The chime of a church bell. The transmission of a live radio broadcast. The amplification of lung sounds through a stethoscope. The rumble of a train moving along its tracks. A prerecorded melody reproduced by a gramophone. The explosion of a bomb. What do these have in common? Together with other sounds, they form a so-called ‘soundscape’, an acoustic environment which is made up of natural and man-made sounds experienced by humans. The term was coined by R. Murray Schafer in 1977: in his book The Soundscape. Our Sonic Environment and the Turning of the World, the sound researcher assessed the ever-increasing abundance of man-made sounds and their impact on humans. The historian Emily Thompson has also dedicated one of her studies to our man-made soundscape. In her book The soundscape of modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America 1900-1930, she analysed how Americans listened to an array of new sounds produced by modern technology at the dawn of the 20th century. Inspired by this historical study, the three-semester-long research seminar “The Soundscape of Modernity” (2022-2023), directed by Prof. Dr. Andreas Fickers and Dr. Laura Steil, combined sound studies with the history of sound (re)production technologies. The seminar emphasized sound as a historical source, which can be studied and interpreted like other, more traditional sources. It was also based on the project Maison du Son[1], a planned immersive and interactive museum in Lamadelaine that will entirely focus on sound and the Grand Duchy’s history of radio. The museum will cover a multitude of topics and concepts, as for example the history of RTL, the concept of liveness, and the fascination with radio in the 20th century. Without Albert Wolter’s[2] private collection of over 100 reproduction and recording devices such as record players and early radios, this project would not have been possible.
How does the museum project relate to the research seminar? While the first semester focussed on the more theoretical and historiographical side of sound studies by introducing the students to relevant literature, the following two semesters became more hands-on. With the design of the museum in mind, the second semester revolved around museology and exhibition design. For that, the students were split into teams. Each team was responsible for the design and content of one thematic room of the Maison du Son. For that, the students were tasked with discussing and elaborating immersive exhibition ideas based on a ‘sonic experience’. In March 2023, the class also visited the residential building and barn in Lamadelaine that will be transformed into the Maison du Son, so that they could better envision the exhibition space.
Next to this, each student chose one object from Albert Wolter’s catalogue of reproduction and recording devices dating from the 19th and 20th centuries that will be exhibited in the future museum. The students were then tasked with writing an object biography that will be published in the museum’s catalogue. Unlike more traditional descriptions of museum objects, an object biography highlights the agency and social life of an inanimate object. The goal was to not only describe the object, but deconstruct it and offer different perspectives. As long as the story was based on archival research, the narration style could be freely chosen by the students: some wrote fictional stories which revolved around the object, some made their objects speak for themselves, and others included their objects in a theatre play.
During the final third semester, the goal was to complete each object biography with an extensive list of archival sources, literature and visual sources such as photos and advertisements. The object biography, together with all the sources and visuals, was then added into GitHub to create a collective website for the Maison du Son project. The result can be explored via the following link: https://maison-du-son.netlify.app.
The website also allowed Tokonoma, a Milano-based team of designers responsible for curating and designing the Maison du Son, to stay updated of the student’s progress. The designers, who have worked on several exhibitions in Luxembourg in the past[3], also visited the campus twice to participate in workshops with the students and architects of the planned museum. While the first workshop allowed the designers and architects to become familiarized with the student’s work on the thematic rooms, the second one focussed on the sonic aspect of the museum. By addressing different hearing and listening practices and the perception of sound, it was discussed how these aspects could be implemented in the exhibition. The collaboration with the well-experienced designers and architects was a valuable experience for the students, as they were able to experience the ‘behind-the-scenes’ process of planning a museum and they learned about aspects such as design and curation, thematic division, and copyright questions. The seminar therefore offered the students valuable insights into the process of planning a history museum.
[1] https://www.tageblatt.lu/headlines/ein-neues-museum-fuer-petingen-gemeinderat-heisst-projekt-maison-du-son-einstimmig-gut/
[2] https://www.tageblatt.lu/headlines/32-transistorradios-und-ein-edison-phonograph-der-radiomann-aus-rodange-stiftet-seine-schaetze/
[3] https://tokonoma.studio/works
