The Second Sense: Sound, Hearing and Nature in the Czech Modernity

GA ČR 20-30516Y panelu č. P410 a P401

This research project sets out to explore the relationship between sound, hearing and modernity in the Central European region, above all in the Czech (and later Czechoslovak) context. It will examine how the shifting boundaries between nature and culture, and the natural sciences and humanities in the 19th and early 20th centuries were inscribed in the human ear and definitions of aural perception, as well as in the attempts to imitate, imagine, and record the sounds of nature. Its aim is to initiate a more intense consideration of the role of sound analysis in fashioning modern notions of sensory perception and representations of natural environment. By focusing on the topics of sound and hearing in the fields as diverse as physiology, natural philosophy, aesthetics, science & technology, ornitology, and entertainment industry, the research will offer alternative readings of nature in the Czech modernity.