Interdisciplinary symposium on the sense of hearing and sight
Thursday, March 14, through Saturday, March 16, 2024
To coincide with the exhibition series at the Museum Tinguely on the human senses in art, a public, interdisciplinary conference will be held in Basel.
This time, the focus is on the senses of hearing and sight, in connection with the group exhibitions *À bruit secret* (2023) and *Les témoins oculistes* (Winter 2026/2027): featuring contributions from the fields of art, culture, and history, as well as psychology, neuroscience, and the natural and technical sciences.
In addition, there will be guided tours, artistic and musical performances, and interactive activities. The public conference is aimed not only at an audience of experts but also explicitly at the general public. The presentations are free of charge and can be attended individually without prior registration.
Program
Thursday, March 14, 2024
4:30 – 5:00 p.m. Welcome: Coffee and cake
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Soundwalk at the Tinguely Museum
Denim Szram, artist and lecturer, Basel
Limited capacity
6:30–7:30 p.m. Outdoor Recreation: A Synergy of Sight and Sound
; Beat Schäffer, Group Leader, Noise Effects, Acoustics/Noise Reduction Department, Empa, Dübendorf; and Silvia Tobias, Director, Center for Landscape Research, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf
7:45 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Themed tour: “Light, Vibration, and Perception in the Work of Otto Piene”
Sandra Beate Reimann, curator of the exhibition Otto Piene. Paths to Paradise , Tinguely Museum
Limited capacity
Friday, March 15, 2024
9:15 – 9:30 Welcome Remarks
; Roland Wetzel, Director, Museum Tinguely, Basel
9:30 – 10:30 When Sounds Taste Salty: The Brain of Synesthetes
Lutz Jäncke, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Neuropsychology/Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Zurich
11:00 – 11:45 Rotoreliefs: Marcel Duchamp’s “Experiments in Optics”
Lars Blunck, Professor of Art History, Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts
11:45 – 12:30 Sound Painting: The Sixth Sense of Bats
Leonie Baier, MSCA Fellow at the Marine Bioacoustics Lab, Aarhus University
2:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. Noise Before Noise: Politics and the Perception of Unwanted Sound Since the Pre-Modern Era
Jan-Friedrich Missfelder, SNSF-funded professor of early modern history, “Power of the Voice” project, Department of History, University of Basel
2:45 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. When Night Turns to Day
Eva Knop, Assistant Professor, Agroscope, Zurich & Institute for Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Sciences, University of Zurich
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. ON AIR: The Sound of Materials in Art from the 1950s to the 1970s
Sylvia Martin, Deputy Director, Krefeld Art Museums
5:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. Artist Talk & Performance “SSS—Shore Scene Soundtrack”
Cevdet Erek, Artist & Associate Professor, Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM) & Turkish Music State Conservatory, Istanbul Technical University
In English
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Closing Discussion
Saturday, March 16, 2024
9:30 – 9:45 Welcome:
Annja Müller-Alsbach, Curator, Museum Tinguely
9:45–10:45 The Hidden Language of Colors: On the Perception and Effects of Colors in Nature and Culture
Axel Buether, color researcher at the Institute for Color Psychology, Wuppertal, and professor of visual communication pedagogy
11:15 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. The Sound of the Ocean
Ilse van Opzeeland, bioacoustician, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven / Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, University of Oldenburg
12:00 – 12:45 Hearing Things: What Do We See When We Hear?
James Webb, Artist, Stockholm
In English
2:15 – 3:00 p.m. Listening to the Earth: Art, Science, and the Environment
Marcus Maeder, Artist & Scientist, ZHdK, Zurich/FU Berlin
3:00 – 3:45 p.m. Manipulated Gaze: Visual Distortions in Modern and Contemporary Art
Eva Bader, art historian, Bern
4:15 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. “Enraptured Vision: The Nocturnal Gaze in Film Noir”
Elisabeth Bronfen, Professor Emerita, Department of English, University of Zurich; Global Distinguished Professor at New York University
Link to the website of the organizer Museum Tinguely
