Jana Winderen is an artist based in Norway. Her work focuses on hard to access audio environments and creatures, both locationally and in terms of frequency ranges. Her work is displayed as site specific and spacial audio, installations and concerts.
Jana has worked with many different aspects of sound, but she focused mainly on her work with water in this talk. In 2016 Jana was invited to join a project called dark ecology that focused on the area between Norway and Russia. A group of artists and scientist investigated an area on the border, this particular space had a political weight at the time due to complications with the north east passage and the oil industry. Jana recorded local people’s stories, people who are directly effected by the conflict. Jana also recorded the ocean with hydrophones to sonically capture the area. She talks about the use of hydrophones and how one has to be patient and a-tune to that form of listening, it can be that you don’t hear anything at first but in time you start to hear more, ‘without any exceptions, I always hear something that is triggering my interest’ she says. Jana was invited to investigate the marginal ice zone, it was an exhibition to catalogue small aquatic creature populations and the change in ice formations. Jana talks about the difficulties she faced due to the ships noise, and that she had to get away from the ship on land. She then faced difficulty due to a drone some scientists were using to record seal populations. Her work requires isolation, she talks about how she has to get very far away from machinery or people. Jana talked about hearing a dropping tone in the water and working out its source because a seal poked its head out of the water shortly. I find the idea that she hears a great deal more than what is visible fascinating, hearing more but what you hear is less defined. In this talk Jana shows a series of images of her seemingly isolated, it looks about as far away as you can get to human influence, but it is not the case. She says you can still hear machinery even if you walk very far away, you would have to ski for a day to get away from it.
‘We have colonised all of the planet with our sound’
During a project in Newcastle following a river source to mouth, Jana became interested in listening to the health of a body of water. She saw fresh water biologists counting underwater insects to say something about the health of the body of water. Jana became interested in trying to identify the sounds of these underwater insects, with the goal of understanding which insects survive certain changes to the river over the years, she found that this method would be quite difficult to prove quantity. While working with these fresh water biologists, Winderen became enamoured by the worlds she found within small sections of rivers, speaking about the variety of creatures and the sounds they produce.
Jana Winderen emphasises the value of drawing a subject, believing it forces you to pay attention to what it looks like, ‘you get to know them better so when you then see them again, in my experience you recognise and see them and remember them.’ I think this could be a valuable practice to just to familiarise yourself with your auditory materials.
Jana reminisces about working in northumberland listening to an ants nest using hydrophones. She describes the movement/vibration of the ants nest as an incredible sound. She emphasises the importance of just trying things out, exploring the auditory world, whilst being mindful to not disrupt it.