Abstract
The ways in which sound materials have been deployed in museum exhibitions and the listening practices that have developed in parallel have long since been driven by a complex interplay of circumstances such as: the conceptual understanding of sound; the situational museum practices and management options of the museum; the wider social and cultural orders in which sound-based practices are enmeshed; as well as the existing and emerging technological devices. The purpose of this study is to muse on how sound materials have been exhibited in museums through time and on the signifying opportunities opened up by those uses. Indeed, sound can convey representational and interactional meanings in a way similar to the more conventional modes. In greater detail, I argue that sound-based museum practices tend to cluster into six categories, specifically, (1) sound as a mode for ‘‘lecturing’’ (2) sound as artefact; (3) sound as ‘‘ambiance’’/ soundtrack; (4) sound as art; (5) sound as a mode for crowd-curation; (6) sound as a non-sonic mode. From the methodological point of view, the framework presented emerged from the collection of two types of data: insights gathered from the academic literature covering sound-based museum multimodal practices and on my own observations of a set of eighty permanent and temporary museum exhibitions worldwide.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Sound in Museums; Sound and Representation; Sound and Interaction
