> Inside-Out Instrument
Journal Paper published in Contemporary Music Review Vol.25, No. 1/2, February/April 2006, (Routledge).
"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."
> Sketch for a Score for an Inside-Out Instrument
Six graphic scores and sound
exhibited in group exhibitions in Kunstnerneshus Oslo, Hatfield Galeries UK and Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art
thanks to 2step curated by Petra Bungert, CCNOA Brussels
> Inside-Out Piano
Composition for disklavier, electronics and video > with performances in Sittard, Aachen and Maastricht, January/March 2007
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Imagine a piano that plays by itself. Are we watching the ghost of a pianist or a technical reproduction? The invention of the disklavier challenges the pianist to re-think their position between the instrument, the music and the audience. Inside-Out Piano does just that, sounds do not appear from the place or action that one habitually expects. The piano is no longer one enclosed object but is fragmented in the performance space, turned inside-out.
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Inside-Out Piano is a composition by Yolande Harris in collaboration with Bert Bongers and Jos Mulder >
commissioned by Intro|InSitu and Urban Myths New Media Lab Maastricht NL
