Research Catalogue

Iris Garrelfs works on the cusp of music, art and sociology across improvised performance, multi-channel installation and fixed media projects. She was one of the first UK artists to combine voice with digital processing and still often uses voice as raw material, which she transmutes into machine noises, choral works or pulverised “into granules of electroacoustic babble and glitch, generating animated dialogues between innate human expressiveness and the overt artifice of digital processing” as the Wire Magazine put it. Iris is interested in modes of listening as a way of connecting to the world. As a result she often works with site, not just as investigations of the geographical, historic or sociological aspects of each locality, but also as poetic evocations of presence on the one hand and presence within a space or situation on the other.
 Her work has been included in major institutions worldwide, for example Tate Britain, National Gallery London, Royal Academy Of Arts London, Visiones Sonores Mexico, Palazzo delle Esposizioni Rome, MC Gallery New York. Residencies have included Grizedale Art (UK), Institute of Modern Art Celje (Slovenia), Onassis Cultural Centre Athens (Greece).
With a PhD from University of the Arts London, Iris’ research interest focuses on the process of creative practice. As a postdoctoral researcher at Chelsea College of Art, she applied her model of process in sound art practice - entitled Procedural Blending - to the development of a model for active metadata as part of the interdisciplinary, cross-university CREAM project. She is currently Senior Lecurer in Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths University of Arts, London.

Public talks and seminars include The Bodleian Library’s Centre for Digital Scholarship, ICA London (UK), Oxford (UK), a performance lecture at Cycling74’s Max Connect session, Keynote at the Field Studies master class series (Metropolitan University, UK). As a commissioning editor of the open access journal Reflections on Process in Sound, she encourages artists to contribute their experiences to the discourse.