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Whether music, speech, or everyday noise, sounds – and also their absence in the form of silence – represent an essential means of communication and identification in human cultures. By appreciating sounds or silencing them, we connect to real or imaginary places and spaces, people, rituals, social structures, and natural environments, and develop wishful thinking and desires. Sounds and noise evoke or express emotions. By evaluating these and by communicating our interpretations in various media, feelings of belonging are formed, and social or cultural communities are demarcated.
Just as we identify ourselves through our sonic expressions, we also take in the culture of “others” with all its acoustic phenomena, adding interpretations, evaluations, and (pre-)judgments. In intercultural encounters, these sonic images of “self” and “other” are put to the test, renegotiated, fought over and against, overturned or consolidated. The conference traces the multidimensional processes of perception and interpretation of sonic cultural encounters in the millennium between 500 and 1500 from a transregional perspective. For this purpose, we follow travel routes through diverse geographical and cultural, but also imaginary, spaces. Leading questions are: how do the travelers perceive, evaluate, and describe their own as well as the foreign acoustic environment? How do they move and stage themselves in “other” sound cultures? Which musical phenomena are adopted and with which motivations? Which prejudices and desires develop in the interplay of their own and “foreign” sound perception? And what expression do these mental constructs find in concrete social (sound) action? An interdisciplinary and multi-perspective approach including an intermedial, multisensory understanding allows us to examine different cultures and their sound spheres, and to discuss the multidimensionality of their social and individual perception as well as their social, aesthetic, and emotional effects.

The conference will take place online via Zoom.

In order to attend, please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZArceirqjspGNHawVEAviXVFjfHP-n-4Ye0

Organizers:

Judith I. Haug (Orient-Institut Istanbul)

Margret Scharrer (University of Bern)

Julia Samp (RWTH Aachen University)

Richard Wittmann (Orient-Institut Istanbul)