TEACHING

University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) 2016-present; Digital Art/New Media, Art and Music Departments:

• Digital Art and New Media MFA Exhibition: Graduate research and production seminar for thesis exhibition

• Environmental Art and Social Practice MFA Exhibition: Graduate research and production seminar for thesis exhibition

• Methods and Approaches to Digital Art & Culture: graduate seminar

• Digital Art New Media Critique: graduate seminar

• Sound and the Environment: Graduate research seminar Digital Art and New Media

• Advanced Digital Synthesis: advanced course for upper division electronic music minor

• Workshop in Electronic Music: Undergraduate advanced music course in project development

• Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: small experimental ensemble for advanced students in music department

• Music and the Ocean: interdisciplinary studio course

• Sound in Art, Science & the Environment: large lecture in music (asynchronous online course in development)

• Special Topics: Still to Moving: Undergraduate photography majors studio course in video

• Special Topics in Intermedia: Art, Sound and Environment: Senior project studio

• Writing for Artists: Undergraduate art majors large lecture course in artist writing

• 3D Foundations: Undergraduate large lecture/studio intro course in sculpture and design

• Introduction to New Media and Digital Art Making: Undergraduate studio

San Jose State University (SJSU) 2020-present; Digital Media Art - see https://cadre.sjsu.edu/

• BFA Seminar: exhibition preparation for graduating students in Digital Media and Studio Art

• Interdisciplinary Seminar in Digital Media: undergraduate theory course for DMA majors

• Introduction to Digital Media Art: undergraduate studio course

• Introduction to Digital Video: undergraduate studio course

Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) 2015-16; Assistant Professor, Department of Film/Animation/Video:

• Senior Degree Projects in Open Media, Studio and Critical Discourse: a year long research and development project identified and chosen by senior students, resulting in a final degree exhibition and publication, see RISD Open Media Catalogue

• Intermediate Video: a year long studio class for Juniors majoring in Open Media, in preparation for the senior year.

• Film/Video Installation: an interdisciplinary elective for advanced students, studio class creating installations.

University of Washington, Seattle 2013-15; DXARTS

Art and the Environment: Listening to the Distance

This graduate studio seminar will explore the artists role in understanding environmental change. It will focus on listening as a method of research and artistic experience, and will engage in examples from composers, artists and scientists who listen to the environment in different ways. The ocean will act as the case study, and the seminar will relate to current research in oceanography that enables live data to be accessed on land. We will study both psychological and technological approaches to listening and experiment with these techniques to expand our relationship to and understanding of environments. We will consider listening as a form of attention, that does not exclude images but actually enhances our ability to visualize and communicate, considering the implications of remote presence when listening to the distance. Students are required to actively participate through ideas and conversation, and to create engaging artistic experiences to communicate their research. Designed as a 10 week Graduate seminar at DXARTS, University of Washington 2015.

Art and the Environment

Artists play an important role in investigating changing human relationships to the environment. In recent decades scientific research has revealed systemic environmental transformations on a global scale. Given this context, artists are increasingly aligning their roles within collaborative, social and technological projects that often emphasize complex interactions at scales beyond human perception. Beginning from this general background, the seminar operates on three integrated levels: research, lab visits and production. Topics include: making the inaudible audible and visual, underwater sound, sound and energetic transductions, field recordings and displaced sound/image, mapping visualizations and navigation. Presentations, readings and discussions locate these topics within a dynamic aesthetic and theoretical context, including land art and acoustic ecology, eco-art and locative media. Students design questions for research visits to science labs that specifically use audification, sonification and visualization to research aspects of the environment. Discussion covers a variety of artistic approaches to environmental technologies and research, to experiment with when working towards a final artistic project and exhibition.

Designed as a 10 week Graduate seminar at DXARTS, University of Washington 2014. The seminar included theory, practice and lab visits to UW scientists in Oceanography and Applied Physics. Students studied the Lagoon Cycle by Helen and Newton Harrison, Douglas Kahn’s Earth Sound Earth Signal, and welcomed David Dunn as guest lecturer. The seminar ended with ‘Sense | Signal’, a public exhibition of new art works developed by the graduate students during the course.

Displaced Sound Walk Workshop

Field recordings often aim to merely audibly ‘represent’ environments that may be otherwise inaccessible to the listener, and in doing so neglect complex layerings of spaces and times inherent in recording and replaying sounds. My Displaced Sound Walks(Leipzig Contemporary Art Museum, 2012) furthers the process of hyper-aware listening while walking. Using a collaborative, workshop-like creative process, I play with prerecording the ambient sounds of a chosen routes and then listening back to these recordings on headphones while physically retracing the same path. Students learn to use basic technology to create a heightened awareness of interaction between the environment and their sensory perceptions.

For more info: http://yolandeharris.net/?nk_work=displaced-sound-walks

Experimental Video Art

An introduction to experimental video art. This course provides a theoretical and practical foundation for creating video and sound for installation, performance or screen, set within a context of historical and contemporary video art and experimental film. Students attend lectures, take workshops to learn skills individually and in small groups, and complete assignments to create original video works. Special guest Gary Hill.

Taught over 10 weeks as an advanced undergraduate Digital Video Foundations course at DXARTS, University of Washington 2014.