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
Spun essay by Michelle Grabner, Oct 2016
The New York Times Style Magazine, May 2012
Les Inrockuptibles, September 2011
Education
2010
New York University BA, Composition
Contact
+1 301 787 1114