Tuned City day 2 / block 1 / 11 am / Technische Universität Berlin, HL001, Marchstr. 4

moderation
Prof. Ulrich Winko

lecture
Dr. Stefan Koelsch (University of Sussex)
from the eardrum to the heart: how noise, sounds and music are processed in the brain

lecture
Dr. Julia Kursell (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin)
miniature space of the ear: on the auditory physiology of Hermann v. Helmholtz

presentation
Thomas Ankersmit
spatial perception and directional sound

guided tour
Dipl. Ing. Joachim Feldmann (TU Berlin)
scientific echo chamber and anechoic chamber

presentation
Bernhard Leitner
presentation of his sound space in the TU main building

nix

listening to sound spaces introduces the basics of acoustic-spacial perception from the physical and physiological perspective.

Hermann von Helmholtz rediscovered hearing in the middle of the 19th century: He conceived the ear as a small room which – equipped with highly specified material objects – provides transformation, transfer and decoding of acoustic signals. Anatomy, oscillation mechanics, mathematics and music could inform about what was going on in this small room and, above all, how it is that the vibration, that hits the ear, finally is received by the nervous system as sound or noise. The musicologist Julia Kursell attempts to trace the audio-physiological construction of this small room and to place it in the history of aural physiology. On this basis, the neurologist Stefan Koelsch speaks about the perception of acoustic information and the underlying complex brain functions as well as the effects on emotions, the autonomic nervous system and the hormone and immune system.

Coming from a background of music and sound art, Thomas Ankersmti will present recent work, particularly installation pieces where sound is used to articulate and distort ideas about spatial perception and communication as well as site-specific experiences and recent experiments with directional sound. Several of these experiments took place in the 1850 cubic meter anechoic chamber at the Institute of Technical Acoustics of the TU Berlin that, together with the echo chamber, will be introduced by Joachim Feldmann.The architect and sound art pioneer Bernhard Leitner has worked with sound as building material and sound-space-concepts since 1968. He will introduce his first commissioned work from 1984 – the sound space in the staircase of the main building of the TU Berlin.