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Photo by Patrick Perkins

Sound Museum Roundtable #1

An international roundtable of artists, researchers, museum practitioners, and community builders explores what it means to put sound first, not as background, but as a primary way of knowing, remembering, and belonging.

Sound Museum Roundtable

Join us for the first session of a series of museum roundtables on the topic of sound on Tuesday, April 14.

This is the first in a series of virtual roundtables bringing together museum practitioners, artists, researchers , and community builders to explore Sonostalgia and the communities that form around listening.

Coined by Jason Reinier, Sonostalgia describes sound longing: The way certain sounds and soundscapes carry comfort, memory, and meaning, and the impulse to preserve and share them. What happens when we put sound first, not as background, but as a primary way of knowing and experiencing?

Sound is everywhere, yet we rarely treat it as a subject in its own right. Together we will explore how communities and institutions such as museums can be designed around listening, sonic memory, and shared soundscapes, and what a sound museum could make possible culturally, socially, and educationally.

As part of the conversations, we will explore practical formats that build attention and a shared language for listening, from participatory archives to performances and immersive installations. We will also consider what it takes to move from a distributed community of sound-oriented people, projects, and places toward a future home. From there, let’s imagine the physical space and lay the foundation for a public museum dedicated to sound and space.

This event is co-hosted by Swissnex in Boston and New York, and Swissnex in San Francisco.

Program + Start Times

Switzerland (CET): Start time 6pm

  • 6:00pm – Introduction
  • 6:05pm – Roundtable conversation
  • 7:00pm – Listening session
  • 8:00pm – Event ends

Boston (ET): Start time 12pm

  • 12:00pm – Introduction
  • 12:05pm – Roundtable conversation
  • 1:00pm – Listening session
  • 2:00pm – Event ends

San Francisco (PT): Start time 9am

  • 9:00am – Introduction
  • 9:05am – Roundtable conversation
  • 10:00am – Listening session
  • 11:00am – Event ends
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Event start time

  • Boston

    12:00PM

  • San Francisco

    9:00AM

  • Switzerland

    6:00PM

Speakers

  •

    Speaker

    Francesca Ceccherini

    PhD and Curator at OTO Sound Museum (Artistic Director)

    Francesca Ceccherini is a curator and PhD researcher in Visual and Media Studies at IULM University in Milan. Her research investigates how artistic practices engage with trauma, and how listening can operate as a form of repair. She is the founder of OTO Sound Museum (Zurich), which she has led over the past six years in close attunement with fellow curators. Since 2020, she has also been a member of the curatorial collective Zaira Oram, following her graduation in Advanced Studies in Curating at ZHdK. Over time, she has curated exhibitions and interventions in both urban and institutional contexts, developing transdisciplinary projects with practitioners from different fields of study. Among these are Eart_ض, a sonic research project dedicated to ancestral knowledges (CH–MA), and Life Lines, a multi-year research-based exhibition exploring migration trajectories, curated with Roger M. Buergel in Zurich. More recently, she conducted curatorial research in India titled Co-listening: Sound Practices and Processes of Repair from the Indian Subcontinent. Her projects have been presented at Kochi-Muziris Biennale (IND), MAP Museum (IND), Haus der Kunst (DE), Biennale Son (CH), Kunsthalle Winterthur (CH), Casino Luxembourg (LUX), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (CH), Johann Jacobs Museum (CH), Careof (IT), and Pastificio Cerere (IT), among others.

  •

    Speaker

    Jason Reinier

    Founder of Earprint LLC

    Jason is Principle Sound Artist and Founder of Earprint LLC. Focusing on multi-layered dimensional sound design, Earprint engages with clients worldwide creating immersive experience with the Earmersive software platform. He worked as Sound Artist at Electronic Arts with the Sims franchise, as Sound Designer for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Exploratorium, The British Museum, The Smithsonian, The Getty, Guggenheim, among many other museums and attractions. He worked on one of the first-ever podcasts, the SFMOMA’s Artcast. He also produced a radio feature for BBC Outlook in 2018. Featured on NPR and in the NY Times Time Capsule at the American Museum of Natural History, Jason’s Day of Sound projects combine global soundscapes from a single day into a linear time-based mix. Jason is an award winning Theater Sound Designer [SFBay Area Theater Critics Circle].

  •

    Speaker

    Joseph Becker

    Curator of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA

    Joseph Becker is the Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where his work explores the intersections of architecture, design, art, and visual culture. Recent exhibitions include Art of Noise (2024-26), Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Strips of Stripes (2023), Marshall Brown Projects: Dequindre Civic Academy (2023), Tauba Auerbach: S v Z (2022), The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment, and Idealism (2018–19), Donald Judd: Specific Furniture (2018), and Tomás Saraceno: Stillness in Motion – Cloud Cities (2017). His publications include Tauba Auerbach: S v Z (SFMOMA/D.A.P., 2020), The Sea Ranch (Del Monico/Prestel, 2018), and contributions to Making Home (Cooper Hewitt/MIT, 2025), The Craft of Place: Mork-Ulnes Architects (Park Books, 2024), Exquisite Experiments: The Early Work of Lebbeus Woods (Wiley, 2024), among others.