Negotiating Noise: Manifesting possible futures
LUND: 20 NOVEMBER 2019
2019-11-19 and 2019-11-20 organised Sound Environment Centre, in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, a workshop with invited scholars and practitioners from various disciplines to exchange thoughts, experiences and knowledge on ‘noise’ in its widest sense. The workshop run for two days framed by two public symposiums: one introducing the field; the other pointing towards possible future collaborative approaches.
This second seminar consists of a presentation and discussion of the noise manifestos developed during the workshop.
Negotiating Noise: Manifesting possible futures
November 20th 2019, 16-18
C121: LUX, Lund University
Collaborative approaches to noise are presented and discussed through what hopefully turn out to be shared manifestos of ‘future noises’. Researchers from acoustics, architecture, cultural theory, sound and music studies, urban planning and health care will participate.
Over the years, ‘noise’ as a term has gained increasing attention from various disciplines: health effects on human beings is paid careful attention from researchers within medicine; the taming of noise by acousticians is an ongoing concern; diminishing and adjustment of noise by city-planners and urbanists remains high on the policy agenda; the masking of noise by sound designers is more important than ever in our media-rich world; historical and aesthetic insights abound from scholars within cultural studies; and use of noise by sound artists and experimental composers and musicians tests the boundaries of the sonically acceptable.
The above-mentioned are only a few examples of research and creative approaches to noise. Each discipline and practice belongs to its own paradigms differing from one another in methodology, theories, norms, aims and purposes. But, what most disciplines and practices have in common is a common understanding of ‘noise’ as a complex phenomenon leaving cracks and fractures that might seem untamable. At times it seems like everything that could possibly be written and said about noise has already been written and said. And yet, from multiple perspectives, new ideas and cultural interventions stem from engagement with noise as sound and as concept.
The two open seminars are part of a closed workshop with the invited speakers. During the workshop the participants are encouraged to engage with the untamable cracks and fractures of ‘noise’, to let them act as pathways and wormholes between the disciplines and as catalysator of dialog, curiosity and maybe even open towards new territories and combinations of knowledge. We wish to generate new dialogue about what noise is, what it does, and what we might gain by bringing different perspectives together to pose new questions about noise as problem and possibility. Beyond the narrow question of noise control, we wish to explore the threads across and between different ways of thinking about and intervening in noise.
Co-organised by Sanne Krogh Groth (Lund University) & James Mansell (University of Notthingham)
