{"id":269,"date":"2025-09-15T11:51:40","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T09:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/2025\/09\/15\/mexico-2024\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T13:29:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T11:29:22","slug":"mexico-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/2025\/09\/15\/mexico-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In November 2024, we participated in several academic events in Mexico.<\/p>\n\n

We went to the annual meeting of the History of Science Society<\/strong> (HSS), in M\u00e9rida (Yucat\u00e1n), where Elena Serrano and Tasio Rodrigo presented a joint panel with Alexandra Hui (University of Mississippi) entitled “At the Crossroads of the History of Music and the History of Science”. The panel explored the ways in which the history of music helps us to address complex problems in the history of science. For example, how can music help us to understand the role of the senses and emotions in the production of knowledge? How might the intersections of the history of science and music serve to understand historical modes of hybridisation and circulation of knowledge? How can hearing be used as an alternative to sight for tackling issues of expertise, objectivity, or attention? <\/p>\n\n

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HSS Annual Meeting (M\u00e9rida, Yucat\u00e1n, November 2024).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

More info about the individual presentations: <\/p>\n\n

Elena Serrano: “Musical Bodies: Knowledge, Senses and Emotions in Eighteenth-century Hispanic World”.<\/summary>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper explores the role of music and musical practices in the production of scientific knowledge about the body, in particular, about the workings of the senses and the origins of emotions. Eighteenth century music offers a good example of the intricacies of the senses and their relations with emotions and sexuality. It is not only apprehended by the sense of hearing, but it also speaks to the haptic nature of sound and its intertwining with sight. Furthermore, music, more than any other arts, was supposed to move affections and passions, provoking such variegated states such as sadness, joy, erotic pleasure, and communion with God. In short, if we consider music as a technology (with its experts and languages, instruments, visions, ideologies) that inter alia claims to affect emotions and wills, what ideas about the body and its passions were presupposed? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper will thus bring into dialogue works on music and related genres (such as musical treatises, musical compositions) that circulated widely in the Hispanic context with medical and philosophical treatises and practices of musical healing. The ultimate aim here is to explore to the role of intersensory, affectional, and gender experiences in the production of knowledge. <\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n

Alexandra Hui: “Writing the History of Music Designed to be Ignored: Sound Affects from Edison to Spotify”.<\/summary>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this paper, I trace out the history of the science of background music, designed to be applied to listeners\u2019 bodies and mind often at or just below the threshold of attention. Using examples from music in industry, Muzak in public spaces, and ambient music and nature records of the 1970s, I document the mechanisms through which sound engineers shaped and standardized listener experiences. Much of the efficacy of this music as applied science depended on listeners\u2019 inattention to it. Considering sound and music as applied science, in turn, allows us to treat them as world-making technologies. And yet, despite the ubiquity of these sounds, the experience of them is tricky to find in the archives. Where can we find affective experiences in the archival record, especially those prompted by technologies\/phenomena created to obscure themselves? How might we \u201csense against the archive\u201d? Because the subjects of these sound applications were also consumers actively marketed to, subject-object, scientist-public binaries break down. More generally, examining the liminal soundscapes of background music motivates us to think carefully about whose attention we attend to \u2014 the scientists or the subjects of their science \u2014 and how not just epistemological frameworks but phenomenological ones are formed. <\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n

Tasio Rodrigo: “Avian Voices: Nature and Music in the Early Modern Ibero-American World”.<\/summary>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the earliest examples of birdsong transcription is found in Athanasius Kircher\u2019s Musurgia Universalis (1650), an eclectic compilation of themes regarding musical thought. This book exerted significant influence on music treatises, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula and colonies. The transcription of nature into Cartesian diagrams of duration and pitch (scores) became a widespread practice. Through the rationalization and classification of sound, it arguably served as a way of conquering not only landscapes, but also soundscapes. However, the possibility of capturing birdsongs in arithmetical language was controversial. Some argued against, since bird soul and chant pertained purely to the senses. In addition, the very nature of music was in question: Was music encoded in the numbers of the \u201cmusic of the spheres\u201d or did it share a mutual origin with language and the affections of the body? Focusing on bird songs, this paper will explore these debates on music in nature and on the nature of music in the colonial context to illuminate the evolution of the relationship between humans and animals and the role of senses and emotions in knowledge production. <\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n

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We also participated in the international symposium “Experiences and Challenges in Music Research”, at the Escuela Superior de M\u00fasica of the Universidad Ju\u00e1rez del Estado de Durango, where we presented our research.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In November 2024, we participated in several academic events in Mexico. We went to the annual meeting of the History of Science Society (HSS), in M\u00e9rida (Yucat\u00e1n), where Elena Serrano and Tasio Rodrigo presented a joint panel with Alexandra Hui (University of Mississippi) entitled “At the Crossroads of the History of Music and the History […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3104,"featured_media":261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/sirens\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}