“The Möbius strip of expanding awareness moves out from one’s own body to immediate place, to other phenomena, on to remote environments and back to the self in Harris’s rich body of thought and art. These are powerful works, in concept and realization. The sense of interdependence which they evoke and encourage is vital to our transformation into good stewards of our environmental neighborhoods.” (Annea Lockwood)
“Shifts in time and space, and undulations in daily perception, are active elements within the work of artist Yolande Harris, and brought forward through a deep curiosity for the world. A gap or fissure seems to appear, to break in – between seeing and believing, between material fact and poetical imagining, and between the near and the far, along with the ineffable and animate threads that may also connect and therefore disrupt such dichotomies. The gap, and the threads that traverse and link, and which invite us to enter their subsequent web of associations and slippages, disorienting layers and close-ups, and from which new perspectives are generated.” (Brandon LaBelle)
Yolande Harris is a composer, sound and video artist with an internationally recognized research practice that focuses on the transformative potential of sound and listening in times of environmental change. Her projects explore respect and advocacy for the environment and other species, approached through a sonic sensibility. Her audiovisual installations, walks, videos and performances create visceral experiences that heighten awareness of our relationship to the environment. How does a composer work with the environmental crisis? How can our conscious listening affect the world around us? How can learning to listen to underwater sounds transform us, and transform our relationship to the environment? Yolande’s work considers techniques of orientation and navigation, expanding perception beyond the range of human senses, the technological mediation of underwater environments and our relationship to other species. Her projects on underwater sound aim to bring us closer to this inaccessible environment, encouraging connection, understanding and empathy with the ocean. Through these audio visual experiences Yolande sets up hope that an expanded sonic imagination can contribute to re-balancing human relationships to our environments.
Her series Taking Soundings (2006-8) explores historic, contemporary and animal navigations using sound; Sun Run Sun: On Sonic Navigations (2008-2010) expands this into instruments and installations of sonified and visualized GPS data; and Scorescapes (2009-2012) examines relationships between sound, image and place, especially in underwater environments. Listening to the Distance (2015) explores expanded sensorial perceptions, the technological mediation of distant environments and the animals that inhabit them. Recent projects include: a sound walk at Dundee harbor with underwater sounds from the Arctic in Whale:Dundee (2017); a series of sound walks using ocean sound recordings from the Monterey Bay, Melt Me Into The Ocean (2018); and a multichannel immersive installation using video and sounds from tagged whales in From a Whale’s Back (2020). Yolande created a highly resonant sound work commissioned for the inaugural international Listening Biennial held in Berlin That Unseen Vibrance (2021) and a video work A Waterfall of Falling Sounds that I catch Dreaming/Listening to Whales at Roden Crater (2022). Her new work Vertigo and the Sound Portal (2023), exhibited in Amsterdam, explores the possibility of simultaneous presence of distant environments through displaced sound and video.
Yolande studied at Edinburgh University and contemporary music practices at Dartington College of Arts, she holds an MPhil from Cambridge University in Architecture and Moving Image and a PhD from Leiden University in ‘Sound, Environment and Sonic Consciousness’. She presents her work internationally, past exhibitions include Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the House of World Cultures Berlin and the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Awards include Individual Artist Stipends from the Dutch Funds for Visual Arts Architecture and Design and research fellowships at the Orpheus Research Center in Music in Ghent, the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, the Jan van Eyck Academy of Visual Arts in Maastricht. Yolande was Assistant Professor in video and open media at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and taught digital media art at San Jose State University. Yolande is Assistant Teaching Professor in Music and Inaugural Principal Faculty in Creative Technologies at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC).
Contact email: yo@yolandeharris.net
Short bio:
Yolande Harris is a composer, sound and video artist focusing on the transformative potential of sound and listening in times of environmental change. She creates audio-visual installations, walks and performances, approached through a sonic sensibility. Originally from the UK, Yolande has lived and worked throughout Europe and the US, presenting her projects worldwide in venues ranging from intimate concerts and walks to international museums including, Issue Project Room (New York), Sonic Acts Festival (Amsterdam), Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt), the House of World Cultures (Berlin) and the Exploratorium (San Francisco). She studied with pioneers of experimental music and sound art Lou Harrison, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, David Dunn, Peter Sculthorpe, Louis Andriessen and Michel Waiswisz. Yolande studied music at Edinburgh University and Dartington College of Arts, holds an MPhil in Architecture and Moving Image from Cambridge University, and a PhD in music from Leiden University titled ‘Sound, Environment and Sonic Consciousness’. Awards include Individual Artist Stipends from the Mondriaan Funds (NL), and research fellowships at STEIM (Amsterdam), Netherlands Institute for Media Art (Amsterdam), the Orpheus Research Center in Music (Ghent), the KHM/Academy of Media Arts (Cologne), and the Jan van Eyck Academy (Maastricht). Recent major sound art residencies include the Roden Crater project (Arizona State University), Polyphonic Landscapes (Amsterdam) and Atmospheres of Sound (UCLA). Yolande was Assistant Professor in video and open media at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and taught digital media art at San Jose State University. Yolande is Assistant Teaching Professor in Music and Inaugural Principal Faculty in Creative Technologies at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC).
