The sounds of nanotechnology

Abstract

Public perceptions of nanotechnology are shaped by sound in surprising ways. Our analysis of the audiovisual techniques employed by nanotechnology stakeholders shows that well-chosen sounds can help win public trust, create value, and convey the weird reality of objects at the nanoscale.Most research centres and other stakeholders in nanotechnology produce informational videos about their work to help the public understand what they do.Along with documentaries about nanotechnology, these are the main sources of images that people have of what science is capable of at the scale of a billionth of a metre.But these videos have soundtracks too, and it's worth listening to them carefully. We conducted a survey of 108 videos and other audiovisual experiences from 21 countries in the areas of education, advertising, TV, film and art (see DOI). We noted their salient aural characteristics, such as music, tone, voiceover and materializing sound indicators, so that we could identify precisely what aspects of nanosoundscapes are important for achieving key aims in nanoscience education: to envelop the viewerlistener into the scale of the nanocosm, to create economic value, and to induce desirable psychological and cognitive states.To understand what's going on, we examined what we were hearing with the help of scholarship in the fields of sonic branding, embodied cognition, and film studies. What we found was that these sounds can tell us a lot about the hopes and expectations that are aroused by nanotechnology, as well as the public's niggling unease about this strange new world. Sonic branding research alerts us to the incentive for commercial organizations to associate desirable sounds with their products, while insights from embodied cognition help us understand that human sense perception can be manipulated to give the impression that the nanoscale can not only be seen and heard, but physically experienced. And film studies research provides the best tool for calibrating the various ways that exist to link visual information with sonic information. The sounds of the nanocosmSo, what do nano-objects sound like? Obviously, the answer is that they make no sound that can be picked up by human ears. We should point out here that we are not

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