Washington, D.C., September 24-26, 2015

The goal of this workshop was to interrogate selected artistic practices in the period from 1800 to the early 20th century in order to determine how such practices were informed by knowledge about the auditory dimension, and to what extent these artistic practices generated new knowledge or modified existing knowledge. This was a period that saw a wide range of diverse inventions in the realm of musical and acoustic instruments, as well as artistic experiments with acoustic spaces and communication practices. This was also a time of institution building and the rise of disciplines, such as acoustics, phonetics, physiology, psychology, and philosophical aesthetics, which explicitly addressed questions of auditory perception. The period ended with the beginning of the electrification of music, which confronted science with new questions about the production of sounds and the uses of far-reaching technologies, but which also clearly extended traditional listening and hearing practices. On the one hand, the workshop investigated the practical uses of scientific findings in the realm of the arts. On the other hand, it asked how artistic concerns transformed and defined listening and hearing practices and helped to inspire further scientific research.

Organisation: Mary Helen Dupree, Viktoria Tkaczyk, Rebecca Wolf

Venue: Georgetown University, Washington D.C.

Click here for the conference brochure.

Images of the fifth workshop can be found here.

Programm

Auditory Knowledge in the Arts

Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015

1-4 pm: Tour and Curator Presentation

Carlene Stephens: “Hear My Voice” -Exhibit on Alexander Graham Bell, Smithsonian Museum of American History (Contact: mhd33@georgetown.edu)

4-4:30 pm: Coffee

4:30 pm: Welcome und Opening (Mortara Center, 3600 N St NW)

Friederike Eigler (Chair, GU German Department) and Mary Helen Dupree

5-6:30 pm: Keynote (Mortara Center)

(Moderation: Viktoria Tkaczyk; Commentary: Axel Volmar)

Thomas Y. Levin (Princeton University): Capturing Recording: Personal Gramophonic Inscription as Narrative Device in Fiction Film

Friday, Sept. 25, 2015

9:30 am: Coffee

10:00 am–1:00 pm: Panel I (Mortara Center)

(Moderator: Brian Hochman, GU)

Patrick Feaster (Indiana University, Bloomington): “Illusory and Without a Future”: The Phonautograph, the Arts, and the Tympanic Principle

Benjamin J. Harbert (GU): Watching to Listen: Music, Sound, and the Image in Early Music Documentary

Deva Kemmis (GU) : “Goddess, Speak, and Begin our Story”: The Poetics of the Auditory in Selected Works of Germanic Literature

1:00–2:30 pm Lunch (Mortara Center)

2:30– 4:30 pm: Panel II (Healy 103)

(Moderator: Noelle Rettig, GU)

Adrian Daub (Stanford University): Piano Culture in the Nineteenth Century

Joy Calico (Vanderbilt University): Female Performers in the Premiere of “Elektra” (1909) and “Salome” (1905) in Dresden

5:00 pm: Roundtable (Healy 103)

(Moderation: Mary Helen Dupree and Rebecca Wolf)

Brian Hochman, Carlene Stephens, Kathy Olesko, Daniel Morat

7:00 pm Buffet: (GU German Department) (Copley Formal Lounge)

Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015

DFG Network „Hör-Wissen im Wandel“, Internal Meeting (Mortara Center)

Guests: Thomas Y. Levin (Princeton), Alexander Rehding (Harvard)

9:30 – 10:45 am: Internal Discussion

Paper Dupree

10:45-11:00 pm coffee

11:00 am –12:15 pm: Internal discussion

Paper Tkaczyk

12:15-1:30 pm Lunch

1:30–2:45 pm: Internal discussion

Paper Wolf

2:45-3:00 pm coffee

3:00–4:30 pm: Network Plenum