Sound is Round, Roden Crater

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Listening to whales at Wupatki National Monument (photo Dan Collins)

Recording at Grand Falls, Little Colorado River, Navajo Reservation (photo Caralie Cedarleaf)

In Spring 2019, as Visiting Artist at the Herberger Institute of Arts and Design at the University of Arizona, Yolande Harris was part of a university wide, interdisciplinary, experimental educational project involving a collaboration with artist James Turrell. The ‘Roden Crater Field Seminars’ are the first step in creating courses and research projects around the central topic of Roden Crater, Turrell’s unfinished naked-eye observatories and sky spaces within an extinct volcano in Northern Arizona. The field seminars addressed multiple overlapping topics including astronomy, indigenous culture, environmental impact, embodied experience of perception, the legacy of land art and more. Yolande’s involvement included conceptualizing the seminar with lead faculty around experiential learning and sound based interventions, a 10 day residency including a visit to Roden Crater hosted by James Turrell, leading students on explorations of cultural and environmental sites around the crater, and collaboratively working with faculty and students to create a final series of art presentations, including an immersive 3D dome projection and a sound installation.