The Sound of Things. Emotionalization, Sensualization, and Habitualization through Product Sound Design.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sabine Kienitz
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 323001854

The research project examines the historical relation and co-construction of sound and objects by using empirical-ethnographical methods and concentrates on the culturality of acoustic phenomenons, as observed in the production of product sounds in the domestic appliance, food, and automobile industries. The project is based on consumer products becoming social actors in the human-object-relation through their sensory design, which include haptical, visual and also acoustic materialities, and therefore also becoming part of an »emotional capitalism« (Illouz 2011). Product sounds are tools that communicate cultural meanings and values, qualities, materialities or product standards and support the emotional bonding between persons and objects (Miller 2012). The project therefore questions: how are these products of consumer culture sensualized, emotionalized, and habitualized? What role do historical factors have in the process of designing sounds for commodities? How are the practices and processes of product sound design theoretized, conceptualized and organized? The key focus of the research project is on the sound designers as actors in the field as well as their production processes and design practices. A multimethodological approach will be performed to answer the question of the conceptualization of designing sound: through narrative interviews with sound designers and the observation of the participants in sound design studios. Practical and theoretical teaching material and programs will be analyzed to answer the question of how sound design and the emotionalization of products are standardized. Therefore research at three different universities (Delft, Dresden, Oldenburg) is necessary. The empirical material will be completed by the research of audiovisual material from both historical and contemporary online and enterprise archives, as these materials show the strategies of communicating emotional contents through sensually designed consumer products.A workshop with international guests from within the field of Sound Studies will be held half-way through the project to discuss the contents. The outcome will be incorporated in the project and a monograph displaying the projects analysis will then finalize the project and will make the research field available to the scientific community, merging Sound Studies and Volkskunde/Kulturanthropologie.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants