Yolande Harris is a composer, sound and video artist with an internationally recognised 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 projects have been exhibited 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).