Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen : Does sound make sense?

The primary focus of this project is the research area of sound, and in particular the epistemological potentials of sound and how it affects the way we experience and sense the world. The underlying thesis is that sound carries a meaning-creating potential both on a primary level concerning the phenomenological, bodily experience and also in the way discourses arise and change through cultural practice. [Is this correct?] From this perspective, sound research reflects an interplay between sound and experience, which includes the aesthetic, phenomenological and discursive aspects and the conventional production of meaning. This particular project will investigate how we are able to analytically describe and theoretically deal with this experience of sound.

Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen is an assistant research professor in the Section for Aesthetics and Culture, Department of Aesthetic studies, Aarhus University. She was awarded a PhD by the University of Aarhus in 2004 for her thesis “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing – gesture and meaning in music and literature”, which was recently published in an edited version: Sound, Literature and Music – Gesture in the experience of Art (Aarhus University Press, 2008). The title of her most recent research project is, ”Current Danish hip hop as aesthetic phenomenon - rhythm, groove and gesture between the local and the global”. Together with Mads Krogh, Birgitte edited Hiphop in Scandinavia ( Aarhus University Press, 2008).