Digital Arts and New Media: MFA: Collaboration, Innovation, Social Impact

You are here

Yolande Harris

Lecturer

Yolande Harris is an artist and scholar engaged with sound, its image and its role in relating humans and their technologies to the environment. Her artistic research projects consider techniques of navigation, sonification of data, sound worlds outside the human hearing range, and underwater bioacoustics. They take the form of audio-visual installations and performances, instruments, walks, performative lectures and writings. She weaves together her artwork with her theories of techno-intuition and sonic consciousness, in which expanded forms of awareness emerge through technological media and critical listening techniques.

Her work is presented internationally in the context of visual art exhibitions, music venues and media art festivals and conferences. These include: MACBA Barcelona, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, ICA London, Netherlands Media Art Institute Amsterdam, ISEA, Issue Project Room NYC, Shedhalle Zurich, STEIM Amsterdam, Ear to the Earth Festival NYC, WRO Media Art Biennale Poland, House of World Cultures Berlin and Sonic Acts Festival Amsterdam.

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 exploring the sonification of GPS data; and Scorescapes (2009-2012) examines relationships between sound and place, especially in underwater environments. Her current project Listening to the Distance (2014), commissioned for a solo exhibition at Woodbury Art Museum Utah, explores relationships between ocean and desert environments.

Yolande, Assistant Professor in Film/Animation/Video at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), teaching courses in Open Media, Video Installation and Intermediate Video. Prior to this she was Artist in Residence at DXARTS (Center for Digital Art and Experimental Media) University of Washington, Seattle, where she  developed and led a graduate seminar ‘Art and Environment’. She is the recipient of two multi-year individual artist stipends from the Netherlands Mondriaan Fonds, was Research Fellow at Orpheus Research Center in Music (ORCiM) Ghent, Artist in Residence at the Netherlands Media Art Institute and STEIM in Amsterdam, Visiting Fellow in Sound Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM), and Artist Researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academy. Yolande was Lecturer in Interaction Design at the Technical University of Eindhoven and is regularly invited as Visiting Lecturer at art and design colleges in Europe and the US.

Education and Training: 
Ph.D. ‘Scorescapes: On Sound, Environment and Sonic Consciousness’ (Leiden University 2011)
M.Phil. in Architecture and Moving Image (University of Cambridge 2000)
B.A. in Music (Dartington College of Arts 1997)
Studied music and art history at Edinburgh University (1995)
Selected Exhibitions: 

2015
Yolande Harris: Listening to the Distance, solo exhibition, Woodbury Art Museum, Utah
Pink Noise, Currents New Media Festival, Santa Fe
Bonneville Blue Whale, Land Mark Show, Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe

2013
Pink Noise, MADATAC New Media Art Festival, Madrid

2012
El Camino, Satellite Sounding, Sensing Place, House of Electronic Arts, Basel
Tropical Storm, Cage100: Opening Spaces of Action, Contemporary Art Museum, Leipzig
You Me Swim Blackbird, Soundworks, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London

2011
Taking Soundings, Navigating by Circles, Satellite Sounding Tracing Mobility, House of World Cultures, Berlin
ScorescapesSonic Unconscious, Solo show, Issue Project Room, New York
Swim, Fishing for Sound, Dump Time, Shedhalle, Zurich
Pink Noise, WRO Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland
Taking Soundings and Navigating by Circles, Ground Level, Hayward Gallery (Touring), UK (2010-11)

2010
Fishing for Sound, Ear to the Earth Festival, EMF, New York
S.W.A.M.P. #2, Certain Sundays, Sowieso Neukoelln, Berlin
Therapy for Future Flooding, Machine Project, Hammer Museum UCLA, Los Angeles
Scorescapes, Resonator, A/V Festival, Newcastle, UK
Fishing for Sound, Sonic Acts XIII Festival, Paradiso, Amsterdam
Pink Noise, Esemplasticism, Transmediale, Berlin

2009
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounding LuisterSalon, Arti et Amicitiae Amsterdam
Now Stripe Time, DNK concert series, Amsterdam
S.W.A.M.P., Diapason Gallery Brooklyn, New York
Tropical Storm, Ponce Inlet and Bell Buoy, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, Playing the City, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt
Sun Run Sun,, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam
Underwater sounds with Contrabass Flute, Karnatic Lab, Amsterdam
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounding, New Music Festival Cal State University, Los Angeles
Hydro, Karnatic Lab, Amsterdam
Sun Run Sun , Netherlands Royal Society of Musicology, Utrecht

2008
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounding Luister Salon, Korzo, The Hague
Sun Run Sun, Re:Visie / Netherlands Film Festival, Utrecht
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, PICNIC08 Virtueel Platform, Amsterdam
Taking Soundings Scores, MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, NIME Contemporary Art Museum, Genova
El Camino, LOOS Foundation, The Hague
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, Temporary Museum Amsterdam
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounders, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam
Sun Run Sun: Dead Reckoning, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam
Navigating by Circles, Eco-Aesthetics TAG Gallery, The Hague
Sun Run Sun: Sun Running, STEIM Amsterdam
Sun Run Sun: Amphibian, Dag in de Branding Festival, TAG Gallery, The Hague

2007
Navigating by Circles, Center Contemporary Non-Objective Art, Brussels
Spin with Hilary Jeffery trombone, Sound Souvenirs Symposium, Maastricht
Taking Soundings 2, Nau Coclea, Catalunya
Taking Soundings 2, DNK @ Mediamatic, Amsterdam
Inside Out Piano, Cement Festival, Maastricht
Inside Out Piano, Stichting Intro, Maastricht
Taking Soundings, SNO Contemporary Art Projects, Sydney

2006
Taking Soundings, Academy of Media Arts, Cologne
“…the landscape is now an acoustic chamber…” , Academy of Media Arts, Cologne
Spin with Hilary Jeffery trombone, Stichting Intro, Maastricht
Sketch for a Score for an Inside Out Instrument, 2Step, Hatfield Galleries, UK
Sketch for a Score for an Inside Out Instrument, Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai
Sketch for a Score for an Inside Out Instrument, 2Step, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo
Divide by Zero, with Zafer Aracagok, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Centre, Istanbul

2005
Helix/Spiral (after Dan Graham), ‘Stepping Out’, JvE gallery Maastricht
Orbital, Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht
Light Phase VideoDance Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece
Divide by Zero with Zafer Aracagok,Ctrl_Alt_Del II Festival, Istanbul
Meta-Orchestra #5 Mine Facelifters Festival, Coal Mine Building Genk, Belgium
A Collection of Circles or Pharology, CCNOA Earwitness, Brussels
Score Spaces, Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht

2003 – 2004
Light Phase, Jan van Eyck Academy Maastricht
Meta-Orchestra #4 Stichting Intro | In Situ, Maastricht
Spark!#1, Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht
On silence and gaps, with Michael Archer, Modern Art Oxford
Between: Two duets for Mobile Video Players, Entre Deux, Maastricht
Live video, Kraakgeluid and Gaudeamus week, STEIM, Amsterdam
Flute Rebel, Mallorca Spain
Video Walk#1and #2 Forest; Video Walk#3 Beach, Emporda Spain

2001 – 2002
Tidal Nomad Mad, Banda Municipal, LEM Festival, Barcelona
Inside-Out Video-Organ, Nau Coclea, Emporda Spain
Paradise Video-Organ, MediaLabEurope, Dublin
MediaEval Video-Organ, Casino de Alicante, Spain
MediaEval Video-Organ, Musica a Metronom, Barcelona
MetaOrchestra Musica a Metronom, Barcelona
Digital Day at Media House, Video-Organ, Metapolis Architects, Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona
Lift and Sagrada stairs, MetronomLab, Barcelona
BAT Video-Organ, Musica a Metronom, Barcelona
Meta-Orchestra Felix Meritis and de Ijsbreker, Amsterdam

1996 – 2000
Architecture and Motion, Dartington, UK
Explorations in Movement, with Evan Parker, Dartington, UK
Meta-Orchestra Dartington International Summer School, UK
Invisible Cities, Sheffield University Music Department, UK
Swallows, Dartington International Summer School, (DISS) UK
Birds for Sculthorpe, with Composers Ensemble, Dartington, UK
Montbretia for Joanna Macgregor, Dartington, UK
Symphony no.2 Marina for Balearic Symphony Orchestra, Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Walking the Line with Sam Richards, Dartington College of Arts, UK
Symphony no.1: Sargasso Sail, Sargasso Sea Atlantic Ocean US
Walk for an Absent Public, Dartmoor, Devon UK
Syrens, Dartington College of Arts, UK