The 2024 Long Night of Research at the mdw Campus
The banner at the entrance had been announcing it since the beginning of the month: on the evening of 24 May, the main campus of the mdw was given over to the 2024 Long Night of Research, offering an interested audience of all ages insights into the research taking place at our institution.
5:00 p.m. found everything ready: luminous yellow tape on the pavements and floors for orientation along with posters, arrows, and signs led guests to the three campus locations that were open for the Long Night of Research: the University Library, the building occupied by the Department of Music Acoustics – Wiener Klangstil, and the award-winning Future Art Lab. All the way up to 11 p.m., hundreds of guests flocked to the mdw Campus to take in multifaceted impressions of selected mdw disciplines and research projects at the evening’s interactive workshops, concert presentations, film screening, sound installations, tours, and lectures. The attendees’ enthusiastic response to the performance by the women’s a cappella band Beat Poetry Club was just as palpable as was the interest in musical and performative answers to the question of, “How do I conceive a classical concert for young people”? Blowing pressure on the trombone was not only explained but also tried out, and even after 11 p.m., guests continued to marvel at a cello-playing industrial robot—to mention just a few examples of this programme’s diverse and intriguing components.
The Long Night of Research at the mdw
The mdw’s relationship with this event is a success story that began in 2016 with the contribution of an interactive audience quiz to the project “Revolutions in the Music Business” on Heldenplatz. In 2018, the mdw had its own stand on the Freyung where it introduced three research projects and presented a concert by international artists. 2020 was forced to take place online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, after which 2022 saw the mdw invite the public to a location of its own—the Exilarte Center—for the first time. There was also a station in the Aula der Wissenschaften as well as a performance at Weltmuseum Wien. In 2024, finally, the focus of the mdw’s Long Night of Research participation shifted to the Campus with a total of 15 contributions. The mdw was also represented by a stand on Vienna’s Heldenplatz and by a film studies podcast.
The Importance of Participation in the Long Night of Research
In recent years, arts universities have been among those institutions for which it has grown increasingly important to be visible to diverse target audiences in terms of research—and, in their case, in terms of the development and appreciation of the arts. Universities’ “third mission” involves making themselves and their knowledge accessible to the outside world as well as addressing and involving non-academic audiences, not least in the interest of “open science”. Moreover, and not unimportantly, the public funding of research entails an obligation to communicate results, methods, and background information on research processes in formats suitable to their target audiences. Events such as the Long Night of Research provide opportunities to address new, interested target audiences and create an awareness of the themes and disciplines present at the mdw.
The positive development of the Long Night of Research at the mdw shows that it truly has “arrived” at our institution as a format, accompanied by commensurately enhanced awareness of science communication’s importance.
