Sonic Days 2024

This presentation examines how artefacts in museum exhibitions can become more dynamic by utilizing innovative display technologies and augmented mediation, moving beyond traditional glass displays. We propose methods for organizing and staging artefacts with temporal considerations, suggesting that their atmospheric influence spreads through the exhibition space like slow ripples in water, in contrast to Böhme's concept of instantaneous radiation. By theorizing and incorporating temporal structuring into artefact staging, we offer practical strategies for curators and designers to blend the sensory, emotional, and factual aspects of artefacts into the exhibition atmosphere. This approach involves a timeline-based layout of media content, emphasizing how the key atmospheric phenomenon of attunement unfolds over time, enhancing the artefacts' atmospheric, factual, and relational impact within museum spaces.

At this session Ditte Rønn will give insight into her creative process in creating outdoor spatial soundart at Rudolph Tegners Museum & Statuepark in northern zealand, Denmark. Primarily using acoustic instruments, Ditte has drawn inspiration from the work of sculptor Tegner (1873-1950) composing three album-like soundpieces that dialogues with the environment using omnidirectional speakers hanging in the trees. This listening session will also include insight into challenges, overall compositional and conceptual methods, as well as artistic thoughts about the potential in cross-aesthetic based soundart.
Her colleague and sounddesigner Yann Coppier, who has been spatial mixing the pieces together with Ditte, also gives a brief insight into his methods and thoughts using Spat Revolution in this case.

Just after this session, at 12.00 o'clock, the soundscape will be played in a version prepared for the immersive speaker system in the Atrium at UC-Syd/Sonic College. Be prepared for a unique listening experience.

Museums have been described as exhibitionary complexes and scopic regimes, both concepts stressing their orientation towards display and visuality, what Martin Jay has also characterized as ocularcentrism. However, new technologies have enabled other modalities, most notably sound, to become ingrained in contemporary exhibition design.
According to media theorist Marshall McLuhan a hot medium is relying on one sense modality in high definition requiring low participation from the audience. A cool medium, on the other hand, provides less detailed, or fragmented, information requiring more participation. Thus, following the ocularcentrism of exhibitions, they could be considered as hot media environments. Consequently, also including sound in the exhibition design could be considered as a cooling of, or tempering of the media environment, requiring, or enabling, more participation from the visitor.
Thinking along with McLuhans temperature metaphor, and applying it to exhibition design, we explore the affordances of sound as a tempering of the media environment of exhibitions that simultaneously requires and enables visitors to use their imagination more actively in the meaning-making – giving wings to their imagination, metaphorically speaking. Thus, sound provides exhibition designers with opportunities to engage in more complex storytelling.
We substantiate our argument with illustrative examples from the H.C. Andersen’s House in Odense, The Viking Sorceress exhibition at the National Museum of Denmark and the exhibition Might and Magic in the ruins underneath Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen.
We discuss whether a more temperate, or balanced, media environment can counteract the ocularcentric bias of the exhibition medium and afford more complex meaning-making experiences. We argue that such an approach, placing more demands on the visitors’ participation and engagement, might appeal to some visitors but alienate others. Finally, we challenge the premise of McLuhan’s temperature metaphor and discuss how certain ways of using exhibition sound might actually “heat up” the experience rather than “cooling” it down.

In this session, David Kamp will explore the unique challenges and creative opportunities of working with museums, focusing on two standout projects: the immersive 360° show "Invisible Worlds" for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and "Bauhaus Sound" for the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany. David will share insights into the production process for both projects, highlighting how they compare to his work in sound for visual art, animated shorts and audio branding. He'll examine key differences in teamwork, client expectations, workflows, and timelines, offering his perspective on museum sound design in contrast to other industries.

The fact that auditory processing is realised not only through the ear but also in the brain allows us to imagine sounds from various stimuli, such as images, thoughts, or dreams with a vividness comparable to real-world sound experiences. This phenomenon is particularly explicit in non-acoustic exhibits, where the absence of sound becomes a catalyst for visitor’s imaginative auditory experiences and personal narratives. The silence inherent in these exhibits serves as a blank canvas, inviting viewers to paint their own sonic landscapes. Some artists deliberatively create works that engage our auditory senses through visual means effectively transmitting sound or music without acoustic stimuli. Such works innovatively invoke sound’s phenomena, with resonances that emerge vividly from the visual imagery.
This presentation delves into the complex interplay between visual art and imagined sound within museum contexts. By examining works from Christian Marclay and Geneviève Cadieux, alongside installations from popular music exhibitions, I will demonstrate the potential of non-acoustic exhibits to evoke powerful auditory perceptions in the mind. These case studies illuminate how artists and museum curators can skillfully manipulate visual elements to stimulate auditory imagination, crafting rich multisensory experiences in the absence of physical sound. I will also demonstrate how, when the right stimuli are given, silence can paradoxically become a canvas for signfiicant sonic experiences.

Struer Museum is on a voyage to become a museum for sound and listening. This talk takes you on the first steps of that voyage, and considers some of the implications for a museum in engaging with sound in all core museological activities. We present some central concepts for the future Struer Museum, we introduce the newly founded National Center for Sonic Cultural Heritage, and ask what is and what could become sonic heritage?

The shift toward the ‘museumification’ of popular music is evidenced by blockbuster shows at leading international art and design museums alongside the establishment of music museums, Halls of Fame and exhibition centres around the world from Australia and Denmark to the UK and the US. The inclusion of music within a gallery context raises both practical questions about how best to deliver and manage sound within the gallery space, as well as questions of interpretation about how visitors will encounter the music, how they are encouraged to listen, and how it contributes to a multi-sensory experience. Drawing on case study museums and exhibitions I will discuss curatorial approaches to presenting music in the gallery and the opportunities opened up for sensory engagement. I will then examine visitor responses to explore how exhibition content is processed and interpreted by individuals.The paper will consider the different modes of engagement enabled through museum technologies while emphasising the importance of listening to visitor perspectives to more fully understand how music is given value within the museum encounter.