Network[ed] Listening: exploring possibilities of a haptic aurality (Schroeder 2009)

This paper closely examines listening attitudes in a network environment; in particular it asks how the network itself makes us listen to ourselves and others. It takes as a starting point Laura Marks’ proposal for a haptic visuality (Marks 2004) and suggest an analogical paradigm for listening, what I entitle a haptic aurality.

It is essential to note that at least two types of listening spaces in a network performance exist, a ‘local’ and a ‘virtual’ listening space. These two spaces in a networked performance become particularly differentiated, as the virtual space is often a non-visual space, i.e. it is a space in a different location to which the audience may not have visual access but has sonic access. Although one can argue that in every listening situation these two types of spaces exist: we listen to an orchestra ‘locally’, i.e. to the orchestra in the physical space itself as well as ‘virtually’, i.e. to the sonic reflections and re-fractions of the orchestral sound off the enclosed space. However it is by means of the mere physical distance and the absence of direct visual information that these two types of listening spaces become more clearly delineated in a networked environment. Listening in a networked performance is closer to a sonic flânerie, a listening more akin to a constant zooming-in and out of specific sonic images of the different nodes.