Functional Sounds 1st International Conference of the European Sound Studies Association

Inviting speakers from a range of geographical and disciplinary locations and involving
practitioners as well as theorists, the conference asks how functional sounds have become
and are still becoming an essential part of everyday culture and what its potentials are for new
critical and inventive ideas for future research and artistic practice.

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. As part of what
has been termed an auditory turn (Meyer 2008), recognition of the research of Canadian and
worldwide acoustic ecology since the 1960s and the more recently established auditory or sound
studies (Bull/Back 2003, Cox/Warner 2004, Schulze 2008, Bijsterveld/Pinch 2011, Sterne 2012)
has grown to become an integral part of a variety of fields of study.