Museum of Sound: Mission Statement (draft 1)

Museums need mission statements, not so much as codes to be followed but as a shorthand method for self-identification, setting the tone by which a collecting institution makes decisions. As I continue to put together an article proposing a concrete plan for a Museum of Sound, its mission statement will hopefully be seen as a through-line weaving through the ideas the article will address. Here’s my first draft.

“The Museum of Sound is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and presentation of sounds as cultural objects. Employing a holistic approach to the experience of sound in diverse contexts coupled with innovative gallery design, we encourage our visitors to engage in contemplative listening that creates an awareness of sound’s importance in everyday life across historical, geographical, cultural, and natural borders.”

Copyright ©2013 John Kannenberg and may not be reproduced or otherwise used without permission.

Towards a Museum of Museum Sounds

For the better part of a decade, I’ve been recording the sounds inside of museum spaces. While some of these recordings have been published either online or on CDs, an ideal situation would be for the recordings to be put on display in a public place, where people could listen to them, engage with them, discuss them, and hopefully find as much beauty, escapism, and poetry in them as I have. But what type of public space would be the best fit?

Untitled 10

The Active
Sounds
of History:

whispering

the stabilizing hum of an HVAC system
camera phone synthesized shutter sounds
“no flash photography, please”

whispering

the piercing cry of a bored and hungry child
footsteps squeaking on a polished stone floor
cryptic words and numbers wrapped in walkie-talkie crackle

whispering

the hissing, whining, and clicking of a heavy door
stifling a cough
“no touching”

a hush

then, whispering

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Untitled 9

In ruins
desiccated, no longer reaching or supporting
merely abandoned:
a dead branch, twisting
between the remains of two columns.
Beyond the rubble at their feet
the olive jar splayed out on the ground below
after a tumbling fall, ages ago
resting
in a hollow stasis
broken only by wind
and lengthening shadows.

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Untitled 5

The murmuring crowd swirls, ebbs, parts
factions flocking from gallery to doorway
finally leaving me alone with
the interred (installed) body of the old woman: wife, mother, and grandmother
now dry with natron, wrapped in linen,
arms extended, palms on thighs,
eyelids painted with false eyes, always staring but never seeing.

Overhead, a dying light fixture
buzzing, flickering, humming
as I stare into the once-new vitrine that acts as
a surrogate coffin, yet another “final” resting place
waiting to be replaced.

How many others have stood
beneath this same electric light (it was brighter and steadier then)
gazing at this same dessicated face
within the dusty glass sarcophagus, and also wondered at their ability to touch
a capsule filled with mute history? Who else has thought those ancient lips 
look like torn strips of parchment
containing stories forever untold? 

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Untitled 2

In the grey clearing under a canopy of pine, oak, and maple
we walked on brown needles
until crispy leaves, now forgotten by their branches, began to fall around us and
I stopped.

I had to listen.

The silent flutterings, invisible impacts melting into the undergrowth
were lost upon the bird and the lonely car off in the distance
both deaf to this momentary theater of slow motion gravity.

You kept walking, but I wasn’t alone.

Our isolation
was a ligature
connecting no-sight and no-sound:
a fragile ball of sibilating yarn unwound
within the labyrinth grooves
(dusty, sedimentary)
stretched between the things
that you never heard
and I never saw.

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The Active Sounds of History: Museums as Acoustic Object Collections

I often experience a sensation of temporal simultaneity when visiting museums, a merging of past, present, and future in which my sense of history is seldom linear. Even if the museum’s exhibition designers have organized their collections chronologically, visitors rarely follow their intended path. The actual routes taken by museum visitors often, if not entirely, involve a great number of chance operations in tandem with a curatorial guide who, unavoidably, is only partially in control of the situation.

Chaos

Sitting in a busy cafe, I am surrounded by sonic chaos: the grinding hiss of an espresso machine, the relentless chug of techno music on the sound system, the clinking of silverware, the thick walls of conversations vying for prominence within the din. The usual rules of sonic navigation no longer apply —

Tractable Space

Space is endlessly malleable, pliant, transformable. Try as architects might to command space, to fix it in place, it is inherently tractable in relationship to the person experiencing it. Everyone’s experience of a space is different: they exist at a different height, they occupy the space at a different time, they hear different things there. Who hasn’t stayed in a hotel, or moved into a new apartment, and reached for a light switch they swear should be there because it was just there a second ago – or was that another apartment ago?