Past Programs
Healthcare Facilities - 2003
Hearing Madness: The Soundscape of the Asylum
07/12/2003
This week, soundscapes of asylums past. Historian and musician Dr Dolly MacKinnon argues that the now abandoned psychiatric asylums give us a false impression of madness and its institutions as silent. Historians have all but ignored the asylum's acoustically rich heritage. From the use of sound to diagnose and categorise, to the conviviality of the asylum ball and the genre of the mad song - this week a journey into the noisy world of 19th Century bedlam.
