Yolande Harris

Score spaces: spatial and environmental mappings in site-specific electronic music

My research as a composer and performer builds on experimental music theories and practices that are concerned with location, site-specific environments, acoustic ecology, graphic scores, and live electronic music. Some important reference-points and inspirations for my investigations can be found in the work of John Cage, David Dunn, Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, Morton Feldman and Iannis Xenakis. Building on the diversity of approaches to music composition which proliferated in the mid-20th century, Score Spaces is an interdisciplinary, conceptual form for rethinking traditional relationships between the composer, instrument, performer, and audience. The score becomes spatial, responsive, and collaborative. The work uses electronic music, navigational technologies, and environmental sound to enable continuously variable, personalized music experiences based on the location of the player/listener. The goal of this research is to heighten awareness of one´s actual location in and movement through physical environments in relation to electronic data and technological environments.

The research Score Spaces investigates thus spatial mappings and technological extensions of the musical score in the context of recent developments in live electronic music and media art. The ideas and questions raised during my professional practice as a composer and media artist will act as the spring-board for more in-depth investigations into earlier precedents of the score space. The topics covered will include the spatial sound compositions of among others Alvin Lucier; the relationship between navigation technologies, mapping and earlier graphic scores; the potential of developing a framework for teaching the process of musical composition based on inter-disciplinary methods; developing new musical work that presents a hybrid space of sound, music, performance and composition. The research aims to chart new ground by drawing together the diverse threads of music composition, electronic instrument development, navigations and sitespecific work, data sonifications, media art technologies, into a hybrid form of knowledge and experience.

Website of Yolande Harris