If We Could Listen to Our Cultural Heritage, What Would It Sound Like? And What Can It Teach Us About the Importance of Sound?

A forthcoming National Center for Sonic Cultural Heritage at Struer Museum aims to explore these questions by mapping and collecting knowledge about our sonic heritage on a national level. The project will be a collaboration with Aarhus University’s Center for Sound Studies, the National Museum of Denmark, and Sound Art Lab. Struer Museum, which already has a strong focus on sound and listening, has received funding from the Færch Foundation and Struer Municipality to establish the center.

“At the Center for Sound Studies, we look forward to the new possibilities that will arise with a national research center dedicated to our sonic heritage, alongside strong partners like the National Museum of Denmark, Sound Art Lab, and Struer Museum. Sonic heritage is a neglected area, and this new knowledge center will help develop our understanding of how sound and listening influence our cultural lives and history,” says Mia Falch Yates, Head of the Center for Sound Studies at Aarhus University.

She sees many opportunities in the collaboration and several areas where the Center for Sound Studies can contribute valuable insights.

"This is the substantial work we have now begun thanks to the visionary idea conceived at Struer Museum. At the Center for Sound Studies, we are proud to be part of the collaboration in developing this new knowledge center. As an interdisciplinary research center, we can contribute broad expertise on sound experiences, sound design, sound interpretations, and soundscapes that extend into areas such as music, literature, museology, art history, digital design, aesthetics, and culture more broadly,” she explains.

Sound as Evidence

Since 2009, the Center for Sound Studies has served as an interdisciplinary research environment for sound, currently housing 15 researchers, two of whom are external.

Morten Breinbjerg, Associate Professor at the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies and representative for the Center for Sound Studies in the new knowledge center in Struer, explains that the research at the Center for Sound Studies broadly encompasses sound. This includes sound in literature as listening and reading, sound in media, sound as a design phenomenon, and sound as an environment.

“The center covers a very broad range of research interests in sound and serves as a platform where we can meet and discuss sound as a phenomenon from various perspectives. And it’s a platform we can utilize in a context such as the collaboration with the National Knowledge Center for Sonic Cultural Heritage,” Morten Breinbjerg explains.

From his own research perspective, he believes that gaining a deeper understanding of sound is essential because sound environments, among other things, bear witness to how we fundamentally function as a society and what relationships we have with each other.

“One can think of sound environments as city environments or, on an even larger scale, as ecology. Typically, people talk about noise issues, but we can also consider it more broadly, like how we actually experience being in the world through our ears,” says Morten Breinbjerg, providing a few examples:

“How do we perceive our surroundings through the sounds we hear? It could involve something like neighborhoods. How do we experience community through sound? What kind of peace and rhythm can be found in hearing the rhythms of a neighbor? This can be applied to various other contexts to consider when designing specific environments, such as hospitals, maternity wards, and schools.”

He believes this perspective is also important historically.

“There can also be historical interest. How can we trace historical developments through sound? I’ve previously worked extensively with sound markers and have written about foghorns specifically here in Aarhus, a port city by the sea. Having a foghorn active in the city for 70 years marks a form of sonic identity.”

Finding Sound in Archives

According to Morten Breinbjerg, researchers at the Center for Sound Studies can provide crucial skills and knowledge for National Center for Sonic Cultural Heritages mission to help us better listen to history.

“For the last 150 years or so, we’ve had recording media, so it’s easy to go out and record sounds. And then comes the question of what sounds should be recorded. What is important to capture? How should it be done? These are classic curatorial questions,” he says, adding:

“But there are also other methods to investigate how history has sounded. In the present, it can involve interviews with people, but it can also mean historical documents. We can trace people’s experiences of their sound environments through written sources, images, and paintings. Paintings of everyday scenes in urban spaces may indicate how the sound environment was perceived. So, it’s an attempt to think about how we can collect knowledge through historical sources.”

He looks forward to the collaboration and is excited that the history of sound is receiving more attention.

“These are classic collection challenges, well-known in the museum world, but focusing on sound is something new. To attune ourselves to how the sonic can also be an indicator of how societies function, how people thrive, and what they are engaged in and surrounded by. So, it makes perfect sense to be involved in such a collaboration.”

Learn more about the Center for Sound Studies here

Contact

Morten Breinbjerg, Associate Professor
Department of Digital Design and Information Studies
School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University
Email: mbrein@cc.au.dk
Phone: +45 87161997

Mia Falch Yates, Postdoc
Department of Art History
School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University
Email: my@cc.au.dk
Phone: +45 22939099