Ansa Lønstrup : Sound in the Museum – Sound and Contemporary Art
What is known as contemporary art today primarily stems from the fine arts, its milieus and the art academies. But contemporary art is in fact multi- or intermedial: it uses materials related and appealing to all the senses: sight, hearing, touch, and smell, and often it also appeals to interactivity.
In aesthetic theory we talk about the notion of media (“medialities”) as being sound, text, picture and staging. Especially in installation art works all or several media will come into play, and the same goes for (multi)media art like video art , digital art, Internet art and computer art. In these, the sound often compensates for or “covers” all the senses but sight – i.e., it compensates for the lack of physical presence (touch, smell, taste).
Sound has therefore become a decisive register of exploration and as such a new global material in contemporary art. In national and international museums of modern and contemporary art, artworks with sound by artists like Bill Viola, Pipilotti Rist, Tony Ousler, Shirin Neshat and many others are exhibited and bought. And many students at art academies use sound in their final projects well.
This rather new presence of sound in museums and art galleries places new demands not only on museums and their way of organizing and staging the physical museum space but also on the visitors and their preparation for and interaction with the museum and the artworks. The question is whether the presence of sound also creates fundamental changes in the way audience receives and interacts with contemporary art and whether it might also have some consequences outside the museum.
Unlike pictures, sound comes into direct contact with the body, creating a sense of presence and proximity and in this way moving us physically and mentally. In addition, staged and framed in the normally silent museum, sound may cause us to pay attention to and concentrate on the acoustic stimuli, as distinct from the way we normally relate to acoustic stimuli in an unconscious, subconscious or repressed way. Meeting sound in this concentrated, staged way in the museum, we may sense and listen to the sound – and watch others listen – while at the same time the sound establishes liveliness and thereby a very strong receptive appeal in relation to the artistic and spatial context. This may be the reason why sound has become the major global attraction in audio visual and multimedial works of art.
The research project will collaborate with the Art Museum ARoS and the Art Academy of Jutland, both situated in Aarhus, and other relevant institutions and galleries, to explore the presence and use of sound (as media) in contemporary art, the practice of exhibiting art with sound and the reaction of the audience to this. The research will balance methods of reception aesthetic analysis and analyses of the physical and gestural activity (movements) of the audience and their interactivity and behaviour, all based on assessments of their general interaction and discursive construction of this interaction (interviews).
Ansa Lønstrup is director of the research project “ Audio visual Culture and the Good Sound” (2009-2012), financed by the Danish Research Council for Culture and Communication (Arts and Humanities). She is an associate professor at the Institute of Aesthetic Studies, primarily attached to the Section for Aesthetics and Culture – Interdisciplinary Aesthetic Studies, which she has headed since 2004. She has published on music and film, music and visuals, music and media, the aesthetics and culture of music, the voice and the ear, soundscapes, vocality, and audio culture. She teaches and supervises cross-disciplinary studies including text, picture, sound, staging and their respective art forms (literature, visual art, music, drama).
Her current research interests are sound aesthetics, cultural politics, soundscapes, sound and environment, sound and experience; audio visual culture and experience culture; acoustemology; sound as medial expression; sound and contemporary art – sound in the art museum; analyzing sound and methodology; music drama (opera), and intermediality.
Member of the Danish National Research Council for the Humanities (SHF) 1998-2005 representing musicology and aesthetic disciplines. Vice-chairman of the SHF 1999-2003. Executive committeemember of the SHF and the international committee 1999-2004. Member of The Nordic Cooperation Committee for Research in the Humanities (NOS-H) 2000-2004, chairman for two years. Member of the board of the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Aarhus, DK, 1998-2000. Member of the board of the Danish Research Centre of the Humanities 2000-2004.
Member of the Committee of the Humanities, the Norwegian Research Council, 2007-2010. Member of ESF HERA panel (Humanities as a Source of Creativity and Innovation), 2009.
1993-96: Head of Centre for Interdisciplinary Aesthetic Studies, University of Aarhus, DK.
Member of the steering committee for the research project ”Modern Aesthetic Theory”, financed by the Danish Research Council (1993-98). Head of the educational research network in musicology “Skagerak” 1996-1999 (Universities of Oslo, Åbo, Göteborg, Lund, Aalborg and Aarhus), financed by NorFa (NordForsk).From 2002-2007 external evaluator (peer review) for The Norwegian Research Council.
Member of the expert panel for the programme Cultural Valuation, The Norwegian Research Council 2008.
Chair and member of several assessment committees for academic positions at the Universities of Gothenburg, Aarhus, Copenhagen, and The Royal Danish Library.
Supervisor on 5 PhD dissertations. Chair of 3 PhD assessment committees; member of 7 PhD assessment committees at the Universities of Copenhagen, Aarhus, Bergen, and The University of South Denmark within the following subject areas: dance aesthetics, film and media science, audiovisual communication, musicology, aesthetics and culture, multimedia and digital aesthetics, vocality).
Lønstrup, Ansa: Music, Film, and Film Experience . An interdisciplinary aesthetic study in Il Conformista, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1986.
Lønstrup, Ansa: "How does the music work in Twin Peaks ?" in Mediekultur no. 18, SmiD 1992.
Lønstrup, Ansa: "Musical-poetic television. On the aesthetics of listening in television” in Filmhäftet . Kritisk Tidskrift för analys av rörliga bilder no. 88, Stockholm 1995.
Lønstrup, Ansa: "From speech and language to tone and timbre – on the voice, the sound and the music in the performances of Hotel Pro Forma ” . In Erik Exe Christoffersen (ed.): Hotel Pro Forma , Forlaget Klim, Århus 1998
Lønstrup, Ansa og Lene Tortzen Bager (ed.): The Art and the Artwork. Aesthetic Studies VI, Aarhus University Press, Aarhus 1999.
Lønstrup, Ansa: "Breaking the Words. On the Voice between Music, Language and Visuality”, in Aesthetic Theory?, Aesthetic Studies VII (ed. Morten Kyndrup and Carsten Madsen), Aarhus University Press, Århus 2000.
Lønstrup, Ansa: "Danish Tone. The Echo of Danishnes?" Tidsskriftet Antropologi nr. 42, København 2000.
Lønstrup, Ansa: The Voice and the Ear. Studies in vicality and auditive Culture (210 s.). Forlaget Klim, Århus 2004.
Lønstrup, Ansa og Charlotte Rørdam Larsen: ”Danish music politics without change?” in Nordisk Kulturpolitisk Tidskrift , 2/2004, Borås/Göteborgs Universitet, 2004
Lønstrup, Ansa og Charlotte Rørdam Larsen: ”SPOT on the music locally – globally thinking” in Kulturliv i Århus , 2005.
Lønstrup, Ansa og Charlotte Rørdam Larsen: "The Rythmic North: From Politics to Policy”, in Nordisk Kulturpolitisk Tidskrift , vol. 9 No. 2/2006, Borås/Göteborgs Universitet 2004
Written in English:
Lønstrup, Ansa: "Sound Aesthetics, Soundscapes and the Politics of Sound”, http://cc.au.dk/ : Nordiska Sällskapet för estetik, 2007. s. 1-7 Konferencen: The Limits of Aesthetics, Århus, Danmark, 31. maj 2007 – 3. juni 2007
Lønstrup, Ansa: “Sounding Art – Sound in the Museum – Acoustemology as Sound Politics” in http://foreninger.uio.no/no/nmf, 2008
