“In_Listening_In: An Exploration of Ambisonic Audiography as an Alternative Approach within Sound Studies” presented by Priest

In_Listening_In: An Exploration of Ambisonic Audiography as an Alternative Approach within Sound Studies

This paper offers the ambisonic audiographic form as a viable alternative approach to theorizing within sound studies. The approach is exemplified in the essay-artwork In_Listening_In that allows the listener to be fully immersed in semiotic and sensorial sound. Traditional modes of theorizing emphasize critical distance and objectivity. However, considering sound and listening phenomenologically, sound/object and listening/subject are interdependent, each bringing the other to meaning in a correlation I call sonaurality. The visual paradigm of observational separation is thus ill-equipped to theorize sonaurality. I propose that the writer can consider the experience of sounding from within, acknowledging context, sitedness and partiality as per Haraway (1988). I call this a tomographic approach, borrowing the term from the medical procedure that explores within a body via multiple X-ray slices. In_Listening_In enacts the tomographic authorial position in its textual material and style additionally repositioning the reader as listener through what Smith calls “critical audiography” (2019). The audiographic form is extended via the ambisonic audio potentials of 360VR technology, fully immersing the listener and sensorially reinforcing the arguments. While the essay-artwork can stand on its own academically, this paper argues for the ambisonic audio-graphic form as both a methodology and format that is a valuable approach within sound studies.