Public Lectures
(click names for biographies)
Are Synaesthetes Special?
August 24 | 16:00
Lecture by Associate Professor of Communication & Psychology Thomas Alrik Sørensen (Aalborg University)
Godsbanen Aarhus
Remisen
Free admission
Synaesthesia is a condition that affect an estimated four percent of the normal population. These people have one or more atypical sensory associations. This could be that letters or sounds have specific colours, or rare conditions where words have tastes. While the mechanisms are still not fully understood, a popular view is that people with synaesthesia possess an atypical wiring between brain areas established during development. However, instead of being the result of an abnormal development we propose that synaesthesia is the result of a more general mechanism, namely expertise. Firstly, while synaesthesia is rare, cross-modal correspondence (CMC) is a phenomenon which can be observed in the general public that have similarities to synaesthesia. CMC reflect the tendency to choose similar associations for otherwise unrelated categories (e.g., shapes-colours or fruits-speed). Secondly, there are several demonstrations that synaesthetic associations can be linked to environmental exposure (e.g., coloured letter fridge magnets). Thirdly, synaesthetic processing seem to modulate attention and memory very similar to expertise.
We have recently proposed a model for perception – the template tuning theory of perception (TTT; Brogaard & Sørensen, in press). While this model is inspired from literature on attention and perception, it also provides a plausible framework for understanding perceptual phenomena like synaesthesia. Finally, and more broadly, the TTT suggest that there is a high degree of individual variation in how each of us perceive and interpreted our surroundings.
The Lonely Ear: Technology as a shaping force in new musical works
August 26 | 16:00
Lecture by Associate Professor of Composition Eivind Buene (Norwegian Academy of Music)
The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus
Kammermusiksalen
Free admission
Composers and musicians in the 21st century have eagerly embraced the advanced
audiovisual technologies that have become available at consumer level. What was once the
domain of well-funded institutions are now available to anyone with a laptop, and we have
seen a conflation between the visual and the aural in the field of new music. When we speak
about the impact of technology, we can also talk about a tendency of negation; in everyday
life, as we feel the need for fallout shelters from the panopticon of social media and technologies that by the same token entertain and control us; in music, when practitioners seek fissures and voids in the shiny façade of technology. In the lecture, I will discuss three strategies that negotiate with the listener behind the backs of the technological guardians: Strategies of immersion, that command the listener’s attention in pre-digital ways; The celebration of obsolete technologies – analogue synthesizers, turntables, tape-machines – a form of technological memento mori where machines and memory merge in poignant ways; The exploration of the corporeal, as the body of the musician and the composer alike become focal points in new works for stage and screen.
Music’s Sensorium: seeing with our ears
August 27 | 16:00
Lecture by Professor of Music History & Theory Judy Lochhead and Assistant Professor of Composition Nirmali Fenn (Stony Brook University, New York)
The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus
222
Free admission
Our lecture considers how the perception of music involves the whole body—not just the ears—in what philosophers and scientists have called intermodal perception. Such intermodal perception of musical sound involves listeners in perceptions of sound as colorful, as brittle, as metallic, as thick—in other words, hearing involves a totality of the senses of hearing, touching, seeing, feeling, and other such bodily reactions. Description of music as thick, bright, high, colorful, edgy, and so on, are not “mere” metaphors. Rather they are descriptors of intermodal perceptual qualities of music.
Our lecture also explores the phenomenon of synesthesia as a particular and enhanced instance of intermodal perception. It focuses on Nirmali Fenn’s work “Shadows hold their Breath”—which will be premiered during the festival. We’ll discuss how Fenn builds on ideas of intermodal/synesthetic perception in creating this work. Fenn composes music aware of the physicality of sound production by the performers and its relation to perceived sonic features for listeners. Our lecture focuses on how the music of Fenn’s “Shadows hold their Breath” engages matters of both synesthesia and intermodal perception as central features of musical design.