Western audiences have long been fascinated with music automata. Against this backdrop, it may not be surprising that art and music curators display historical examples of such mechanical instruments together with contemporary sounding art. Yet what exactly do these curators aim to accomplish when combining historical music automata with kinetic sound art? And do visitors understand the connections between the objects on display in the ways intended by the curators? To examine the curators’ ambitions, this article analyses three exhibitions: Für Augen und Ohren (West Berlin 1980), Ballet Mécanique (Maastricht 2002) and Art or Sound (Venice 2014). To unravel visitors’ responses, we focus on the Berlin exhibition, the best documented case. We argue that the curators staged the automated kinetic as a key historical link between mechanical musical instruments and contemporary sound art, and that they tried to tap into specific dimensions of public fascination with musical automata – the magical invisible, mechanical wonder and blurring of boundaries – to open their audiences’ senses to sound art. As we will show with the help of the notion of ‘listening habitus’, visitors’ responses indeed drew on these dimensions, but more often than not displayed a preference for the historical automata rather than contemporary kinetic art.

中文翻译：

---

上演动力学：音乐自动机如何使观众对声音艺术敏感

西方观众一直对音乐自动机着迷。在这种背景下，艺术和音乐策展人将这种机械乐器的历史例子与当代发声艺术一起展示也就不足为奇了。然而，当将历史音乐自动机与动态声音艺术相结合时，这些策展人的目标究竟是什么？参观者是否按照策展人的意图理解展出对象之间的联系？为了审视策展人的雄心壮志，本文分析了三个展览：Für Augen und Ohren（1980 年西柏林）、Ballet Mécanique（2002 年马斯特里赫特）和“艺术或声音”（2014 年威尼斯）。为了解开参观者的反应，我们专注于柏林展览，这是记录最好的案例。我们认为，策展人将自动化动力学作为机械乐器和当代声音艺术之间的重要历史联系，他们试图利用公众对音乐自动机的特定维度——神奇的无形、机械奇迹和边界模糊——让观众对声音艺术敞开心扉。正如我们将借助“聆听习惯”的概念展示的那样，参观者的反应确实借鉴了这些维度，但往往表现出对历史自动机而非当代动态艺术的偏好。