More details will follow as the event gets closer.
- The deadline for abstracts is September 15th. Click here for more information.
About the Workshop
Sound, silence and rhythm are key to our embodied interaction with the world around us, to our moving through space and perception of temporality. Attending to sounds and rhythms is fundamentally an embodied process, just as reading and writing. Reading and writing, in turn, are profoundly related to questions of sound and silence – think of the rhythm of a poem, the narrative pace of a story, the flow and interruptions of the reading process, practices of reading out loud or in silence, and, not least, fuzzy boundary between language and music.
While manuscripts, as any other written documents, are in themselves silent, the relationship between manuscript cultures and sound is complex and entangled with both the status and role of sound in a specific culture and with the manscript’s materiality and visuality. Traces of sound, silence and rhythm are abundant in manuscripts from all periods and cultures, from music annotation, visual clues on the manuscript page (or lack of these) that may suggest whether a manuscript was to be read aloud or silently, philosophical or theological reflections about the relation between thought, word and voice, to writers’ reflections about music or their use of it as a resource in the writing process, and composers’ creative use of texts.
The LCE Manuscript Group's hypothesis is that by studying sound (or its absence) in interaction with the materiality and visuality of manuscripts/manuscript cultures through the lens of 4E cognition, we can enhance our understanding of the interplay between written and oral culture, music and literature, rhythm and temporality, sound and space.
The invited and confirmed speaker this year is Professor of Classics Bissera Pentcheva from Stanford University. She has done important and amazing research on acoustics, art and music in Byzantine culture, and will speak about her latest work.
The event is organized by Stijn Vervaet and Stefka Georgieva Eriksen. If you are interested in joining the event, or have any questions, you can contact them at: stijn.vervaet@ilos.uio.no or s.g.eriksen@iln.uio.no.