Phenomenological Investigations of Sonic Environments

Martin Nitsche, Ivan Gutierrez, Jiří Zelenka, Vít Pokorný

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9783031659201
• eBook ISBN: 9783031659218
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

Phenomenological approaches to sounds, noises, voices, and music traditionally privilege methods that center visual perception. This book aims not only to phenomenologically describe sonic environments, but also to develop an audition-centered phenomenological methodology to enable this task. "Sonic environment" is this book's term for the acoustic shape of human life-environment, which is multisensory and does not exclude visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory sensations connected with sounds or their sources. Sonic environments (in so far as they are lived) are not composed of separate sounds, but created by "sonic phenomena" – i.e., lived (real or imagined) experiences with sounds, noises, voices, and music. Just as phenomenology traditionally privileges the visual over the audio, phenomenology thematically prefers listening to a voice or a music over less articulated sonic experiences (i.e., sounds without an obvious meaning, melody, or rhythm).In this respect, the book not only provides missing phenomenological descriptions of sonic environments, but also redefines phenomenological methodology with respect to acoustic perception.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Phenomenological Methodology in Sonic Research
• 3. Phenomenological Topology of Localization Within Sonic Environments
• 4. Perception
• 5. Constitutive Elements of Sonic Environments
• 6. On and Beyond the Horizon of Auditory Experience
• 7. Composed Sonic Environments
• 8. Sonic Phenomenology: Conclusion