Pre-Acoustic Sound Studies

Auditory Cultures before 1800

 

A Symposion of the
Forskningsgrupper Sound & Senses
at the University of Copenhagen

Location

University of Copenhagen
Department of Arts & Cultural Studies
Karen Blixensvej 1
2300 Copenhagen

Room 16.3.07
(building 16, 3rd floor)

Fee

No fee (funded by the Forskningsgrupper Sound & Senses)

Concept

Often, the field of sound studies explores sound practices, listening experiences and auditory dispositives in relation to the academic discipline of acoustics. This has happened especially in relation to the discipline as developed in the 19th century, when acoustics became first established as part of the experimental cultures and national academic disciplines.

In this symposion we intend to travel further back in time, partly because it has not been researched nearly as intensively as the post-1800 centuries in sound studies; partly because we want to investigate if the middle ages, the renaissance, and early enlightenment present rather different ways of producing, experiencing and theorizing sound compared to the post-enlightenment and the achievements of national sciences in the 19th century.

The lectures and discussions will explore sound and listening practices, dispositives and experiences in an age when auditory knowledge was either concrete and rooted in the everyday or abstractly and mathematically conceptualized. It was not an age without sonic epistemologies, but with different ones that were already in place, applied, and somehow even dominant: on the marketplace, in religious edifices, in situations of domestic and military everyday life. Our three guests will explore with us the fields of sound in ecclesiastical milieus and of surveillance concepts. The individual lectures will be completed with more extensive listening sessions concerned with examples related to the presentations of our three guests.

Registration

Send a mail to: Rasmus Holmboe

 

Programme

10:00
Morten Michelsen & Holger Schulze (Copenhagen/DK)
Welcome & Introduction

10:30
Peter Woetmann Christoffersen (Copenhagen/DK):
The Solemn Sound:Sounding References to the Liturgy’s most Sacred Mysteries

11:30
Listening Session & Discussion

12:15
LUNCH

14:00
Andi Schoon (Bern/CH):
Enlightened Ear en Route.
From the Panacousticon to Transcultural Listening

14:45
Listening Session & Discussion

15:30
COFFEE

16:00
Rupert Till (Huddersfield/UK):
​Archaeoacoustics:Studying and Reconstructing the Acoustics of the Ancient Past

16:45
Listening Session & Discussion

17:30
Morten Michelsen & Holger Schulze (Copenhagen/DK)
Concluding Remarks