Marie Højlund (born 1979) // I am a sound artist and musician and from august 2019 an assistant professor in Sound Studies at Aarhus University. In 2017 I finished my PhD about noise and listening in Danish hospitals and together with Morten Riis I present the project The Overheard (www.overheard.dk). During my work I have been engaged in developing novel sound technologies for alternative listening situations and designing sound environments for various public spaces. I am also an external curator for Kunsthal Aarhus’ music/sound programme and play in the Danish band Nephew. (Photo: Isak Hoffmeyer)
SoundEffects - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience, 2016
Most research on the acoustic environment in the modern Western hospital identifies raised noise ... more Most research on the acoustic environment in the modern Western hospital identifies raised noise levels as the main causal explanation for ranking noise as a critical stressor for patients, relatives and staff. Therefore, the most widely used strategies to tackle the problem in practice are insulation and isolation strategies to reduce measurable and perceptual noise levels. However, these strategies do not actively support the need to feel like an integral part of the shared hospital environment, which is a key element in creating healing environments, according to the paradigm of Evidence-Based Design and Healing Architecture. This article suggests that the gap in contemporary research is intimately linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field, which is incapable of accommodating the multisensory and atmospheric conditions amplifying the experience of noise. This article argues that an attuning approach should be included in the field to help bridge the gap by offering ...
In this article the authors present their sound art project Nephew vs. Overheard as an exploratio... more In this article the authors present their sound art project Nephew vs. Overheard as an exploration of a messy, fragile and incoherent local approach to public ecological art, an approach that aims at creating links of affectivity with technological creatures, such as large wind turbines, with which we share our landscape. Supplementing, as well as challenging, the dominant global strategy of ecological art, the authors argue that it is essential to experiment with transductive chains of local environmental data, creating sensibilities that we can relate to in our everyday environments.
Den pandemiske periode tydeliggjorde fællesskabernes rodede, skrøbelige og besværlige mellemværen... more Den pandemiske periode tydeliggjorde fællesskabernes rodede, skrøbelige og besværlige mellemværender med lyd. Dét kalder på en ny dialog om vores fælles lydmiljøer. Med et begreb om sonisk medborgerskab udvider artiklen den forståelsesramme for studiet af lyd, der ligger i det klassiske soundscape-begreb som Murray R. Schafer udviklede det. Baseret på eksempler fra pandemiens periode foreslår artiklen, at Schafers idé om at ’stemme verden’ suppleres med en ’afstemmende’ tilgang.
This paper describes the development of a loudness-based compressor for live audio streams. The n... more This paper describes the development of a loudness-based compressor for live audio streams. The need for this device arose while developing the public sound art project The Overheard, which involves mixing together several live audio streams through a web based mixing interface. In order to preserve a natural sounding dynamic image from the varying sound sources that can be played back under varying conditions, an adaptation of the EBU R128 loudness measurement recommendation, originally developed for levelling non-realtime broadcast material, has been applied. The paper describes the Pure Data implementation and the necessary compromises enforced by the live streaming condition. Lastly observations regarding design challenges, related application areas and future goals are presented.
Nurses working in the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Aarhus University Hospital lack the tools to p... more Nurses working in the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Aarhus University Hospital lack the tools to prepare children for the alarming atmosphere they will enter when visiting a hospitalised relative. The complex soundscape dominated by alarms and sounds from equipment is mentioned as the main stressor. As a response to this situation, our design artefact, the interactive furniture Kidkit, invites children to become accustomed to the alarming sounds sampled from the ward while they are waiting in the waiting room. Our design acknowledges how atmospheres emerge as temporal negotiations between the rhythms of the body and the environment in conjunction with our internalised perception of the habituated background. By actively controlling the sounds built into Kidkit, the child can habituate them through a process of synchronising them with her own bodily rhythms. Hereby the child can establish, in advance, a familiar relationship with the alarming sounds in the ward, enabling her to focus later more on the visit with the relative. The article discusses the proposed design strategy behind this solution and the potentiality for its use in hospital environments in general.
In this article, we offer an object-oriented ontological perspective to complement the diversity ... more In this article, we offer an object-oriented ontological perspective to complement the diversity of sounding ontologies, challenging the human perspective as the only valid perspective and call for the necessity of including perspectives of objects such as a speakers, voices and light sensors. Subscribing to this view also confronts music and sound art as consistent autonomous categories and focuses on how the pieces attune to the environment, emphasising meetings, transformations and translations through and with other objects. These meetings generate an ecological awareness of causal aesthetics where objectstimeandspaceeach other. This contrasts with traditional analysis of music and sound art, which is based on the assumption that time and space are containers in which sound and music unfold. We analyse two contemporary pieces by the authors in an attempt to unfold a dark ecological1approach to test the implications, limits and potentials for future use and development.
Most research on the acoustic environment in the modern Western hospital identifies raised noise ... more Most research on the acoustic environment in the modern Western hospital identifies raised noise levels as the main causal explanation for ranking noise as a critical stressor for patients, relatives and staff. Therefore, the most widely used strategies to tackle the problem in practice are insulation and isolation strategies to reduce measurable and perceptual noise levels. However, these strategies do not actively support the need to feel like an integral part of the shared hospital environment, which is a key element in creating healing environments, according to the paradigm of Evidence-Based Design and Healing Architecture. This article suggests that the gap in contemporary research is intimately linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field, which is incapable of accommodating the multisensory and atmospheric conditions amplifying the experience of noise. This article argues that an attuning approach should be included in the field to help bridge the gap by offering active ways of attuning to the shared environment.
In this article, we offer an object-oriented ontological perspective to complement the diversity ... more In this article, we offer an object-oriented ontological perspective to complement the diversity of sounding ontologies, challenging the human perspective as the only valid perspective and call for the necessity of including perspectives of objects such as a speakers, voices and light sensors. Subscribing to this view also confronts music and sound art as consistent autonomous categories and focuses on how the pieces attune to the environment, emphasising meetings, transformations and translations through and with other objects. These meetings generate an ecological awareness of causal aesthetics where objects time and space each other. This contrasts with traditional analysis of music and sound art, which is based on the assumption that time and space are containers in which sound and music unfold. We analyse two contemporary pieces by the authors in an attempt to unfold a dark ecological1 approach to test the implications, limits and potentials for future use and development.
Nurses working in the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Aarhus University Hospital lack the tools to p... more Nurses working in the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Aarhus University Hospital lack the tools to prepare children for the alarming atmosphere they will enter when visiting a hospitalised relative. The complex soundscape dominated by alarms and sounds from equipment is mentioned as the main stressor. As a response to this situation, our design artefact, the interactive furniture Kidkit, invites children to become accustomed to the alarming sounds sampled from the ward while they are waiting in the waiting room. Our design acknowledges how atmospheres emerge as temporal negotiations between the rhythms of the body and the environment in conjunction with our internalised perception of the habituated background. By actively controlling the sounds built into Kidkit, the child can habituate them through a process of synchronising them with her own bodily rhythms. Hereby the child can establish, in advance, a familiar relationship with the alarming sounds in the ward, enabling her to focus later more on the visit with the relative. The article discusses the proposed design strategy behind this solution and the potentiality for its use in hospital environments in general.
SoundEffects - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience, 2016
Most research on the acoustic environment in the modern Western hospital identifies raised noise ... more Most research on the acoustic environment in the modern Western hospital identifies raised noise levels as the main causal explanation for ranking noise as a critical stressor for patients, relatives and staff. Therefore, the most widely used strategies to tackle the problem in practice are insulation and isolation strategies to reduce measurable and perceptual noise levels. However, these strategies do not actively support the need to feel like an integral part of the shared hospital environment, which is a key element in creating healing environments, according to the paradigm of Evidence-Based Design and Healing Architecture. This article suggests that the gap in contemporary research is intimately linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field, which is incapable of accommodating the multisensory and atmospheric conditions amplifying the experience of noise. This article argues that an attuning approach should be included in the field to help bridge the gap by offering ...
In this article the authors present their sound art project Nephew vs. Overheard as an exploratio... more In this article the authors present their sound art project Nephew vs. Overheard as an exploration of a messy, fragile and incoherent local approach to public ecological art, an approach that aims at creating links of affectivity with technological creatures, such as large wind turbines, with which we share our landscape. Supplementing, as well as challenging, the dominant global strategy of ecological art, the authors argue that it is essential to experiment with transductive chains of local environmental data, creating sensibilities that we can relate to in our everyday environments.
Den pandemiske periode tydeliggjorde fællesskabernes rodede, skrøbelige og besværlige mellemværen... more Den pandemiske periode tydeliggjorde fællesskabernes rodede, skrøbelige og besværlige mellemværender med lyd. Dét kalder på en ny dialog om vores fælles lydmiljøer. Med et begreb om sonisk medborgerskab udvider artiklen den forståelsesramme for studiet af lyd, der ligger i det klassiske soundscape-begreb som Murray R. Schafer udviklede det. Baseret på eksempler fra pandemiens periode foreslår artiklen, at Schafers idé om at ’stemme verden’ suppleres med en ’afstemmende’ tilgang.
This paper describes the development of a loudness-based compressor for live audio streams. The n... more This paper describes the development of a loudness-based compressor for live audio streams. The need for this device arose while developing the public sound art project The Overheard, which involves mixing together several live audio streams through a web based mixing interface. In order to preserve a natural sounding dynamic image from the varying sound sources that can be played back under varying conditions, an adaptation of the EBU R128 loudness measurement recommendation, originally developed for levelling non-realtime broadcast material, has been applied. The paper describes the Pure Data implementation and the necessary compromises enforced by the live streaming condition. Lastly observations regarding design challenges, related application areas and future goals are presented.
Nurses working in the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Aarhus University Hospital lack the tools to p... more Nurses working in the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Aarhus University Hospital lack the tools to prepare children for the alarming atmosphere they will enter when visiting a hospitalised relative. The complex soundscape dominated by alarms and sounds from equipment is mentioned as the main stressor. As a response to this situation, our design artefact, the interactive furniture Kidkit, invites children to become accustomed to the alarming sounds sampled from the ward while they are waiting in the waiting room. Our design acknowledges how atmospheres emerge as temporal negotiations between the rhythms of the body and the environment in conjunction with our internalised perception of the habituated background. By actively controlling the sounds built into Kidkit, the child can habituate them through a process of synchronising them with her own bodily rhythms. Hereby the child can establish, in advance, a familiar relationship with the alarming sounds in the ward, enabling her to focus later more on the visit with the relative. The article discusses the proposed design strategy behind this solution and the potentiality for its use in hospital environments in general.
In this article, we offer an object-oriented ontological perspective to complement the diversity ... more In this article, we offer an object-oriented ontological perspective to complement the diversity of sounding ontologies, challenging the human perspective as the only valid perspective and call for the necessity of including perspectives of objects such as a speakers, voices and light sensors. Subscribing to this view also confronts music and sound art as consistent autonomous categories and focuses on how the pieces attune to the environment, emphasising meetings, transformations and translations through and with other objects. These meetings generate an ecological awareness of causal aesthetics where objectstimeandspaceeach other. This contrasts with traditional analysis of music and sound art, which is based on the assumption that time and space are containers in which sound and music unfold. We analyse two contemporary pieces by the authors in an attempt to unfold a dark ecological1approach to test the implications, limits and potentials for future use and development.
Most research on the acoustic environment in the modern Western hospital identifies raised noise ... more Most research on the acoustic environment in the modern Western hospital identifies raised noise levels as the main causal explanation for ranking noise as a critical stressor for patients, relatives and staff. Therefore, the most widely used strategies to tackle the problem in practice are insulation and isolation strategies to reduce measurable and perceptual noise levels. However, these strategies do not actively support the need to feel like an integral part of the shared hospital environment, which is a key element in creating healing environments, according to the paradigm of Evidence-Based Design and Healing Architecture. This article suggests that the gap in contemporary research is intimately linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field, which is incapable of accommodating the multisensory and atmospheric conditions amplifying the experience of noise. This article argues that an attuning approach should be included in the field to help bridge the gap by offering active ways of attuning to the shared environment.
In this article, we offer an object-oriented ontological perspective to complement the diversity ... more In this article, we offer an object-oriented ontological perspective to complement the diversity of sounding ontologies, challenging the human perspective as the only valid perspective and call for the necessity of including perspectives of objects such as a speakers, voices and light sensors. Subscribing to this view also confronts music and sound art as consistent autonomous categories and focuses on how the pieces attune to the environment, emphasising meetings, transformations and translations through and with other objects. These meetings generate an ecological awareness of causal aesthetics where objects time and space each other. This contrasts with traditional analysis of music and sound art, which is based on the assumption that time and space are containers in which sound and music unfold. We analyse two contemporary pieces by the authors in an attempt to unfold a dark ecological1 approach to test the implications, limits and potentials for future use and development.
Nurses working in the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Aarhus University Hospital lack the tools to p... more Nurses working in the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Aarhus University Hospital lack the tools to prepare children for the alarming atmosphere they will enter when visiting a hospitalised relative. The complex soundscape dominated by alarms and sounds from equipment is mentioned as the main stressor. As a response to this situation, our design artefact, the interactive furniture Kidkit, invites children to become accustomed to the alarming sounds sampled from the ward while they are waiting in the waiting room. Our design acknowledges how atmospheres emerge as temporal negotiations between the rhythms of the body and the environment in conjunction with our internalised perception of the habituated background. By actively controlling the sounds built into Kidkit, the child can habituate them through a process of synchronising them with her own bodily rhythms. Hereby the child can establish, in advance, a familiar relationship with the alarming sounds in the ward, enabling her to focus later more on the visit with the relative. The article discusses the proposed design strategy behind this solution and the potentiality for its use in hospital environments in general.
Denmark is building new and improved super hospitals, based on a vision of improving overall qual... more Denmark is building new and improved super hospitals, based on a vision of improving overall quality by switching the focus from hospitals for treatment to hospitals for healing, guided by research in the field of evidence-based design and healing architecture. Users mention noise as one of the main stressors and research has discovered that noise levels in hospitals continue to rise. Noise has therefore become a central point of concern, recommending strategies to reduce measurable and perceived noise levels.
However, these strategies do not support the need to feel like an integral part of the shared hospital environment, which is also a key element in creating healing environments linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field. This framework regards broad concepts such as noise and silence as objects with quantifiable properties, and assumes that these properties can be understood independently of the perceiver as a bodily and situated subject. The aim of this dissertation is accordingly to develop an alternative framework capable of accommodating the multi-sensory, affective and atmospheric conditions that influence the experience of noise, with a view to complementing the existing approaches in the field.
Consequently, the dissertation develops an ecological framework capable of accommodating these issues, established by viewing sound and listening through the lens of atmospheres. The attuning approach highlights the reciprocal relationship between the way in which atmospheres condition shared rhythms that shape us, but also the way in which we can tune them in different ways. In the context of sound and listening, this creates the potential of ecological overhearing as an atmospheric mode of listening capable of reconfiguring habitual background and foregrounding relationships.
Attuning strategies should thus provide opportunities for diverse acoustic situations and possibilities for active choice-making to meet different and shifting needs through an enactive approach in order to enhance empowerment and ecological overhearing. Embedding diverse enactive sound installations and interactive sound technology in hospitals can facilitate such zones of overhearing. These zones become places for ruptures that strengthen the possibilities for engaging in counter-attunements of existing negative atmospheres. In this way, zones of overhearing not only provide continual sense of presence without demanding full attention, but also create ample opportunities for the restoration of attention.
The dissertation takes an experimental practice-based approach through artistic- and constructive design-research and comprises six peer-reviewed papers (Part IV), framed by a general overview article (Parts I-III) that develops the theoretical and methodological foundation for the papers, and provides a synthesis and discussion of their main findings. The practice-based work is founded on a range of experiments, but focuses on two main experiments: Light, Landscape & Voices and KidKit, and the way in which they elicit sensitivities within the topic of investigation. This contribution also concerns the concrete development of installations through the experiments. These installations are in themselves manifestations of and challenges to hypotheses about the topic I aim to address.
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Conference Presentations by Marie Højlund
Papers by Marie Højlund
the gap in contemporary research is intimately linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field, which is incapable of accommodating the multisensory and atmospheric conditions amplifying the experience of noise. This article argues that an attuning approach should be
included in the field to help bridge the gap by offering active ways of attuning to the shared environment.
the gap in contemporary research is intimately linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field, which is incapable of accommodating the multisensory and atmospheric conditions amplifying the experience of noise. This article argues that an attuning approach should be
included in the field to help bridge the gap by offering active ways of attuning to the shared environment.
However, these strategies do not support the need to feel like an integral part of the shared hospital environment, which is also a key element in creating healing environments linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field. This framework regards broad concepts such as noise and silence as objects with quantifiable properties, and assumes that these properties can be understood independently of the perceiver as a bodily and situated subject. The aim of this dissertation is accordingly to develop an alternative framework capable of accommodating the multi-sensory, affective and atmospheric conditions that influence the experience of noise, with a view to complementing the existing approaches in the field.
Consequently, the dissertation develops an ecological framework capable of accommodating these issues, established by viewing sound and listening through the lens of atmospheres. The attuning approach highlights the reciprocal relationship between the way in which atmospheres condition shared rhythms that shape us, but also the way in which we can tune them in different ways. In the context of sound and listening, this creates the potential of ecological overhearing as an atmospheric mode of listening capable of reconfiguring habitual background and foregrounding relationships.
Attuning strategies should thus provide opportunities for diverse acoustic situations and possibilities for active choice-making to meet different and shifting needs through an enactive approach in order to enhance empowerment and ecological overhearing. Embedding diverse enactive sound installations and interactive sound technology in hospitals can facilitate such zones of overhearing. These zones become places for ruptures that strengthen the possibilities for engaging in counter-attunements of existing negative atmospheres. In this way, zones of overhearing not only provide continual sense of presence without demanding full attention, but also create ample opportunities for the restoration of attention.
The dissertation takes an experimental practice-based approach through artistic- and constructive design-research and comprises six peer-reviewed papers (Part IV), framed by a general overview article (Parts I-III) that develops the theoretical and methodological foundation for the papers, and provides a synthesis and discussion of their main findings. The practice-based work is founded on a range of experiments, but focuses on two main experiments: Light, Landscape & Voices and KidKit, and the way in which they elicit sensitivities within the topic of investigation. This contribution also concerns the concrete development of installations through the experiments. These installations are in themselves manifestations of and challenges to hypotheses about the topic I aim to address.