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photo: Quinn Tivey

 

 

 

Bio 

Jake Harper (Banrei) was born in Washington DC in 1988.


Formerly of New York and Berlin-based Soundwalk Collective, he is most known for his work with sirens.

In 2015, he founded Public Decibel, a sonic architecture firm whose aim is to solve placemaking and urban design challenges through sound. 

He is currently leading auditory urban design for an autonomous mobility startup. 

 

 

 

 

Artist Statement 

Banrei makes use of sites/methods of control as the means for public sound installation, often utilizes equipment seemingly existing in a site by default: public address systems, ambulance sirens, mass SMS messaging services, native advertising.

 

Impulses, bursts, and sirens are constructed from the rejectamenta of the music sampling process. Sources are obscured and listeners are confronted with the primal qualities of the wavelines – roughness, harmonies, shapes. Bursts are experienced emotionally as well as physically, an imperative breaking apart linear narratives into a collection of simultaneously possible states.

 

The listener is provoked to engage a cognitive crossroads between analysis and instinctive reaction.  Beyond the limitations of our irrational fears and our arbitrarily curated taste, the mechanisms of this crossroads cannot be possessed by experience.  To give into it is to open one’s self up to the most abstract forms of human interaction. 

 

 

 

Select Public Presentations of Work 

2018

Spatial Music

Sentralen, Oslo

Mass Notification (solo show)

Experimental Sound Studios, Chicago

Premio Arte Laguna Art Prize, Finalist

Arsenale, Venice

2017

Multiburst (solo show)

Efrain Lopez Gallery, Chicago

Re: Re: Re: Re Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Art Show

Pfizer Factory, Brooklyn

Mass Notification

Antarctic Pavilion, Venice Biennale of Art

796 Bursts [radio premiere]

Concertzender FM, Netherlands

2016

KISS2016

De Montfort University, Leicester UK

AMNMA (solo show)

Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Oak Park IL

Re: Art Show

Pfizer Factory, Brooklyn
 

Spies in the Wires

PACT Galerie, Paris
 

Drop Everything Biennial

Inis Oirr, Ireland.

Father's to I've to Father's

Tate Modern, London

Manifest

Columbia College, Chicago

 


2015
 
The Garden

Pershing Square, Los Angeles
 

Ephemeral Objects

San Diego Art Institute, San Diego
 

It's Too Late

Zhou B Art Center, Chicago
 


2012

 “MEDEA: Zig Zag Series” Audio CD, photo book, and travel diary

Published by Dis Voir (With SWC)


Drop Everything Biennial

Inis Oirr, Ireland (with SWC)


MEDEA

Centre Pompidou, Paris (With SWC)


Well / Well / Not-at-all Solo Festival

ESORABAKO, Tokyo, Japan


Eavesdropping Festival 

The Tank, New York.
 


2011

MEDEA 

PS1 Art on Air, NYC (With SWC)


EN Movement Showcase: Anew

Tokyo Salon, Tokyo


Festival of Ideas for the New City Biennial 

New Museum (With SWC)


The Passenger

French Institute Alliance Française concert at Florence Gould Hall, NYC (With SWC).
 

 


2010

Running Man (Opera)

Riverside Church, NYC. 

 

Lectures / Papers / Demonstrations

2016

”AMNMA”  Demonstration and lecture. KISS2016 Kyma International Sound Symposium Emergence!  De Montfort University Leicester, UK

2015

“The Sonic Garden: Interactive sound in Public Spaces” Demonstration and talk. Pershing Square Renew Technology Committee, Los Angeles USA.

Residencies

2017

Mana Contemporary Artist in Residence, Jersey City NJ

Select Publications

BBC, July 2017

Irish Times, May 2017

Spun essay by Michelle Grabner, Oct 2016

 

Daily VICE, August 2016 

Trajectoire, July 2016

Art New Portal, July 2016

L’Exploreur, June 2016

VICE, March 2016

 

Irish Times, March 2016

 

The New York Times Style Magazine, May 2012

 

Tsugi, October 2011

 

Les Inrockuptibles, September 2011

Liberation Next, 2011

 

PS1 Art on Air, August 2011 

Education

2010
New York University BA, Composition

Contact

ys4lve@gmail.com

+1 301 787 1114

 

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