Under the Hood Episode 2: Yolande Harris

Under the Hood is a video series presented by the UCLA ArtSci Center that pops open the “hood” to reveal the mechanics and mechanisms of ArtSci projects. In these short interviews, you are invited to take a deep dive into the process of how these complex artworks are created.

For the month of December we hosted sound artist Yolande Harris as our Artist-in-Residence for our virtual program Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption. Shilpa Rao interviewed Yolande to find out more about the behind-the-scenes of her intricate sound artworks. Yolande discusses two projects, From a Whale's Back, and Melt Me Into The Ocean and focuses on the underbelly of topics such as interpreting spectrograms, editing sound files with Adobe Audition, hydrophone technology and data retrieval, and marine citizen science. We also get a glimpse into what data collection for marine animals and environments may look like.

Yolande emphasizes the growing availability of citizen science and the accessibility of publicly released data for informal scientists, aspiring researchers, students and artists. Her work is a direct example of a project spawned from the growing openness in science.