Contemporary Soundspaces: Acoustemology and Musical Agency

The primary objective of the project is to produce knowledge about the significance of sound and sound processes by researching ways of "knowing through sound" and agency related to sonic environments, sound production and listening processes. The project deals with the aesthetic and social significance of sounding processes and aims to map out and analyse agency (sound actions) and the discursive values ascribed to these processes. The empirical case studies will focus on three different aspects or sphe res of documentation and the relations between them: A) dissemination and interpretation of sound in relation to nature, culture and the sonic environment; B) musical listening, as a way of "knowing". This includes sound production and interpretation, son ic experience and specific uses of technology; and C) social, cultural and aesthetic constructions of discourse. This concerns processes of cultural value; interpretation and naming; genealogical and historical constructions; collective memory and ideolog y; identity processes and mechanisms of distinction. In the analysis particular attention is paid to the cultural complexities of these uses, including questions of social identification, gender and race. The project does not take as its point of departur e a notion of territorially based identities, rather we expect mediations in sound to operate as complex local - global identifications. Even if most of the fieldwork will be carried out in Norway, the perspective is global rather than national in the s ense that the omnipresent changes of the contemporary soundspaces are not expected to stem one-sidedly from a "nation-building" project. The project stresses the importance of international dissemination of the research results since the theoretical pione ering as well as the empirical findings are expected to be of great international scholarly interest.