“Spectral Sound Systems: Mapping the Mnemonic Soundscape” presented by Trommer
Session Title:
Virtual (full papers)
Presentation Title:
Spectral Sound Systems: Mapping the Mnemonic Soundscape
Presentation Subtheme:
Ecologies of place
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
This paper considers urban spaces as commercialized topographies of deliberately deployed sonic mnemonics, examining how an acoustemological approach to mapping locale might be reconfigured to address retail environmental music (often referred to as Muzak) as an infrastructural element that bears the capacity to territorialize both their vibratory and non-vibratory sonic spectra – an intentionally articulated sonic architecture that, in the words of philosopher and musicologist Peter Szendy, ‘us[es] the words of hits as subliminal advertisements’.
