Event 1 Blog

 

Screenshot of online event and registration email for “Yolande Harris Public Lecture”


Webinar link: https://ucla.zoom.us/w/96453242859?tk=nxw74XwF0gM5-_NsegLSuEbE4rWNfuxNVnCWw278y3U.DQYAAAAWdQ-v6xZZQU9SRjlIWVJsZU5OaXFDck5KSXlRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


On April 11th, 2024 I attended a public lecture with artist and researcher Yolande Harris. Here, Harris discusses her specific works including satellite sounders, navigating by circles, and displaced sound walks. What I enjoyed about this lecture is that Harris contextualizes her work by first giving an overview of her field: the transformative potential of sound and listening in times of environmental change.


Image 1: Navigating By Circles / Sextant


In the first outside work that Harris references, Harris highlights the distinctions between the concepts of hearing and listening (Oliveros 2002). The ear hears, the brain listens, and the body senses vibrations. These three basic understandings lay the groundwork for Harris’s work. Listening is a lifetime practice that depends on the accumulation of experiences with sound. Although we have agreed on the meanings of certain sounds as a species, there is much more to be understood about listening and its subjectivity. Harris further uses another outside work to highlight the fact that humans are quite limited in their ability to hear sound (Bakker 2022). While other species such as elephants and mice can hear infrasound and ultrasound wavelengths respectively, humans are typically limited to a range between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. She describes how accessibility to these different vibrations provides these species with a unique understanding of the world, with elephants and whales being able to hear earthquakes while mice and bats can communicate at high-frequencies.


Image 2: Satellite Sounders


The common theme which ties together Harris’s work is the purpose of expanding perception beyond the range of human senses with a particular focus on marine animals. Harris uses another outside work as an example of how expanding our perception of other species can influence the framework by which we approach identifying with people of different backgrounds than ourselves (Gumbs 2021).


Image 3: Displaced Sound Walks

     

I found Harris’s work to be relevant to our class due how she leverages technology to collect information from our environment in terms of sound waves. Each of her works raises our perceptual awareness in a unique way. In “Sextant”, Harris overlays the electronic sonification sounds of GPS with a video attempt to fix the sun through a sextant. “Satellite Sounders” also explores the relationships between our physical position and associated wavelengths to establish a sense of embodied connectedness to one’s environment. Overall, I really enjoyed this lecture and it was a great learning experience. I would definitely recommend her work to anyone who is interested in the human perception of environment.


Sources:

  1. Oliveros, Pauline. "Quantum listening: From practice to theory (to practice practice)." Culture and Humanity in the New Millennium: The Future of Human Values. 2002.

  2. Bakker, Karen. The sounds of life: How digital technology is bringing us closer to the worlds of animals and plants. Princeton University Press. 2022.

  3. Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. "Undrowned: Black feminist lessons from marine mammals." Soundings 78. 2021.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 3: Robotics + Art

Image
I always saw photography and painting as very similar in their forms. Certainly there are differences between the two, but I have never been able to articulate it. After this week’s reading, I see that the work of a painter stands at a natural distance from reality whereas the photographer is a more precise and specific view of reality (Benjamin 1935). Looking back at the evolution of art since the rise of industrialization, it’s most interesting to see how mechanization and robots were used in art and popular media. Image 1: Hermes & Modern Communication One of my favorite movies growing up was Baymax. With the setting being the metropolis of San Fransokyo (a hybrid of San Francisco and Tokyo), it is clear that the Japanese cultural fascination with automation and robotics is present. In this sense, I had a fun time understanding how cultural differences between the United States and Japan give rise to differing attitudes towards the place of robots in society. While the Japanese ...
Read more

Week 1: Two Cultures

Image
  By highlighting the curriculum and layout of educational institutions as the source of the separation between science and art in “The Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution”, CP Snow urges that education in the two fields and understanding their core connection is of immediate value to both the individual and society. He argues that mutual understanding between the two cultures would solve issues much larger to society. In contrast, John Brockman argues that contemporary scientists are the third culture or middleman, stating that such thinkers will replace traditional intellectuals.  Figure 1: Venn Diagram of Arts and Sciences It is my understanding that industrialization and the desire to have specialists in each field that perpetuates the “two culture” world as explained by John Heskett in the text “Industrialization and Design”. I agree with the emergence of a third culture that holistically integrates both artistic and scientific perspectives as the primary path towa...
Read more

Week 8: Nanotech + Art

Image
  This week I really enjoyed learning about nanoparticles. My own research in CNSI is based on a core-shell microparticle platform that enables single-cell encapsulation and studies. I thought it was really cool that Dr. Gimzewski dove into the history of nanoparticles and how they have existed in technology and nature for a long time. It’s so interesting to see the science of how making materials into a nanosized portion can yield interesting properties. The one that I found to be most interesting was how inert materials can become catalysts for chemical reactions (Gimzewski 2024 Lecture 3). It was cool to learn about all the different industrial applications of nanoparticles from windows to fabrics. I never knew that nanoparticles were so prevalent in everyday life outside of technology. Image 1: Nanoparticles to Cross Blood-Brain Barrier These properties make it obvious why nanotechnology would be appealing to artists. This week, I also learned that manipulating and rearranging ...
Read more