Registration: Personal registration here. Note that there are a limited number of places for the event.
Note that the seminar will be held in Danish.
Programme outline
Arrival and visit at the museum from 10:00 a.m.: coffee, croissants, networking etc.
11:00 a.m. - Welcome and introduction, Jacob Kreutzfeldt
11:10 a.m. - Keynote, Eric de Visscher: The Resonating Museum – Crafting a Dynamic Soundscape at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
12:00 a.m. - Anne-Sofie Udsen and Daniela Bretes Maciel Elneff: Sound as storytelling – sound design in Struer Museum's new Bang & Olufsen exhibition (in Danish)
1.00-2.00 p.m. Lunch
2:00 p.m. – 2 cases:
o Jakob Ingemann Parby & Birgitte Folmann: Qualitative user survey of the exhibition The Sound of Copenhagen at the Copenhagen Museum (in Danish)
o Michael Højlund Rasmussen: About the use of functional museum objects in communication? How can we use museum objects as sources of sound? (in Danish)
3:00–3:20 p.m. Short break: refreshments with coffee and cake/fruit
3:20 p.m. – 2 cases:
o Marie Martens and Ulla Hahn Ranmar: The sound of instruments at the Music Museum – the past told in the present (in Danish)
o Bjarke Moe & Peter Hauge: Raphaëlis. Resonant cultural heritage in Roskilde Cathedral in the early modern period (in Danish)
4:20–4:30 p.m. - Concluding remarks
Background
The traditional focus of museums on objects is challenged by new ways of thinking about cultural heritage. UNESCO's 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and ICOM's 2024 museum definition draw attention to intangible and ephemeral forms of cultural heritage: to everything that lies outside and around the objects themselves, everything that the preserved objects point to and were once part of. In this movement, sound emerges with renewed relevance.
Sound is at once intangible – embedded in traditions and rituals, manners and modes of behaviour – and at the same time increasingly materialised in sound-carrying media and sound-producing objects. Our interest in sound draws us towards the practices, activities and events that would otherwise easily be lost behind the silent objects in the museum display. If we ask ourselves what the anchor chain, the drum or the church sounded like, we must understand the life that unfolded around the objects. In some cases, we can – gently – activate the preserved objects. In other cases, we can reconstruct and design the sound of the object. But often the question of the object's sound takes us away from the object itself and back to the intangible, lived, sensed and experienced cultural heritage.
Sound is thus no longer just a medium for conveying objects and stories (as in audio walks, podcasts, etc.), but now also the object itself – or at least a central feature of the object. The sound of traditions and rituals, the sound of musical instruments, the sound of radio sets and many other sound-designed objects can be just as central as visual or material characteristics. In many cases, it is precisely the sound of the object in function, the sound of the recreated environment, or the recording of an important historical event that can evoke and unfold history for us in a new and surprising way.
The seminar brings together SOKU's network and all interested parties for discussions on sonic cultural heritage: How can we focus on sound and listening, which is often in the periphery of our attention? What works when we exhibit sound? How do museums manage the balance between conserving objects on the one hand and maintaining and communicating their (audible) function on the other? And what new stories about the past, present and future can we tell if we make room for sound and listening?
Presentations
Eric de Visscher: The Resonating Museum – Crafting a Dynamic Soundscape at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
This paper presents the Resonating Museum project, a pioneering curatorial endeavor at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris, which transforms the museum’s Plateau des Collections into an evolving sonic landscape. At its core, the project integrates sound as a living, interactive medium, demonstrating how soundscapes can enrich cultural storytelling and visitor engagement.
Implementation involved extensive curatorial and musicological research, collaboration with the sound design firm Narrative, and the deployment of a multi-level acoustic system. Sound diffusion is strategically layered at aerial, human, and ground levels, with presence sensors triggering sequences based on visitor movement. All sounds have been carefully sourced and great care has been given to securing credits and copyrights to the relevant artists and communities. The result is a dynamic, responsive environment where localized listening points and diffuse ambiences coexist, fostering a deeper sensory connection to the exhibits.
The project also includes an annual program of sound art residencies: I will briefly discuss La Réserve des Non-Dits by Lebanese artist and composer Youmna Saba, which captured the micro-sounds of several unplayed musical instruments using miniaturized microphones.
Eric de Visscher is a curator and researcher, presently working for the French Ministry of Culture in Paris, as “Inspecteur de la Création Artistique”. He has been Artistic Director of IRCAM/Centre Pompidou, Director of the Musée de la musique (Philharmonie de Paris) and “Andrew W.Mellon Visiting Professor” at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London). He has recently curated the new sonic design for the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac ‘s permanent collection (Paris). He edited a special issue of “Curator: The Museum Journal” entitled “Sonic”and is presently co-editor of the forthcoming “Bloomsbury Handbook on Sound in Museums”.
Anne-Sofie Udsen & Daniela Bretes Maciel Elneff: Sound as storytelling – sound design in Struer Museum's new Bang & Olufsen exhibition
In this presentation, we present the work behind the sound design in Struer Museum's new Bang & Olufsen exhibition: Bang & Olufsen – Sound through 100 years. The presentation explores sound design as a curatorial tool and raises questions about what it means to listen your way into history. We focus on two elements of the exhibition: the entrance and the recreation of a historical explosion, and finally ask: How important is it to create historically accurate sound? When is atmosphere more important than precision?
Anne-Sofie Udsen, PhD. Museum curator, project manager for the B&O exhibition and Head of Cultural Heritage, Communication and Learning at Struer Museum. She holds a PhD from Aarhus University with the thesis ‘Feminist Ears – On Listening to Sound, Body and Gender’. In her work, she brings together cultural, gender and sound studies to explore how sound and listening are part of our lives and history.
Daniela Bretes Maciel Elneff is a sound designer and transdisciplinary artist. She works at SOKU, Struer Museum, where she explores sonic cultural heritage and opportunities to become better at listening to the past, present and future. As an artist, she explores the connection between natural science and sound art practice. She holds a BA in Art & Technology and an MSc in Audio Design.
Jakob Ingemann Parby & Birgitte Folmann: Qualitative user survey of the exhibition The Sound of Copenhagen at the Copenhagen Museum
In 2025, the Copenhagen Museum opened the exhibition The Sound of Copenhagen – Noise, Voices and Silence. The exhibition placed sound at the centre of the exhibition experience and made sound and sound history the main subject and focus of attention. How did the audience experience the exhibition, and what can we learn from this experience about how sonic cultural heritage is experienced in practice? The museum invited a research group from Sonic College to investigate. The study shows that the sound effects create historical authenticity, physical empathy and memory, but also that the exhibition's sound also gains meaning through the visual and spatial staging. The audience listens actively but navigates visually, and it is only in combination that the city's past comes together as a sensory experience.
Jakob Ingemann Parby is a museum curator and senior researcher at the Copenhagen Museum, where his work has focused on urban development, migration history, urban memory cultures and the history of everyday life. From 2020 to 2025, he was PI in the research project The Sound of the Capital and published a monograph of the same name focusing on the history of sound and listening in the 19th century.
Birgitte Folmann is an associate professor and research programme director at Sonic College, where she uses sound anthropological fieldwork to investigate sensory experiences and atmospheres in museums with a focus on human meaning-making and experience.
Michael Højlund Rasmussen: On the use of functional museum objects in communication? How can we use museum objects as sources of sound?
The new museum law introduces a developmental perspective in collection management, where continuous use of collections should create proximity. Against this background, the presentation focuses on the use of objects as a starting point for establishing an authentic soundscape. Sound is part of the environment and the intangible values we associate with certain objects. The question is when and to what extent we can use the original objects as sources of sound – and on what terms?
Michael Højlund Rasmussen is a graphic conservator, Cand. scient. cons., Fellow of the International Institute of Conservation, and works at Konserveringscenter Vejle. Most recently, Michael has collaborated with Industrimuseet Horsens to write about the functional use of museum objects, with a focus on the need to develop a collections policy in this specific area.
Marie Martens & Ulla Hahn Ranmar: The sound of instruments at the Danish Music Museum – the past told in the present
How can instruments and sounds from the past be made meaningful to a modern museum audience? The Danish Music Museum has explored this question through a series of grant-funded projects. In this presentation, we will talk about how we at the Danish Music Museum use sound works, interactive installations and hands-on instruments to strengthen the audience's relationship with the museum's collection of non-playable musical instruments.
Ulla Hahn Ranmar is an experience and learning designer at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. She works at both the Danish Music Museum and the National Museum, focusing on experimental, playful communication and educational programmes.
Marie Martens is the curator responsible for collections at the Danish Music Museum and works with the museum's instrument collections, research library and archive. Since 2019, she has been active in the international museum organisation ICOM and in 2025 was elected Chair of ICOM MUSIC.
Bjarke Moe & Peter Hauge: Raphaëlis. Resonant cultural heritage in Roskilde Cathedral in the early modern period
A new project based at the Royal Library (2026-2029) has as its central research question how to reconstruct and revitalise the sounding cultural heritage, i.e. any form of music that has been performed and thus constituted the sonic identity of Roskilde Cathedral in the period from the Reformation to around 1800. The presentation will focus on the project's definition of music as an event and as sound, and we will talk about the project's approach to communicating the sounding cultural heritage.
Peter Hauge is a senior researcher who has worked primarily with music philology but also with early music history. In addition, he has been involved in sound exhibitions, including in connection with the new Carl Nielsen Museum in Odense.
Bjarke Moe is a senior researcher at the Royal Library. In addition to his work with Danish music history, he has taken an interest in the role of music in society and changing understandings of musical cultural heritage.