San Francisco
Photo by Patrick Perkins

Sound Museum Roundtable #2

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 second session of a series of museum roundtables on the topic of sound on Tuesday, June 23.

This is the second in a series of virtual roundtables bringing together artists, researchers, museum practitioners, and community builders to explore how sound shapes the way people listen together.

The first session focused on listening as a social practice: why it matters, how it circulates across people and places, and how collective attention can open a common space of reflection. The second session focuses on the conditions of space, and on the design of listening environments. Where the first asked why listening matters, this one asks how environments can support it.

The conversation turns to spatial audio, technical mediation, and the relationship between physical and remote experience. We explore what a listening-centered environment actually requires: spatial design, ritual, and the forms of participation that hold attention as a shared act.

The Sound Museum project aims to create a permanent space for immersive group listening, where people gather to experience sound together. Online sessions like this one introduce the questions and practices that such a space could host onsite, and bring the conversation to a global audience.

Moderated by Joseph Becker, with Nina Emge, Chris Salter, Chris Chafe.

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
  • 8:00pm – Event ends

Boston (ET): Start time 12pm

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

San Francisco (PT): Start time 9am

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

  • Boston

    12:00PM

  • Switzerland

    6:00PM

  • San Francisco

    9:00AM

Speakers

  •

    Speaker

    Chris Chafe

    Professor and Chair at Stanford University Music Department

    Chris Chafe is a composer, improvisor, and cellist, developing much of his music alongside computer-based research. He is Chair of Stanford University’s Department of Music and works at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). In 2019, he was International Visiting Research Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies The University of British Columbia, Visiting Professor at the Politecnico di Torino, and Edgard-Varèse Guest Professor at the Technical University of Berlin. At IRCAM (Paris) and The Banff Centre (Alberta), he has pursued methods for digital synthesis, music performance and real-time internet collaboration. An active performer either on the net or physically present, his music reaches audiences in sometimes novel venues. An early network project was a simultaneous five-country concert was hosted at the United Nations in 2009. Chafe’s works include gallery and museum music installations which are now into their third decade with “musifications” resulting from collaborations with artists, scientists and MD’s. Recent work includes the Earth Symphony and PolarTide (environmental), Gnosisong (medical), Tomato Music (biological) and Harbour Symphonies played by the horns of large ships in the port of St. Johns, Newfoundland.

  •

    Listener / Site Coordinator

    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].

  •

    Moderator

    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.

  •

    Speaker

    Nina Emge

    Artist, Research Assistant and Chair at ETH Zurich

    Nina Emge is a Zurich-based artist who reflects on the social dimensions of sound, voice, silence and listening practices. At the heart of Emge’s work are themes such as decentralization, collaborative working methods and redistribution.

    This can be seen in her installations and drawings, which reflect her research and archival work, as well as in the production processes of her artworks. Emge is an active member of the Transnational Sound Initiative.

    Emge’s work has been exhibited at the Biennale Son, Akademie der Künste Berlin, Lagos Biennale, Kunsthaus Zürich, WAF Vienna, Kunsthalle Zürich, Kunsthalle Bern, Goethe-Institute Paris, La Loge Brussels, Istituto Svizzero Rome, Istituto Svizzero Palermo, Halle für Kunst in Lüneburg, Frac Bretagne + Centre culturel suisse de Paris, Uferhalle Berlin, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Helmhaus Zürich and other national and international institutions.

  •

    Speaker

    Prof. Dr. Christopher Salter

    Professor for Immersive Arts, Director of the Immersive Arts Space, Co-Head of REFRESH at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

    Chris Salter is Professor for Immersive Arts and Director of the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He is also Professor Emeritus, Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal and former Co-Director of the Hexagram network for research-creation in arts, cultures and technology and Co-Founder of the Milieux Institute at Concordia.

    He studied philosophy and economics and completed his PhD in theatre studies with research in computer music at Stanford University. His artistic work has been seen all over the world at such venues as the Venice Architecture Biennale, Barbican Centre, Berliner Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen, HeK, ZKM, Kunstfest Weimar, Musée d’art Contemporain, Muffathalle, EXIT Festival and Grand Palais Immersif-Paris, among many others. He has given more than 100 keynotes and talks in academic and cultural institutions internationally and is the author of Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance ( 2010), Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (2015) and Sensing Machines (2022), all from MIT Press.