Audio History. On the Production of History through Film Sound and Film Soundtrack

• Duration: 2014 – 2015
• Project lead: Prof. Dr. Winfried Pauleit

Project management: Prof. Dr. Winfried Pauleit (ZeMKI-Lab “Film, Media Art and Popular Culture”)

Funding institution: Excellence Initiative of the federal and state governments

The project explored how film sound and film sound generate, model and make history audible, and thus represented an extension of the approaches to cinematic storytelling and visual history.

The innovative core of the project lay in the hypothesis that the acoustic dimension of film makes its own contribution to the modeling of history. In contrast to cinematic storytelling and visual history, the audio history of film has not yet been investigated. Although sound has developed into a relevant field of research in film studies and has recently been established as a separate field in sound studies, the historical reference of sound production in film and its significance in the production of historicity have not yet been specifically addressed.

Historiography has described and reflected on the telling of history as a poetological process and visual history, which explores film and visual images, is considered an established method within the discipline. However, this approach does not specifically examine the auditory dimension, but instead only questions visuality. This is where the project comes in and explores how film sound and soundtracks can generate, model and make history audible. The aim is therefore to develop a theory on the audio history of film. It examines both the aesthetic dimension and its potential to produce history as well as the material, technical and cultural dimensions of film sound production with regard to historical modeling.

The aim of the project was to highlight the significance of film sound and soundtracks in the production of history. The project was pioneering work in film studies and at the same time offered the prospect of a highly innovative approach for the interdisciplinary field of film studies and historical studies.

Further information

Website Film Studies and Media Aesthetics: https://www.uni-bremen.de/film