Tuning In

Acoustics of Emotion, Sound Archives, and Contemporary Aesthetics

de Elisa Rusca (directeur de publication)

février 2026

À paraître | le 18/02/2026

Medias

Présentation

Born from the exhibition Tuning In—Acoustique de l’émotion held between October 3, 2024, to August 24, 2025, at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, this volume explores the voice as a fragile yet powerful space where memory, emotion, and humanitarian praxis converge.

Extending the exhibition beyond its physical space, this volume offers a meditation on the affective depth of sound through contributions that intertwine scholarship, curatorial reflection, and artistic practice. The voice is not reduced to information; it becomes presence—rhythm, vibration, sign—forging an intimate bridge between emitter and receiver. At the crossroads of emotional prosody, archival questions, and contemporary aesthetics, this constellation reveals sound as a site of resonance while investigating the aural archives from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Tuning In—Acoustics of Emotion, Sound Archives, and Contemporary Aesthetics opens a contemplative journey into politics and poetics of sound and voice—and to consider listening as both an ethical stance and a form of care.

To listen, it suggests, is to recognize vulnerability, to affirm dignity, and to remain attentive to the persistent humanity carried by every voice—a vision of humanitarian engagement grounded not in spectacle, but in presence, nuance, and shared attention.

Sommaire

Foreword – Pascal Hufschmid
Introduction. Tuning In—Acoustics of Emotion, Sound Archives and Contemporary Aesthetics – Elisa Rusca
Regeneration and the Regulation of Emotion – Senam Okudzeto
“Grass-roots support… to help achieve health for all”: How the Red Cross Radio Prize Exemplified the Local Action, Global Reach Aims of the IFRC – Sarah-Joy Maddeaux
EPFL Cultural Heritage & Innovation Center: Practical Aspects in the Digitization of the IFRC Audio Recordings – Alain Dufaux and Alain Chardonnens
Emotional Prosody, the Source of Humanitarian Emotion – Didier Grandjean
The ICRC’s Audio Archives: When Voices and Sounds Convey Emotion – Manuela Filippa
Performing Sound Archives: Past and Future in the Present Moment – Christophe Fellay
Sound is Always More: Cracking the Myth of the Artificial Voice – Elisa Rusca
To Hear and To Be Heard: A Language – Hafsa Alkhudairi
Exhibited artists and works
Round Table: Sound and the Archive
When Music Went to War. Can music have an impact in war, when other methods to humanize it have failed? – Paul-Henri Arni
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
The authors
Credits for illustrations and photographs