After the first day of exhibiting the Satellite Sounders during sound walks at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt during the Playing the City exhibition, I took the batteries back to the hotel to charge them, and at 2.30 in the morning one exploded, causing a small fire in the room. I put the fire out using the hotel pillows and called the front desk. The firemen and police came, I shook fiercely, and the hotel offered no first aid and are now in an aggressive process of intimidating me for insurance money for damage to their furniture. What a strange ending to the Satellite Sounders.
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Satellite Sounders on fire in Frankfurt
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009experiments in underwater sound 2
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009Musical experiments into underwater creatures and the aqueous properties of the contra-bass flute. Part of Scorescapes. New sound works with electronics and contrabass flute played by Ned McGowan Karnatic Lab evening, Muziekcentrum De Badkuyp, Amsterdam.
The second in the series of experiments into underwater sounds, this introduces a live musician to the electronic and environmental soundworld of the first performance. The musical negotiations between two musicians using such different processes of sound production and variety of timbral possibilities became a focus. I introduced Ned to the material we would be using and the ideas behind the work including sounds outside of the human hearing range, and we worked with these ideas in an unstructured way, to create a really unusual performance.
Sound and Science symposium UCLA
Friday, March 6th, 2009A fascinating collection of presentations by scientists and artists working with sound and sonification. Video streams of the lectures at Sound and Science
Prof Peter Narins presented research discoveries on the ultrasonic calls and hearing of certain frogs to adapt to environmental noise. The spectograms of the sound recordings clearly show how limited our own hearing range is in the total sound scape we inhabit. He implied that ultrasound is a relatively new and unexplored area of science, and put the recent interest down to now available field technology, such as the Sound Devices 722 that he used on a field trip in China.
Laura Peticola presented work using sound to communicate data about solar winds. As a space scientist she described the need and difficulties of making the concepts of solar storms, magnetic fields and even plasma to a general public. The team decided to use sound, rather than visualisation, to create sonifications of live solar wind data received by two satellites orbiting the sun. (more…)
Lecture and Performance at KVNM Royal Society of Dutch Musicology
Tuesday, January 20th, 200931 January 2009 at the Royal Society for Netherlands Musicology KVNM, during a congress on the future of dutch musicology – international, interdisciplinary and practice based research. Aula of the University of Utrecht.
“Scorescapes: Between the Map and the Music” - Yolande Harris will present her recent work on sonic navigations, describing a musical journey that lies somewhere between the map and the music. (more…)
Satellite Sounding .mp3
Saturday, December 20th, 2008Listen to the 7 minute sound piece that includes the Satellite Sounder recordings
Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounding (7′43″)Yolande Harris
The Satellite Sounders are custom made hand-held instruments that take live navigation data (gps) from the satellites orbiting the earth and turn them into electronic sounds listened to on headphones while walking. In this piece the reactions of the public who become the performers, combined with the satellite sounds collected from four corners of the world, activates an imaginative space of both dreams and suspicions enacted above the everyday.
Sun Run Sun and the Satellite Sounders: composition, concept and design Yolande HarrisWith thanks to participants at the Picnic08 Conference Amsterdam, Virtueel Platform and Fonds BKVBDeveloped at the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMK) and STEIM Amsterdam during 2008Satellite sounds recorded on location in Genova, Los Angeles, Singapore, at Sea 2008
more information: http://www.sunrunsun.nimk.nl
David Zicarelli – on women and Max/MSP
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008David Zicarelli, founder and CEO of Cycling 74, company behind Max/MSP, introducing the design decisions behind the very different Max 5. The design improvements really reflect an attempt to incorporate creative users needs, aiming for fluency in programming so that the creative process is allowed to take the foreground.
STEIM Jamboree 8-11 December 2008
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008A series of presentations and concerts on issues related to electronic music performance, interface design, and instrument technology, taking place at STEIM and the Smart Project Space in Amsterdam. STEIM Jamboree blog
Notes on Walled Garden, Flwr Pwr
Monday, November 24th, 2008Flwr Pwr: Tending the Walled Garden, moderated by Matt Ratto. Ideas from the building and discussion of emergent behaviors and communications in networked environments. Workshop during the Walled Garden working conference held at the Lloyd Hotel, Amsterdam 20 – 21 November 2008 (more…)
Walled Garden: working conference on networks
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008Walled Garden is an international working conference that approaches the development and future challenges of the current Web 2.0 through exploration, experimentation and exchange of knowledge. It will address issues of identity, mobile communities and networks by focussing on the tendency towards online gated and closed communities.
20 & 21 November 2008, Lloyd Hotel, Amsterdam, Organised by Virtueel Platform
Scorescapes Workshop no1 – photos
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
