Music, Noise and Silence: Defining Relationships between Science & Music in Modernity Aleks Kolkowski, James Mansell and John Kannenberg. Introduction: Developing a Research Network In February, March and April, 2015, the Science Museum, in partnership with the Royal College of Music and Nottingham University, organised three, two-day workshops, bringing together fifty-three researchers, writers, musicians and acousticians from across the U.K., Europe and North America. A full list of participants is giving in Appendix A. The aim was to examine music and sound in relation to science and technology within the context of sonic modernity, at the same time exploring the structure and outline of a new touring exhibition around the theme of science and music. The participants were asked to consider how the cultural and historical categories of music, noise and silence could be used to structure the proposed exhibition, in the light of recent work in sound studies, musicology and history of science and technology. The involvement of leading researchers and practitioners in the development of content and narrative for the proposed exhibition brought about up-to- date, rigorous thought and enquiry, relevant to its subject matter, while the extensive use of action research techniques in the workshops, mainly through provocations rather than presentations, along with activities and events, also helped generate group discussions that teased-out numerous and insightful implications for the exhibition. The workshop series also celebrated the 80 th anniversary of the Science Museum’s Noise Abatement Exhibition, instigated in 1935 by the Anti Noise League, who saw noise as a by-product of industrial modernity that needed to be tackled, not least by new silent technologies and measuring devices. The 1935 exhibition was used as a point of reference throughout the series especially during the second workshop at Nottingham University where it was placed in historical context. From the outset, the approach in planning the three workshops for this research network was to avoid the ‘shared report’ style common in academic conferences and employ techniques from action research 1 aimed at producing a synthetic view through a ‘shared enquiry’. Each invited speaker was encouraged to deliver a short ‘provocation’ rather than paper presentation, exploring questions in their chosen subject and thus giving a far greater emphasis and duration to the group discussion that followed. The use of action research approaches was intended to provoke novel interactions, enabling the participants not only to break down barriers between disciplines and practice, but also to set the terms for doing so between academics, researchers, music specialists and the public in a museum context. Each workshop was held over a day and a half. The first session consisted of mutual 1 Burns, Danny, Systemic Action Research: A Strategy for Whole System Change (Policy Press, 2007) passim