NOTE: Apart from Schulze’s keynote the seminar will be in Danish.
In recent years, many museums, research institutions, and knowledge centers have turned their attention to sound. It is clear that sound and listening today play an essential role in our cultural heritage and identity. Large collections of radio broadcasts, music releases, folklore recordings, and more have been created. Some museums have begun collecting contemporary sounds, and sound has become an integral element in exhibition designs across the country. The sensory experience of sound is in focus—not just for enjoyment but also for understanding our past, present, and future.
This first networking seminar of the National Knowledge Center for Sonic Heritage brings together national expertise in the field and aims to map valuable methods, tools, and resources for working with sound as an entry point to historical insight and experience.
REPORT
By Jacob Kreutzfeldt, Director of SOKU
On Monday, April 7, 2025, the national network for sonic heritage met for the first time. The theme of this first network seminar was Methods, Tools, and Resources in the Work with Sonic Heritage. It was an inspiring day at Struer Museum with 49 participants from across museums, universities, and private sectors.
The seminar confirmed the need for a cross-disciplinary and national effort to strengthen the presence of sonic heritage in Danish museums. Several museums reported concrete challenges related to collecting, cataloging, and preserving sound. While sound is already a prominent feature in the communication strategies of many Danish museums, there remains a significant need for deeper knowledge about the role and effects of sound in exhibitions. Overall, the seminar revealed a strong demand for experience-sharing related to working with the soundscapes of cultural history.
The day began with a keynote by Professor Holger Schulze: Exhibiting Sonic Heritage: Three Radical Scenarios. Drawing on ‘the anthropology of sound’, Schulze distinguished between three aspects of sonic heritage: sonic objects, sonic practices, and sonic experiences. Objects, practices, and experiences are three facets of the same matter—three entry points into the anthropology of sound as it has evolved over time. Schulze was the first of several speakers throughout the day to refer to UNESCO’s various cultural heritage conventions. While UNESCO’s original focus was on tangible heritage, in 2003, this expanded to include “intangible cultural heritage”, defined as valuable cultural practices passed on from generation to generation. In addition to objects and practices, Schulze introduced a third area of focus—sonic experiences—which may be the most challenging, and potentially the most exciting, for cultural history museums. The core question becomes: how do we understand, document, and communicate situations where the world is experienced through sound?
The interest in sonic experiences is well-established in the international research field known as Sound Studies, in which Schulze plays a leading role. However, a focus on sound and listening as a mode of experience is still relatively new in the museum world and poses a challenge to conventional notions of heritage. There is (as yet?) no UNESCO convention focused on experiences. That said, we are already seeing Sound Studies-inspired research projects—also within museums. One example is the upcoming exhibition The Sound of Copenhagen at the Museum of Copenhagen, where experiences of noise and silence in the city over the past centuries provide insights into radically transformed lifeworlds.
The afternoon featured two sessions, each with two presentations followed by discussion. In the first session on Sound and Collection Development, curator Kamilla Hjortkjær from Greve Museum shared her experiences with collecting contemporary sound. In addition to making documentary field recordings at selected sites, Kamilla has experimented with workshops where citizens select and describe sounds from their local environment. Curator Mads Kullberg from SOKU shared insights from a SOKU study on how Danish museums handle sonic heritage. It became clear that it is difficult to locate sound and sound-producing objects in the central collection database SARA, and that several barriers within current collection practices make it challenging to work professionally with the sounds of cultural heritage—even when dealing with clearly sound-producing objects like musical instruments or radios.
Overall, the discussion around sound and collections gave the impression that sound still plays a relatively small role in museum collections. It is unsurprising that sound often falls outside the traditional object-focused paradigm of museums, but the discussions highlighted clear opportunities to support museum efforts to collect, catalog, and preserve sound. Suggestions included developing terminology, categories, and registration systems specific to sound, as well as manuals and courses on collecting, cataloging, and storing sound data.
The second afternoon session, on Sound and Communication, featured postdoc Mia Yates from Aarhus University, who spoke about her work with Holger Drachmann’s House, part of the Skagens Museum. The project explores how sound can serve as a gateway into Drachmann’s life and artistic practice, experimenting with different audio-based formats to build bridges between the poet and the visitors to his house-museum. PhD fellow Jonas Kirkegaard and associate professor Birgitte Folmann—both from Sonic College—presented a study of how sound was used as a narrative tool in the exhibition The First Kings at the Cultural Museum in Vejle. Interviews and observations with visitors provided insights into the multifaceted reception of the exhibition’s soundscape, although many found it so integrated into the overall experience that it was difficult to separate from other exhibition elements.
The session and subsequent discussion offered insight into an exciting and developing professional field: the role of sound in the museum experience. Over the past few years, the increased focus on audience development and communication in museums has led to new methods for investigating visitor experiences—and sound is playing an increasingly significant role. Methodologically, however, there is still the challenge that exhibition sound is often perceived as background, making it difficult to evaluate independently. At the same time, that very background quality is being challenged in several exhibition projects, where sound is given a more prominent and central role. Without a doubt, we will gain more insights and experience in this area in the coming years. One concrete request from participants was for strong manuals focused on the role of sound in exhibitions to help museums better evaluate their own exhibitions.
All in all, the day provided us at SOKU with valuable input. Thanks to the insights from our excellent speakers, we gained a better understanding of the current status of sound in collection development and in exhibition practices. Thanks to the many participants, we also got a sense of the professional landscape in Denmark—and we were reassured that we are working in an important and much-needed field. We gained insights into existing methods, tools, and resources for working with sonic heritage, and—perhaps most importantly—we were able to map out the gaps and blind spots in the field regarding available methods, tools, and resources.
Thank you to everyone who contributed! … and please keep us updated with knowledge, suggestions, and reflections.
PROGRAM
- From 10:30 AM – Arrival and coffee
- 11:00 AM – Welcome and Introduction to the National Knowledge Center for Sonic Heritage
Jacob Kreutzfeldt, Head of SOKU, Struer Museum - 11.15 AM – The Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde in Struer: New Branch for Sound-Based Art
Christian Skovbjerg Jensen, Museum Director, The Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde - 11:25 AM – Keynote: Exhibiting Sonic Heritage: Three Radical Scenarios
Holger Schulze, Professor and PI, Sound Studies Lab, University of Copenhagen - 12:00 PM – Discussion
- 12:15 – 1:15 PM – Lunch
Session 1: Sound and Collection Development
- 1:15 PM – Experiences in Collecting Sound at a Cultural History Museum
Kamilla Hjortkjær, Curator, Greve Museum - 1:35 PM – Mapping Sonic Heritage
Mads Kullberg, Curator, SOKU, Struer Museum - 1:55 PM – Discussion
- 2:15 – 2:40 PM – Break
Session 2: Sound and Communication
- 2:40 PM –_ Sound as an Approach and Experience in Interpreting Historical Artists’ Homes_
Mia Falch Yates, Postdoc and Head of Center for Sound Studies, Aarhus University - 3:00 PM – The Sonic Thread in the Material of Museum Experiences
Jonas Kirkegaard, Ph.D. Fellow, and Birgitte Folmann, Associate Professor, UC Syd - 3:20 PM – Discussion
- 3:40 – 4:15 PM – Wrap-Up and Input for the Center's Future Work
PRESENTATIONS
Christian Skovbjerg Jensen: The Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde in Struer – A new branch for sound-based art presents works from the museum's collection and current exhibition program at Struer Museum
Christian Skovbjerg Jensen introduces the museum's newly opened branch at Struer Museum and discusses the work of activating and making the museum's collection and archive accessible.
Keynote
Holger Schulze: Exhibiting Sonic Heritage: Three Radical Scenarios
Museums are presenting sound in the early 21st century through audio files, video projections, sound showers, headphone stations, smartphone apps, and playlists, with hyper-directed sound projections, historical reenactments, or contemporary sound performances. These techniques allow cultural institutions to do more than display selected objects; they enable visitors to engage with the meanings these historical artifacts may have had—or still hold.
However, do these methods adequately present the complexity and diversity of sonic heritage? What constitutes a material corpus of sonic heritage?
This talk introduces three radical scenarios for exhibiting sonic heritage from the perspective of sound anthropology, focusing on sonic artifacts, practices, and experiences. It will address questions such as: What are sonic artifacts? What practices activate these artifacts? And what are the experiences and effects of a sonic heritage shaped by these practices?
Holger Schulze is a professor of musicology at the University of Copenhagen and principal investigator at the Sound Studies Lab. His research explores the cultural history of the senses, sound in popular culture, and the anthropology of media. His current projects include The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound in Museums and The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Sound Studies.
Session 1: Sound and Collection Development
Kamilla Hjortkjær: Experiences in Collecting Sound at a Cultural History Museum
Kamilla Hjortkjær will present the methods for collecting and documenting sound that Greve Museum has developed and tested over time. She will share insights—both successful and less successful—from specific sound collection projects. Additionally, she will reflect on how collecting cultural history sounds can support museum collections and enhance understanding of cultural history.
Kamilla Hjortkjær is a curator at Greve Museum and holds a master’s degree in musicology. Her recent work explores how sound, sound art, and music can be integrated into cultural history exhibitions.
Mads Kullberg: Mapping Sonic Heritage
Through the project Sound and Collection Development: Mapping Practices for Collecting, Cataloging, and Preserving Sonic Heritage in Denmark, Mads Kullberg investigates how Danish cultural institutions approach sonic heritage through collection and documentation. The presentation will cover the project's key findings, challenges in cataloging sound-based heritage, and perspectives on developing shared methodologies for creating sonic collections.
Mads Kullberg holds a Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Arts and Cultural Studies. He is a freelance developer and curator at SOKU/Struer Museum.
Session 2: Sound and Communication
Mia Falch Yates: Sound as an Approach and Experience in Interpreting Historical Artists’ Homes
At Drachmann’s House (Skagens Kunstmuseer), sound is used as a methodological approach to researching Holger Drachmann’s life and art in Skagen around 1900. Sound also serves as a medium of communication and experience within the historical house. This talk will explore the approaches used to understand Drachmann and how sound enriches the museum visitor’s encounter with the historical site.
Mia Falch Yates is a postdoc at Aarhus University’s Department of Communication and Culture and leads the Center for Sound Studies. Her research develops and explores new methods for communicating cultural heritage.
Jonas Kirkegaard and Birgitte Folmann: The Sonic Thread in the Material of Museum Experiences
Anthropological research methods, such as observation and interviews, provide critical insights when examining the role of sound in museum exhibitions. This talk will delve into the challenges of isolating sound’s role in the overall museum experience and explore its sensory, emotional, and cultural dimensions.
Jonas Kirkegaard is a composer and Ph.D. fellow at Kolding School of Design, and Birgitte Folmann is an anthropologist, associate professor, and research leader in UC Syd’s knowledge environment for atmospheric research.
TRANSPORT
We can offer financial support for transport to and from Struer for a smaller amount of participants. Please write us at [email protected], if this may be relevant for you.
ABOUT SOKU
The National Knowledge Center for Sonic Heritage (SOKU) is legally and administratively a part of Struer Museum and is established in a formalized partnership between Struer Museum, The National Museum of Denmark, Sound Art Lab, and Aarhus University.
The center aims to serve as a national hub for knowledge on sonic heritage, fostering collaboration among museums, research institutions, and knowledge centers while contributing to the development of skills and expertise in the field.
This seminar is the first in an annual series hosted by Struer Museum.
