Sound in Media Culture

International Research Network – German Research Foundation 2010-2013

Quote from: soundinmediaculture.net

»The research topic around what constitutes and influences a cultural history of sound, and which methods would be suitable to examine it, grew out of our own quite diverse approaches to sound and its various meanings. These include an interest in auditory experiences in everyday life, past and present, in daring and generative developments between popular culture and avantgarde art, as well as in advanced ad critical theoretical approaches between historical-cultural anthropology and the cultural history of the media and the senses. Furthermore, the conceptualization of sound within the music industry, within certain genre discourses, which ensure that sounds became part of popular music histories, and particular technologies associated with these sounds.

This diversity in definition and approach will also be reflected in the final publication of this network as a comprehensive handbook that may serve as a work of reference for future research in this field.

It is especially important to us that the research network funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) requires the inclusion of young scholars. The conception of the network as a whole, as well as the design of the individual workshops, will encourage a dialogue between those young scholars and the established and experienced researchers while collaborating on the final reference handbook.

For this reason the internal workshops do not consist of a series of full-length papers. Instead, several short theses with audiovisual examples will be presented and serve as a starting point for discussion.

The topics and articles for our final publication will stem from these discussions and develop and change throughout the three-year span of the project. This will allow us to keep in close touch with the changes in our contemporary media soundcape as well as developments in technology and research that will inevitably take place this decade.«