Banrei

mass notification

 

Banrei performance at 7:30pm

March 23rd- May 13th, 2018

ESS
Audible Gallery
5925 N Ravenswood Ave
Chicago, IL 60660


mass notification is a sound installation by the artist Banrei (Jake Harper) that considers auditory methods of control and the language of the siren. The work experienced at Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) consists of an array of hundreds of works dispersed through short auditory bursts of sound that swell and spatter, interspersed with moments of modulated silence, utilizing sheer volume as a visceral form of object presence.

This is the latest iteration from a series of international site-specific installations and performances by the artist, titled mass notification. The first work in the series was devised in collaboration with a neuroscientist and was a live test of a specially reconfigured siren that broadcast sound from a mobile medical clinic. The sound was engineered to function on a cognitive level as a siren but was reworked into a more inviting series of sounds. In this apparently paradoxical situation, the sound system was employed to improve the efficacy of delivering humanitarian aid, through radical sonic urban place-making.
 
The presentation at ESS downplays physical staging, instead favoring the creation of an immersive psychoacoustic experience. The speakers are utilized as equipment, a “way of knowing” that engages the audience as sonic bodies, in a multiplexed auditory environment.
 
The installation will begin with a one-time performance of 796 Bursts, which premiered last year as a radio broadcast in the Netherlands on Concertzender FM as part of their Gamechangers Series, at ESS on March 23rd at 7:30pm.
 
For more information on the artist, visit: http://www.banrei.com/ 

Jake Harper (Banrei)

Born in 1988 in Washington DC, Harper spent the early part of his career as a keyboardist and composer in New York. From 2006 - 2010, he performed with a diverse range of artists including Theophilus London, Machinedrum, Jimmy Edgar, DMC (Run DMC) and M-1 (Dead Prez).


From 2010 to 2012, Harper was active as a part of Soundwalk Collective, which led to his first international exposure as a sound artist with exhibitions and performances at the Centre Pompidou, the New Museum, FIAF, and the National Museum of China.


Harper spent the following three years becoming a Buddhist monk and working as a priest in Tokyo, Japan.  Upon returning to the US in July of 2015, he adopted the name 'Banrei', a word found on communal graves in Buddhist graveyards that translates to ’10,000 souls’. Under the name Banrei, he has exhibited and performed at numerous museums and arts institutions around the world, including the Tate Modern, the Drop Everything Biennial, and the Antarctica Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale of Art. He has exhibited solo shows at the Efrain Lopez Gallery and the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio.

In 2015, Harper formed Public Decibel, an architecture firm that seeks to solve urban design and placemaking challenges with sound.  Public Decibel most notably piloted a program in Malawi that leverages sound aesthetics and neurosciences to improve the efficacy of humanitarian aid delivery by reprogramming sirens on mobile medical trucks.