Sound, Politics, and the Urban Laboratory

July 21–23, 2025 | mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

isaResearch is the yearly international, interdisciplinary summer school of mdw and part of isa – International Summer Academy. It is a forum for negotiating the annual isa theme theoretically and discursively along current discourses and embedding it in the diverse contexts of Vienna’s urban space. The isaResearch Summer School for Early Stage Researchers takes place at the same time as the artistic masterclasses and the festival on campus.

Read the call for papers and the Book of Abstracts

Public Guest Lecture 

“‘Noise Not Music’? Urban Sound Between Participation and Disturbance”

Kai Ginkel (Anton Bruckner Private University Linz)

Followed by discussion and reception, as part of the isaResearch Summer School

Environmental noise is not simply a ‘background feature’ of urban life, nor merely a by-product of industrial activity or traffic. Rather, it is a central element of how urban environments are experienced and negotiated. Across metropolitan regions in Europe, cities are increasingly challenged to reconcile their vibrant cultural activities with residents’ demands for rest and quality of life. In this context, sound and its regulation become a field in which questions of justice, inclusion, and urban futures are actively contested.

Focusing on music-related sound, the presentation draws on a qualitative pilot study of sound-related negotiations around the Arena music venue in Vienna. It explores how music-generated sound is perceived, classified, and contested as either ‘music’ or ‘noise’. As sound operates as both a medium of community and a trigger of exclusion, it raises the broader question of whose voices are heard – literally and politically – and whose voices are subject to marginalisation. In this sense, the talk will conclude by outlining future directions for sociological research on music-based environmental noise in urban spaces.

Kai Ginkel (Dr phil.) is postdoc researcher at Anton Bruckner Private University Linz. His project Unwanted Sound was funded by the City of Vienna (MA7 Department of Culture) in 2024. Former research activities include a position in the international project Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe (Volkswagen Foundation) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. His monograph on the social distinction between music and noise (Noise – Klang zwischen Musik und Lärm. Zu einer Praxeologie des Auditiven) was published by Transcript in 2017. His key research areas are sound and music, qualitative methods, and practice theory.