Shannon Harris
Public Installation Examples:
This portfolio highlights selected multichannel sound installations, immersive listening environments, environmental recording projects, and public sound experiences created between 2021–2026.
Audio Auravation: 16-Channel Immersive Experience
Elastic Arts, Chicago, Illinois
Created for Elastic Arts' CLEAT system, this site-responsive installation utilized a 16-channel ceiling-mounted loudspeaker array to spatialize environmental recordings, voice, music, and atmospheric textures throughout the listening environment. Sounds dynamically emerged, traveled, and dissolved across the room, encouraging audiences to experience sound as an immersive architectural medium rather than a fixed stereo presentation.
This project expanded my ongoing practice of combining environmental recording, immersive sound design, and contemplative listening into site-specific public experiences.
Media:
Installation Photos | DAW Session Screenshots | Video Excerpt
MJ Audio Pharmacology™ Anthology: The King of Pop Meets The King of Healing Arts
University of Chicago Logan Center for the Arts, 10th Anniversary Celebration
Created for the University of Chicago Logan Center's 10th Anniversary celebration, this site-specific multi-channel sound installation transformed the Tower Stairwell into an immersive listening environment that accompanied visitors as they moved throughout the space. The work combined rare Michael Jackson a cappella recordings with original environmental recordings captured throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Costa Rica, and Belize, alongside custom Audio Pharmacology™ sonic compositions.
Designed as an exploration of voice, frequency, and place, the installation highlighted the expressive power of the human voice while creating unexpected connections between music, environmental sound, and cultural listening traditions. By integrating ethnographic recordings, natural soundscapes, and spatially distributed audio, the work invited visitors to encounter the stairwell as a contemplative acoustic environment rather than simply a passageway.
Media:
Installation Photos | Links
Audio Pharmacology™ Sound Spa©
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Center
Audio Pharmacology™ Sound Spa© is an ongoing immersive listening experience that combines environmental recordings, original compositions, acoustic instruments, and spatialized sound design within contemplative public settings. Developed and facilitated throughout Chicago over the past three years, the project has been presented in cultural, educational, healthcare, and community-centered environments, engaging audiences through deep listening and immersive sound.
Each session integrates natural soundscapes, music, voice, and environmental recordings into carefully curated listening journeys that encourage focused attention and engagement with the sonic environment. Presented for diverse audiences ranging from intimate community gatherings to large-scale public events, the work expands traditional concert and sound-art formats by emphasizing listening as an active and participatory experience.
The project represents an ongoing exploration of environmental sound, audience engagement, and the creation of temporary listening environments that transform public spaces into sites of reflection, presence, and acoustic discovery.
Media: Installation Photos | Audio Excerpt
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Center (2025)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Center (2025)
Biophonic Americas (Work-in-Progress Excerpt)
A Quadraphonic Nature Walk Through the Americas
Excerpt from a developing quadraphonic composition created for the proposed Biophonic Americas installation. This sample demonstrates the spatial movement of environmental recordings captured in California's Sierra Nevada, Costa Rica, and Belize, and illustrates how sounds are positioned and transitioned throughout a four-channel listening environment.
Embedded four-channel audio excerpt from the proposed installation. The file will play as a discrete quadraphonic composition on multichannel systems and automatically fold down for stereo playback when surround monitoring is unavailable.
Media:
Audio Sample | Images
Field recording expedition in California's Sierra Nevada. Original recordings from these habitats form part of the proposed Biophonic Americas installation.
Field recording expedition in Costa Rican rainforest habitats represented within the installation.