Tangible Music Lab #8: Viola Yip

Viola Yip, born and raised in Hong Kong, now based in Berlin, is an experimental composer, performer, improviser, sound artist and instrument builder. In her practice, she develops unorthodox self-built instruments, compositions and performances that explore the complex and dynamic relationships between materiality, media, space, human body and machine body through sounds.
Her instruments and sound performances have been presented in music festivals and venues such as Issue Project Room New York, The New School NYC, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Cycling ‘74 Expo Hong Kong Arts Center, University of Huddersfield, QO-2 Brussels, Moers Festival, Center for Art and Media ZKM Karlsruhe, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, A L’arme! Festival, DARA String Festival, Heroines of Sound, Akademie der Künste Berlin, Blurred Edges Festival Hamburg, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, NEXT festival Bratislava and Serralves Contemporary Art Museum in Porto.

In her guest lecture “My Body as Transducer: Building Instruments for Transmedial Listening,” Viola Yip will share some of her recent works — from a lightbulb and a dining turntable to an electromagnetic feedback dress, a laser feedback instrument, and an inflatable feedback dome. She will discuss how these different instruments serve as sites for ontological investigation, exploring how music communicates across medial boundaries through the embodied presence of the listening body.