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ABC of Sounds.
Image, Word and Memory in Languages of Sound and Music throughout the World

02.11.2007 to 03.02.2008


An exhibition of the National Museums in Berlin. Supported by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.

The alphabet is a medium of expression, a tool for delivering speech, a self-contained system of symbols. Languages of sound and music are just as multifaceted. They, too, are motivated by visualisations and other representations defining the communication between humans and how it is passed on: an ABC of sounds.

The 'ABC of Sounds' completes the suite of activities with which the National Museums in Berlin have participated in the Year of the Humanities. It marks the end of that year with an important contribution to the 'ABC of Humanity', a project supported by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.

The 'ABC of Sounds', under the auspices of the department of Music Ethnology at the Ethnological Museum, adds sound to the broad range of aspects addressed in earlier projects realised by the National Museums in Berlin: 'The ABC of Pictures' and 'Language-Script-Image'. Visitors can plunge into global worlds of sound and, in the exhibition and the accompanying events, learn about their different cultural expressions and ways of communication.