds from scientific analysis of marine environments, sounds used in psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, and sonified data from satellites orbiting the Earth. All share in a mass of background noise, sounding in the contexts of environment, memory and information. Listening in these spaces is like fishing for sounds.

Documentation video of performance, 27/02/2010 Sonic Acts Festival

Pink Noise Installation in Berlin 2010

Documentation video of the installation of Pink Noise during the group exhibition ‘Esemplasticism: The Truth is a Compromise‘ at Club Transmediale Festival in Berlin 29 Jan -28 Feb 2010
Sound and video recorded at a National Marine Reserve Balearics Spain.

Ponce Inlet

Collaborative work by Erik DeLuca, Charles Stankievech, Yolande Harris. Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center, Miami Florida, November 2009.

Ponce Inlet is an immersive, spatialized, hypnotic sonic exploration of a narrow body of water, an entrance, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal waterway and the Indian River in Florida. The material for the composition was recorded with an array of three hydrophones, mapped by the triangular shape of a boat’s hull and a set of air microphones used to capture the simultaneous sounds produced in air.

Publications on Scorescapes

‘Dolphins, Spectograms and Scorescapes: an interview with Yolande Harris’  by Morgan Currie, Masters of Media Blog, University of Amsterdam, 2009

 Sun Run Sun: On Sonic Navigations (2007 – 2009)

Satellite Sounders; Dead Reckoning; Sun Running; Navigating by Circles

Sun Run Sun, investigates contemporary, historical and animal techniques of navigation through the use of sound. Charting a path between environmental engagement and technological development, Sun Run Sun explores the relationship between the embodied experience of location and the calculated data of position. A continuously changing musical composition is generated from signals of navigation satellites in orbit, together with the participant’s coordinates on earth. By exploring the individual experience of navigation technologies through the intimate and immersive qualities of sound, it re-establishes and renegotiates a sense of embodied connectedness to one’s environment.

Project blog http://sunrunsun.nimk.nl

Satellite Sounders

The Satellite Sounders are handheld custom-made instruments that allow one to listen to the changing satellite data while walking. They consist of a GPS antenna and receiver, a small Linux processor converting the data into sound, a rechargeable battery and stereo headphones. They are presented as walks with the artist.

Satellite Sounding (short version)

Satellite Sounders walk during exhibition Playing the City at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, May 2009

Dead Reckoning

Dead Reckoning is a site-specific, multi-channel sound and data projection installation. Sound is generated from a fixed GPS receiver that continuously calculates a different position, emphasising the satellites in motion at an apparently drifting location.

Sun Running

The sound performance Sun Running, combines recordings of satellite sounds from around the world with environmental recordings and voices of participant reactions to the Satellite Sounders.

Navigating by Circles

Video and sound installation, exhibited at CCNOA Brussels 2007 and <>TAG Den Haag 2008. Looking through the lens of a sextant, trying to fix the sun on the horizon from a moving boat, the sound are electronic sonifications of the same process done by GPS.

Acknowledgements

Sun Run Sun was produced by the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMK) during the Artist in Residence, November 2007 – April 2008 in collaboration with STEIM Amsterdam.

Software development of the Satellite Sounders by Sukandar Kartadinata.

Software development of the GPS data parser in PureData by Damian Stewart.

Hardware instrument building of the Satellite Sounders by Jorgen Brinkman of STEIM .

Video documentation by Ward ten Voorde (Satellite Sounders) and Sami Kallinen (Dead Reckoning).

Many thanks to Annet Dekker.

Presentations in exhibitions, festivals and events April 2008 – May 2009:

Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounding WEALR09, California State University, Los Angeles

Sun Run Sun: Sun Running, Netherlands Royal Society of Musicology, Utrecht

Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounding, Luister Salon, Korzo, Den Haag

Sun Run Sun: Sun Running performance, Netherlands Film Festival, Utrecht

Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, Picnic09 Virtueel Platform, Amsterdam

Sun Run Sun: artist lecture, Royal College of Music, London

Sun Run Sun: artist lecture, ISEA08, Singapore

Sun Run Sun: artist lecture, Orpheus Institute for Advanced Research in Music, Ghent

Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, NIME08, Museum of Contemporary Art, Genova

Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, Temporary Museum 2008, Amsterdam

Sun Run Sun artist lecture, Design Media Arts, UCLA, Los Angeles

Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, V2_Insitute for Unstable Media, Rotterdam

Sun Run Sun: Sun Running, STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music), Amsterdam

Sun Run Sun: artist lecture, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam

Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam

Sun Run Sun: Dead Reckoning, Netherlands Media Art Institute Amsterdam

Sun Run Sun: artist lecture, Mediamatic, Amsterdam

Sun Run Sun: Amphibian, Dag in de Branding Festival and <>TAG, Den Haag

Publications of Sun Run Sun

http://sunrunsun.nimk.nl , on-line project diary and documentation by Yolande Harris

‘Dolphins, Spectograms and Scorescapes: an interview with Yolande Harris’ co-authored by Yolande Harris and Morgan Currie, Masters of Media Blog, University of Amsterdam, 2009

‘Aiming for Dead Reckoning: A conversation between Yolande Harris and Annet Dekker’, co-authored by Yolande Harris and Annet Dekker , in Brickwood, Cathy and Annet Dekker (eds.), Navigating E-Culture (Amsterdam: Virtueel Platform, 2009) with video documentation of Sun Run Sun on DVD.

‘A Journey Through Sound: an interview with Yolande Harris’ co-authored by Yolande Harris, Carmen Hutting and Annet Dekker, TagMag 5, <>TAG publication, Den Haag 2008 

A-minima:: New Media Art Now, Barcelona forthcoming edition 24, 2009

Art and Electronic Media, Edward Shanken (Phaidon 2009) mention of A Collection of Circles (2005) and Sun Run Sun (2008) in Survey chapter.

‘Sun Run Sun and Taking Soundings’ in Atau Tanaka et al. eds. Creative Interactions – The Mobile Music Workshop 2004 – 2008, University for Applied Arts, Vienna, 2008

‘Het Nieuwe Media Effect’ Thijs Witty in Xi 17.1 Kwartaalblad over Film, Televisie en Nieuwe Media, University of Amsterdam 2008)

‘Sun Run Sun, perceiving spaces after GPS’, by Vito Campanelli in Neural.it 4 June 2008
http://www.neural.it/art/2008/06/sun_run_sun_perceiving_spaces.phtml

‘Media Art in Pulic Space in the Netherlands’ by Heiner Holtappels, Eyeball Media Arts Web-zine, Korea April 2008, http://www.eyeball.or.kr/entry/Netherlands

Score Spaces (2003 – 2007)

A Collection of Circles (or Pharology); Light Phase; Meta-Orchestra; Inside-Out Instrument; Spin 

Sound spaces and performances, from intimate to inhabited, collaborative and networked. 

———————————————

A Collection of Circles (or Pharology)

Interactive Sound Installation,  CCNOA (Centre for Contemporary Non-Objective Art), Earwitness Sound Art Series, Brussels January 2005

“Over the last months I have been collecting sounds and video images related to the circular movements of a lighthouse loom. What Virginia Woolf called the “winking eye” has provided me with a form that can be shared between both sound and image and related to human movements. Functioning as a spatial score the pulsating circularity is potentially infinite but not soporific. The invitation to create a sound installation for Earwitness has given me the opportunity to exhibit my collection of circles, as overlapping miniatures, without the layer of video images that made up the recent performance Light Phase. It seems to me a paradox that these circular sounds contain more reference to images in their own right than when displayed with the images that inspired them. I am becoming curious as to the relations between sound and image through subtraction rather than combination or translation. Images shadow the four distinct sonic elements, electronic, instrumental, environmental and vocal. Light sensors allow for subtle transformations of the sounds and can be influenced by visitors. Together these spiralling, folding patterns envelop the visitor while suggesting movement through distance and open space. A Collection of Circles therefore has an alternative title, Pharology, the study of lighthouses.”

Light Phase

performance for video, voice, sound and sensors: Video Dance Festival, International Film Festival Thessaloniki Greece 2005

Light Phase was the first in the Light-House series. As a 30 minute single screen video performance with live sound, I explored the various motions implied by a light-house loom, applied to the camera work, the phasing of the sounds, and the internal motions of the shots. Regularly the camera spins in full circles across horizon lines of city-scapes and sea, and the surface water of both inland rivers and coastal shots. I filmed the material in Bretagne France, Maastricht Netherlands, and Mallorca Spain. The sounds I used were collected on location as well as composed out of instrumental material from the Banda piece and on top of this was my live voice speaking about centrifugal and centripetal forces of rotation which was distorted and transformed by electronics to blend into the fabric of the soundscape. The basis of the transformation between sound and light was two light sensors, placed on the video projection area: with the change in light intensity of the moving images, the sensors would control shifting sound patterns acting as the continual sonic thread throughout the piece.

The Meta-Orchestra

Collaborative networked performances, Maastricht 2004, Genk 2005

The Meta-Orchestra is a flexible group of performers using electronically extended musical and visual instruments, exploring the relevance of new technologies in extending our perception of unusual places. As a platform for practical research and performance, the M.O. brings together the different working strategies of artists and technologists in a non-hierarchical, non-academic structure. I organised, directed and made the post-production of the two most recent M.O. workshops, Maastricht in 2004 and Genk in 2005. My interest has been incorporating the characteristics of specific spaces; score systems for the group within the collaborative non-hierarchical structure; incorporating a wireless network to enable portable video sound and cameras.

“The acoustics of a reverberant chamber force the sound into a liquid behaviour. If these sounds could be seen travelling through space, leaving from a distinct source and location, dispersing, reverberating, would we understand more clearly what it may be like to set off these resonations? The sound is placed by a musician in the space, it’s set-off, set in motion. The next sound may be set in motion before the other dies, relating each sound to one another through the resonating acoustics of the space. The echoes off one wall compared to another may make the liquid sound interfere, perhaps mix, perhaps separate or curdle. Perhaps we can ferment these sounds in their space, bottle them up and let them mature, so after their process of transformation they become intoxicating…”

Publications on the Meta-Orchestra: 

— Meta-Orchestra report 2004

— ‘The Meta-Orchestra: Research by Practice in Group Multi-Disciplinary Electronic Arts’. Journal paper, including video documentation, in: Journal of Organised Sound (special issue collaboration and intermedia), 9/3, (December), Cambridge University Press 2004

— ‘The Building as Instrument’, in Ros Bandt et al. eds. Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time and Culture Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007 
 

Inside-Out Instrument

— ‘Inside-Out Instrument’. Journal paper in: Contemporary Music Review, Special Issue Bodily Instruments and Instrumental Bodies, Contemporary Music Review Vol25/1+2, Routledge 2006
“Acknowledging a radical shift in what it is to play an instrument in a technologically expanded environment, this paper explores ideas of a turning inside-out of the traditional body-instrument-space. By treating the instrument as a situation of engagement with a technological environment, rather than as an interaction with a specific object, and by including in this concept of instrument the acoustic, visual and natural context within which it is placed and interacts, the inside-out instrument develops, not as an exoskeleton, but as an exocentric (rather than egocentric) space of interaction. With the increasing fragmentation, miniaturisation and network communication of digital technologies, the instrument that uses these means is distributed, largely invisible and intangible and un-coupled from its apparent source of sound production – the body. Now the body inhabits and navigates through this instrument, instead of holding it, the sound and tangibility of the sound comes from outside, rather than generated from inside the body, and the audience spectator no longer has the focal point of body-instrument-sound but explores as one of the players. It is like a turning inside-out of the intimacy of the musician-instrument into a space inhabited by multiple performers and instruments”.

Spin

Yolande Harris composition, sound, video and sensors, Hilary Jeffery trombone. Performed at Intro|In Situ, Maastricht, April 2005 and November 2007
“Audio-visual composer Yolande Harris and trombonist Hilary Jeffery layer circle upon circle of turning sounds. Based on a gift of a twenty meter long unfinished paper score from 1966 from Louis Andriessen, Yolande rethinks the trombone piece ‘Rage, Rage, Against the Dying of the Light’ in terms of physical movement and the fragmentation of space brought about by new technologies.”

Taking Soundings 2006 – 2008

Navigations, journeys, maps, coastlines of sound. 

Taking Soundings was developed during an Artistic Fellowship at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, and an Artistic Residency at STEIM, Amsterdam.

Exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona (MACBA) group exhibition “Possibility of Action: the Life of the Score” 18/06/2008 – 5/10/2008

Taking Soundings: Anchor (900mm x 1390mm, inkjet on paper)

Taking Soundings: Blue Map (900mm x 1243mm, inkjet on paper)

Taking Soundings: Red Chart (900mm x 1200mm, inkjet on paper)

Taking Soundings (electronic sound, 9 tracks total playing time 15 minutes)

These images exist on the edge between a score and a map, line and sound, an event and a recording. Produced from satellite data collected by GPS of travels at sea and along coastlines, the work is “taking soundings” of position and movement. These images are the result of re-drawing those traces during a performance; as each part of the line is digitally drawn the data is transformed simultaneously into electronic sounds. The score then is being re-created, re-drawn, and so re-interpretted at the moment the sound comes into existence. These static prints become a record of a personal map, the memory of a shared performance, and encourage new interpretations by audience and viewer.