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Jana Winderen
bára, 2017

The Making of bára: Jana Winderen deploying the ambisonic hydrophone at Coiba National Park, Panama

The Making of bára: Hydrophone recordings in the waters off Panama
Photo: TBA21–Academy, 2013

Photo: Jana Winderen | TBA21–Academy, 2012

Tidalectics

TBA21–Academy

Jana Winderen

28-channel ambisonic sound installation
28 min
Overall dimensions variable
Commissioned by TBA21–Academy

Jana Winderen's sound installation bára (2017) is composed from hydrophone recordings the artist collected during various expeditions with the TBA21-Academy among other journeys. The composition comprises diverse sounds, from waves to the distinctive clicking noises of crustaceans, from smaller fish species grunting and interacting with corals to larger mammals like pinnipeds and cetaceans, whose songs create moments of intensity when they waver through the space. The piece plays at different times each day, which shift according to the lowest and highest water level in the tidal calendar of the geographically closest coast near Vienna. Winderen's aural compositions turn our attention to audible underwater landscapes, from the North Pole to the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans, homing in on our senses and immediate perceptions beyond visual representations. The oceans' ecosystems are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature, acidification through rising levels of CO2, and sound pollution caused by air guns for seismic testing, military sonar, ship traffic, and explosions from undetonated dynamite. The sonic level of the underwater environment can be indicative of the status of ecosystems and the health of marine habitats. Yet subaquatic worlds are removed from access for many and often neglected in the common imaginary conjured by ecological and climate change discourse. Winderen's work takes us into these subsea environments in an evocative composition that creates both an interconnecting element within the exhibition, and a logic of ebb and flow that is reminiscent of the tidal movements of the oceans themselves.

*1965 in Bodø, Norway | Living and working in Oslo, Norway

Jana Winderen is an artist educated in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London, and with a background in mathematics, chemistry and fish ecology from the University in Oslo. She had an installation in Park Avenue Tunnel, New York City in the summer of 2014 and exhibited at MoMA, NYC in 2013. Jana was recently an artist-in-residence at the TBA21 Academy and releases her audio-visual works on Touch.

In 2011 she won the Golden Nica, Ars Electronica, for Digital Musics & Sound Art. Amongst her activities are immersive multi-channel installations and concerts and has performed all over the world. She currently lives and works in Oslo.

Jana Winderen researches the hidden depths with the latest technology; her work reveals the complexity and strangeness of the unseen world beneath. The audio topography of the oceans and the depth of ice crevasses are brought to the surface. She is concerned with finding and revealing sounds from hidden sources, both inaudible for the human senses and sounds from places and creatures difficult to access.

ARTIST'S WEBSITE

http://www.janawinderen.com/