Entre el 4 y el 6 de octubre de este año tendrá lugar la primera conferencia de European Sound Studies Association. Este grupo, al que pertenecen muchos de los investigadores que han publicado estudios de interés sobre el tema de los estudios del sonido o la auralidad, propone tres encuentros o conferencias, y con toda seguridad, una importante publicación.
Una de las razones por las que esta asociación resulta más amigable e interesante que el seminario que se presentará en Harvard o la publicación de la universidad de Oxford, con dudosas raíces académicas en su territorio, es que ESSA parece un conjunto de esfuerzos, un trabajo colectivo para el desarrollo de una cultura estructural del sonido.

The Sound Studies Lab at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in cooperation with the international research network Sound in Media Culture concludes its first two years of research with an international conference in Berlin. This will also serve as the first international ESSA conference.

The conference will focus on existing as well as emergent and cutting-edge approaches to functional sound design, sonification, auditory culture, everyday soundscapes, artistic concepts and popular culture. In particular, the conference will encourage presentations that include both theoretical and practical aspects and presentations that address everyday contexts within which sound—in its relation to media, technology, and the arts—is constitutive for new ways of thinking, listening, and becoming.

The conference also aims to examine, explore and critically engage with the issues and implications created by the growing field of sound studies. The ubiquity of sound in everyday communication and our daily sonic environment is not a new phenomenon; but the study of non-verbal communication through sound has only recently gained more attention in the academic realm.

The conference intends to provide six different streams for all the various aspects and hearing perspectives towards the functionality and dysfunctionality in auditory cultures today and in the past ranging from Soundscapes of the Urban Future over Cultural Politics & Sonic Experience, Pop & Sound, Methodologies of Sound in the Humanities and Sonic Artistic Practices & Research up to Sound Design Practices.

The programme committee consists of Michael Bull (UK), Marcel Cobussen (NL), Rainer Hirt (DE), Erik Granly Jensen (DK), Anahid Kassabian (UK/US), Jacob Kreutzfeldt (DK), Sylvia Mieszkowski (FR/DE), Jens Gerrit Papenburg (DE), Max Schneider (DE), Holger Schulze (DE), Carla Müller-Schulzke (DE), Alexandra Supper (NL/AT), Heikki Uimonen (FIN), Morten Michelsen (DK)