Jana Winderen is an artist who currently lives and works in Norway. Her work focuses on audio environments and creatures which are hard for humans to access both physically and sonically. This may be animals underwater, in ice or out of the frequency range of human hearing. Her activities include site specific and spatial audio installations and concerts, which have been exhibited and performed internationally in major institutions and public spaces.

Much of Jana’s work involves preserving the essence of the sound she is recording. Her works revolve around capturing often delicate and hard to capture sounds and wants. Her work is similar to sushi, any preparation done to the fish is to enhance the natural flavour and umami of it. You can say the same for Jana’s work, any post production to the audio is to enhance the sound that’s already there, not lather it in unneeded and unwanted effects. For instance, in her album “The Wanderer” all sounds recorded come from zooplankton and phytoplankton, microscopic plants and creatures. For Jana’s pieces, listening to the rarely heard sounds, or impossible to hear with human ears in nature is intriguing enough as is.

When coming into sound arts from a musical background I believe it’s quite easy to fall into experimental sound design software. Granulators, convolvers, Pelletizers etc. create amazing other worldly sounds by mangling and destroying the audio originally passed through it. I think Jana’s work is a reminder that there is still more exploration to be done in finding sounds found naturally. Many of the clicking plankton sounds heard in “The Wanderer” could be emulated by passing a click through a granulator but it’s not the same as finding the natural source. Some parts of the world have never been recorded. The deepest point in the ocean, the mariana trench hasn’t been sonically explored. It’s interesting to think about what these unexplored parts of the world might sound like.