This is Yolande’s bio,
Yolande Harris (UK/US) explores ideas of sonic consciousness, using sound and image to create intimate visceral experiences that heighten awareness of our relationship to the environment and other species. Her artistic projects on underwater sound encourage connection, understanding and empathy with the ocean. Yolande is associate researcher and lecturer in digital media art and electronic music at University of California Santa Cruz and lecturer in digital media art at San Jose State University. Previously Assistant Professor in film/animation/video at Rhode Island School of Design, she has held major research fellowships at Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Jan van Eyck Academy and UCLA Art|Sci Center. She presents her work internationally, including Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the House of World Cultures Berlin, the Exploratorium in San Francisco and Ars Electronica Festival. Yolande studied at Edinburgh University, Dartington College of Arts, has an MPhil from Cambridge University and a PhD from Leiden University.
I’m interested in sonic consciousness, what does that mean to her? How can sound become a conscious thing? Using sound and image to heighten our awareness of our environment and species is something of huge interest to me, I’m really excited to see her lecture and how she discusses these subjects.
FISHING FOR SOUND
Fishing For Sound is a stereo installation piece that creates a sea of social connections between spaces. Yolande weaves sounds from underwater, marine life and sonified navigation satellites. She compares the similarities of the intrusive background noise within all these environments and technologies. Environment, information and memory are key in this piece of work. Where listening is like fishing for sound.
I found this piece to captivate me with the visual and sonic elements together. Once again I do find myself in a situation where I do enjoy the sounds and the overall work but without further context, it’s hard to really see the defined meaning. By no means am I saying her work is bad or not active enough for my own thoughts but more that I think this sort of work becomes its full form when accompanied by further explained texts and ideas.
MINKE WHALES SURFACE THROUGH ICE
This piece of work discusses the ideas and themes of what it might feel like to be oceanic. To come from an existence of aquatic consciousness, Yolande collaborated with scientist Dr Ari Friedlaender who gave Yolande the footage of cameras attached to these whales. Yolande contributed the music, the harp and other sounds.
I found this piece to actually become a favourite of mine, simplicity really works sometimes. I see the harp and the other sounds in an almost ironic beautiful tone. Disclosing the beauty of whales surfacing and returning back. The playful nature of these animals exists in locations that are extreme difficulty to exist. Where life is difficult. The juxtaposition between the audio and the cold tough oceans these whales live in brought a smile to my face. I’m looking forward to the lecture.
Post-lecture Reflection:
Yolande begins by saying that she finds when she shares her work she’s interested in how people can experience it. What are the many ways in which an idea can be realised?
She then shows us the first piece which is a silent film, the light going through trees In a rainforest and asks us if we hear anything despite the silence. She explains that sound is more than just things we hear in our ears. Sound in relation to the other senses is an important way of thinking. The sense of sight is quite sonic in this sense, as well as colour and weather.
She was trying to build instruments back in the early 2000s when she worked in a studio in Amsterdam. The second piece she showed us was Walk in the Woods 2, they were trying different images in contrast to the first one.
She’s interested in how our perception of the environment can change and how this relates to the environment that we are in. The imagery blends and disappears into the forest. Overlays and disappears is the technique presented.
Another piece she did was in 2009, The Pink Noise, which is about the experience of noise pollution or sounds that were happening under the water. Pristine on the surface but under the water it was filled with noise. She dropped a hydrophone under the water to discover all the yachts and other boats had filled the ocean with noise pollution. Her installation was similar, a projected floor with headphones hanging to combine both her idea and installation into one.
This leads her to be into noise pollution and underwater sounds. It can travel further than inland and at greater speeds. And because we can’t see it there’s a sense that it’s not there. It’s the case with so many things, to make something experienceable that’s an important thing for us to do, to enable us to experience things beyond our perception. This was the start of her idea of underwater sound.
She was also working with the ideas of navigation, she was working with early GPS work. She’s been a sailor since a young age and being a sailor and being on the ocean has been very central to her life. She was taking GPS and GPS data and making it into different maps and sounds. Looking at old style navigation styles like the sextant, she felt it was good to learn this to contrast the works.
Working with the sextant made her create the next piece Sun Run Sun, Frankfurt 2009.
She creates an instrument that takes GPS data and the distance from the sky, including the XY axis. And they were very basic sounds because the processor couldn’t handle a lot. You would listen and walk around with the device and perform with the sonified data.
Displaced Sound Walks, 2012 Leipzig. This explored the idea of how sound can give us a sense of place and location. The idea is she has a set of binaural microphones and a Zoom Recorder. You’re getting a very good stereo impression. You walk around for 5 minutes on a route of your own choosing and remember the route you did. You come back and sit and listen to the recordings and not move. The final step is to listen to those recordings while walking in a different location to the recorded sound walk.
It sounds incredibly simple but the reaction is interesting. They’ll hear footsteps but there is nobody there. Suddenly a bus starts and the engine begins to roar but there is no one there. Things will happen like there are phantoms or ghosts in the environment. It creates an idea of how important sound is for us in our environment.
How can our conscious listening affect the world around us? She asks this is what this project looked into
How can learning to listen to underwater sounds transform us, and transform our relationship with the environment?
I think these last two questions she asked us before finishing her lecture hit me deeply. My project from the end of the second year titled Listen to the Thames explored hydrophone recordings near Richmond Lock and the amount of noise pollution and how far sound travelled up the river gave me a different outlook that I haven’t had yet. Also Yolande’s ideas of the importance of sound in our environment and to use the human species, how we use sound to guide us towards understanding locations, spaces and environments. Perhaps I can explore the many ponds in Stave Hill and see if the noise pollution resonates in the water as much as the wind turbine?