“In_Listening_In” by Gail Priest
Title:
- In_Listening_In
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Artist Statement:
In_Listening_In is an ambisonic essay that uses the 360VR format for its dynamic, spatialised audio capacity in order to discuss the immersive nature of sound. It uses ficto-critical writing strategies that combine poetic texts, anecdote and theoretical reflection to explore and explicate how listening is an embodied, embedded experience in correlation to sound — an experiential unit I call “sonaurality”. This correlation complicates the notions of subjects and objects as independent entities so that sound cannot meaningfully be considered phenomenally, materially or conceptually without listening.
Flipping the visual focus of the medium, In_Listening_In eschews figurative visual narrative for an “visu-auditive” environment or atmosphere, to enable a stronger focus on listening (Chion 2016). The soundscape combines binaural field recordings adapted to an ambisonic environment and compositional elements developed to create a dynamic spherical soundworld in which the listener is always at the centre. In this way sound sensorially and affectively illustrates the concepts being discussed. Developed within the context of a practice-based PhD, the form is offered as an artwork as well as an alternate academic methodology and distribution format.
