Conference Theme:

A Dance of Perception – the symbiosis between image and sound.

The IVSA Conference 2027 invites us to reflect on the intricate ways in which image and sound intertwine in shaping our understanding of society. Visual sociology not only employs images and image-making in practice, research and analysis, but also studies how visual culture itself constructs and reflects social life. Yet images rarely exist in silence. Whether in film, performance, digital media, ritual, or daily encounters, intentional or ambient sounds accompany and transform the visual, affecting perception and meaning. Indeed, the concept of ostranenie, or defamiliarisation, as articulated by Viktor Shklovsky, plays with perception by making the familiar strange.

It challenges us to see and hear the everyday anew, revealing unnoticed rhythms of social life. In this conference, we explore this dance of perception through a multicultural lens, recognising that ways of seeing and hearing are deeply rooted in cultural contexts. From indigenous visual storytelling to global social media aesthetics, we consider how image and sound co-produce meaning, emotion, identity, and memory. By bringing together practitioners, artists and scholars from across the world, we aim to illuminate how this symbiosis between image and sound reveals new dimensions of social reality and how, through their interplay, we all share in this dance of perception.